Re: Dead ports [Re: config(5) break down]

[Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%panix.com@localhost>]

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 03:14:57PM -0500, David Young wrote:
> 
> Regardless of what we do or do not do with sun2 et cetera, TNF could buy
> some ARM and MIPS boards for developers.  ARM and MIPS boards, however,
> are not so precious as a sun2.  In fact, they're abundant, and cheap.
> Nevertheless, there does not seem to be much interest in porting to
> them.  Why is that?

Neither so abundant nor so cheap as you think, it seems to me, if you
want something that's modern enough to really be useful and has a vendor
friendly enough to make software development specifically for the platform
an exercise anyone would want to do in his spare time...!

That loongson-based laptop might be one cute exception to the rule.  But
eval boards for things like MIPS network processors are not exactly free,
and documentation not trivial to come by without NDA.

If you're going to buy 10,000 and make your own boards, sure, these
platforms are cheaper than things like Soekris.  But qty 1 it's a whole
different ballpark, which in my opinion is why Soekris even exists at all!

Thor