diff for duplicates of <20070311135654.GA26339@linux-mips.org> diff --git a/a/1.txt b/N1/1.txt index 314a40f..e9257cb 100644 --- a/a/1.txt +++ b/N1/1.txt @@ -18,45 +18,3 @@ impedance connectors for logic analyzers. Another factor is that the vendors making these boards usually target their commercial customers and factor in a fairly generous markup for the post-sale support into the sales price of the board. - -From a Free Software perspective this is a bloody disaster. Even if for a -moment I put on my dot com hat again, it's one. Over the past years the -commercial contributions have primarily focused on hardware support. In -many cases I received large code drops of lousy to medicore quality and -no maintenance at all after the initial code drop. I won't go into the -reasons here nor do I think I need to name companies here - but it's a big -problem. - -As usual exceptions proof the rule and also as usual there are alot of -grey shades between white and black. Some companies seem to have tremendous -difficulty to be good open source citizens - but they throw some free -hardware into the crowd. Not enough to satisfy the demand and usually only -a few key people are really able to take advantage of that. - -Otoh many if not most important and highest quality contributions over the -years have come from hobby hackers, so in the end the lack availability of -modern hardware is making everybody suffer. Meanwhile the importance of -Linux as OS for MIPS is continuing to rise ... - -I hear similar complaints from other, mostly embedded architectures such as -ARM. But that's not an excuse - this problem wants some remedy. - -But let's also look at the options you have right now: - - o Eval boards end on ebay relativly rarely, but you can try anyway. - Another option is something like a surplus MIPS workstation. - o A bunch of wireless routers and other devices such as some the Linksys - WRT54 models have been recycled for hacking use with good success. - o Routerboard which is not yet supported out of tree (working in cleaing - the patches) would be another reasonably priced option. Generally you - may want to look at the list of platforms supported by - http://openwrt.org/ - many of their platforms have friendly price tags. - Of course alot of those are purpose built hw so may be a bit quirky to - use. - o Apparently AMD Alchemy boards used to be fairly cheap, on the order of - $100. I have not idea this is true or still true for the new owner of - Alchemy Raza Microelectronics. - o For the meager investment of a few megabytes of disk space Qemu is a - really nice and well performing system which also is rapidly improving. - - Ralf diff --git a/a/content_digest b/N1/content_digest index 1f67b3d..7553870 100644 --- a/a/content_digest +++ b/N1/content_digest @@ -25,48 +25,6 @@ "impedance connectors for logic analyzers. Another factor is that the\n" "vendors making these boards usually target their commercial customers and\n" "factor in a fairly generous markup for the post-sale support into the sales\n" - "price of the board.\n" - "\n" - "From a Free Software perspective this is a bloody disaster. Even if for a\n" - "moment I put on my dot com hat again, it's one. Over the past years the\n" - "commercial contributions have primarily focused on hardware support. In\n" - "many cases I received large code drops of lousy to medicore quality and\n" - "no maintenance at all after the initial code drop. I won't go into the\n" - "reasons here nor do I think I need to name companies here - but it's a big\n" - "problem.\n" - "\n" - "As usual exceptions proof the rule and also as usual there are alot of\n" - "grey shades between white and black. Some companies seem to have tremendous\n" - "difficulty to be good open source citizens - but they throw some free\n" - "hardware into the crowd. Not enough to satisfy the demand and usually only\n" - "a few key people are really able to take advantage of that.\n" - "\n" - "Otoh many if not most important and highest quality contributions over the\n" - "years have come from hobby hackers, so in the end the lack availability of\n" - "modern hardware is making everybody suffer. Meanwhile the importance of\n" - "Linux as OS for MIPS is continuing to rise ...\n" - "\n" - "I hear similar complaints from other, mostly embedded architectures such as\n" - "ARM. But that's not an excuse - this problem wants some remedy.\n" - "\n" - "But let's also look at the options you have right now:\n" - "\n" - " o Eval boards end on ebay relativly rarely, but you can try anyway.\n" - " Another option is something like a surplus MIPS workstation.\n" - " o A bunch of wireless routers and other devices such as some the Linksys\n" - " WRT54 models have been recycled for hacking use with good success.\n" - " o Routerboard which is not yet supported out of tree (working in cleaing\n" - " the patches) would be another reasonably priced option. Generally you\n" - " may want to look at the list of platforms supported by\n" - " http://openwrt.org/ - many of their platforms have friendly price tags.\n" - " Of course alot of those are purpose built hw so may be a bit quirky to\n" - " use.\n" - " o Apparently AMD Alchemy boards used to be fairly cheap, on the order of\n" - " $100. I have not idea this is true or still true for the new owner of\n" - " Alchemy Raza Microelectronics.\n" - " o For the meager investment of a few megabytes of disk space Qemu is a\n" - " really nice and well performing system which also is rapidly improving.\n" - "\n" - Ralf + price of the board. -d6f6e05d10b1b06043076e0b827cc9825088bfd6c292fad7e8f2e5a742d97c16 +1f9149cf5c0cc9362e6f79f8cef39e36ed800a37afcaae09a5814806ba0649fe
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