Re: Cobalt Qube
On Thu, Dec 03, 1998 at 01:12:04AM +1030, Mark Mickan wrote:
>
> On 29-Nov-98 Jim Pick wrote:
> >
> > Gerhard Poul <gp@atnet.at> writes:
> >
> > > Is there someone who uses a Cobalt Qube out there???
> > >
> > > I asked on #debian and they told me that there was a message on
> > > debian-devel
> > > about it. But I'm not able to find it in the Mailing list archives.
> > >
> > > Please let me tell why I'm interested in these Cobalt Qubes...
> > >
> > > I really like the hardware they have. But I really dislike these
> > > Web-Interfaces and all these special things.
> > >
> > > That's why I'm looking for a way to install debian on it. With ssh and all
> > > these things...
> >
> > I've heard nice things about their hardware. The Cobalt RaQ looks
> > sort of interesting. Plus Dave Miller works there. :-)
> >
> > There has been some interest in a MIPS port, and there is a mailing
> > list - see:
> >
> > http://www.debian.org/ports/mips/
> >
> > >From what I understand, the Cobalt hardware comes with a Red Hat based
> > distribution. I think that it is different from the MIPS you'd find
> > on an SGI machine, as it is little endian. (Correct me if I'm wrong)
>
> IIRC, the MIPS processor is rather unique in that it can operate with either
> big-endian or little-endian byte order.
The Powerpc can do that also, but i think a particular endianness is chosen
either in the hardware (hardwired, or hardware switch) or by the OS. in the
powerpc it is possible to change endiannes my changing a value in the control
register, but i don't think anyone has yet taken advantage of it, for example
to use little endian only drivers in a big endian setting.
so if the linux is already supported by it, the rest should cause no major
problem, after all we already support big endian architecture (m68k, ppc and
sparc) as well as little endian.
but endianess is only one of the parameter, and from what i heard the MIPS
processor is very special ...
Friendly,
Sven LUTHER
Reply to: