I lied

Posted August 27, 2004

It just occured to me, whilst hacking away on some overdue code, that I lied.

The Cobalt Qube, whilst having a MIPS processor, doesn't use the mips architecture as far as Debian is concerned. That's for SGI machiness (like my IP-22 Indys), whilst mipsel is for the Cobalt gear, and the DECStations with MIPS processors.

So, I actually have 4 of the 11 architectures covered :)

Next; a DEC Alpha I think. Whilst it's not a new architecture (like I said, it uses mipsel), the Alpha processor was a major player, and for history's sake, I'd like to have on in my personal museum :)

4 Comments so far

  1. Hale on August 27th, 2004

    You could also run NT4 on it, if you were so inclined. There is a program called FX32 that will translate your Intel-targeted apps to run on Alpha for NT.

  2. mlambie on August 27th, 2004

    If you want to run NT on it then you’ll need to change the BIOS over, which prevents it from booting any of the other UNIX/Linux/BSD OSes that are available. Swapping BIOSes all the time sounds like !fun :)

    Also, as a side note, you’d need NT4, as Alpha support was dropped with RC3 of Windows 2000 Server.

    Really though, why would you want NT on an Alpha? It’s like running Debian on an SGI box. You can’t utilize its fancy hardware. Ohh… wait a sec… sheeeet.

  3. Hale on August 27th, 2004

    Yes, I know 2000 doesn’t run on Alpha… which is why I said NT4 :)

    And it wouldn’t be like running Debian on Alpha… it would be like running Red Hat 4 on Alpha :)

  4. Hale on August 27th, 2004

    Err… Redhat on SGI I mean. My point was that Debian is newer than NT4 by quite a margin.