[[ Oppologies for references to other OSes here, but they are all that
   is available right now ]]

In message <199611190916.BAA18576@MindBender.serv.net> "Michael
L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" writes: 
: >Anyway, It has a Mips Processor which one I don't know, I think it's 
: >33MhZ.

Likely an R4000 or R4400.  If it is the machine I think it is, then it
is just a clone of the MIPS Magnum 4000 (I think that's the right
model number).

: >is any other UniX OS that would support it?  I guess getting netBSD to 
: >work with the CPU wouldn't be to difficult, it's dealing with the Display 
: >is the only problem I could think of...
: 
: The closest thing that would work would be NetBSD/pmax (for
: DECstations -- same MIPS processor).  The thing is that all the
: devices are probably NEC proprietary hardware, and it's very doubtful
: there are any existing drivers that would be close to them, even if
: you could get the documentation on their innards.

Since NT is running on it now, that implies that it is an ARC BIOS
machine.  If it is an ARC BIOS machine, then there are two Unix ports
going on right now.  There's OpenBSD/arc (which is a followon to the
PICA port) and Linux/MIPS.  I think that Linux/MIPS supports more CPU
types and different oddball hardware than the OpenBSD/arc port.  If it
is just a repackaged Magnum, then either will work.

Most of the MIPS PC machines have an ISA bus or one of the other PC
standard buses.  That may make things easier.

I have a Deskstation rPC44 which has a R4400PC in it running at 100MHz
that I've been trying to get working with either Linux/MIPS or
OpenBSD/arc.  I'm quite close to OpenBSD working, but need to find
time to setup an NFS world to boot from so I can create a hard
disk...

If you want to really go with NetBSD, then the PICA port would be the
place to start.  However, it is badly out of date and lags OpenBSD's
arc tree by many months.  It may be possible to merge OpenBSD's arc
tree into NetBSD and have it work, but that would be a lot of effort
at this point.

: To put it another way: those were designed specifically to run Windows
: NT, and they probably will never do anything else.  Which is a real
: shame, since Microsoft is dropping MIPS support in all future NT
: products.  Can you say "dead end"?

Interesting.  I hadn't heard that.  Where's your information?  I
assume this is after NT 4.0?  I don't disagree that this may be a
deadend platform, but there may be life after NT for them :-)

Warner