> > that's true. but IMHO it's very sad watching one company after the other
> > (Commodore, sgi, Sun won't take long either) or technoligies (MIPS,
> > PA-RISC, Alpha) dying -- what survives is el-cheapo x86 crap.
> 
> I'm not sure about MIPS, but they are still here, got separated 
> from SGI a few years ago. They are more in the embeded field I 
> guess. Is not the Sony PS2 running with MIPS?

what i've wanted for years: a non-x86 chipset available in a commodity
motherboard formfactor. the closest thing i've seen was the mips magnum
4000. sure, you can get non-x86 architectures at commodity pricing (eg,
sony ps2) but it's not "usefully generic" (not trivially a drop-in
replacement for my primary desktop machine).

i've resigned myself to "el-cheapo x86 crap" on the desktop, mostly because
nothing else has a comparable bang:buck ratio... sigh.