On Wed, Jul 26, 2000 at 11:47:15PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:

 > The R4000 models, usually known as MIPS Magnums or Magnum 4000, will
 > work in either endian mode.  In the little endian mode, it is
 > supported by the NetBSD/arc port.  It is also known as Microsoft Jazz.
 > In big endian mode, no free OS that I'm aware of supports this.  The
 > big endian mode support would be nice because you can run that with a
 > serial console while the little endian mode requires a special,
 > expensive video card.

Yah, but that graphics card (well, at least the INMOS-based one in
mine) sure looks great at 1280x1024 on a 17'' SGI display :-)

Anyway, the fact that little-endian mode doesn't support serial
console explains why my 4000PC behaved differently than the
manual claimed.

Big-endian mode on the 4000 could probably be easily supported by
NetBSD/mipsco, eventually.  I mean, it's just the same thing as
NetBSD/arc supports (and could use the same drivers!), but would
need different header files (and do byte-swapping bus_space, etc.)

That could be a fun project.

-- 
        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@zembu.com>