debian-mips on cobalt hardware

[Nathaniel Irons <lexical@bumppo.net>]

I'm looking into buying the Cobalt Qube2, originally under the theory
that I could safely limp along with their webby admin system for a while
while I get my bearings running a box, and eventually replace their
weird, customized, somewhat elderly kernel and configuration with a more
current distribution.

That plan predates my having read over materials such as:

a)  www.linux.sgi.com ("The Cobalt Qube support has never been 
    integrated into the official Linux/MIPS 2.1.x kernels"), 

b)  the horrifying, chaotic list archives at cobaltnet.com 
    (<http://ftp.cobaltnet.com/lists/cobalt-users/msg07124.html>), 

c)  and the near-total lack of any cobalt discussion in Debian's mailing 
    list archives.  
    
Did I miss anything?  Is it reasonable to ever hope to install a
functional debian on this apparently-bastard hardware?

Thanks very much.

  -nat