i am also quite happy with my z50 and NetBSD... i use it as a wireless X11 
terminal (D-Link DWL-650 and Linksys WPC11 cards work great!)... i also 
use it as a portable Internet terminal and for dialup, using my Motorola 
StarTAC and a serial I/O pcmcia card...

truly a little wonder, and with the dual-capacity LiIon battery (which 
comes with a AA-cell adapter), the unit seems to run for at least 10 hours 
on a single charge! (the dual-LiIon package is running for $19[US] on 
ebay; the 8-cell AA adapter, which is bigger, lasts for five hours)...

my only initial problem was getting the cursor keys working (but i got 
around this problem with an xkbcomp hack... has this been fixed in the 
latest release?

On Fri, 22 Mar 2002, Bernd Sieker wrote:

> 
> Ah, now I have X11 up and running. My 128M CompactFlash card does not
> leave much room for clients, but the Server works fine and can query a
> remote xdm, so the z50 is a really nice, very quiet X-Terminal.
> 
> The problem might have been an unhealthy mix of 1.5.3_ALPHA kernel and
> 1.5.2 userland.
> 
> I'm now using 1.5.3_RC1 userland and it seems to work.
> 
> Problem might also have been missing fonts. Oops ;)
> 
> I have to say I'm amazed how fast it is. I'm also used to the sluggish
> Xhpux on my hp300 machine, and in comparison Xhpc just flies.
> 
> Plus, of course, it's 16 bit, compared to the HP300's 8. And the CPU
> is 131 MHz, instead of 33. I guess at floating point, the M68040 would
> beat the VR4121, but not at much else.
> 
> Just letting you know how happy I am with NetBSD/hpcmips on IBM
> z50. Never had such a "cool" toy since my first Amiga ;) And this one
> was even cheaper. Paid only $140 on ebay.
> 
> Keep up the good work!
> 
>