Subject: Mips project Go or Wait?

From: Bill Broadley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1993 02:22:09 -0500 (EDT)

Seems like all we need to decide on what to do about the project is
the price of the 4000 PC and the 4200 PC to decide on which cpu to use,
and the price of parts for the arc 100/150 kits.

I heard the the approximate price of the 4000 PC is about $300.  But I don't
have any distributor contacts to check on a price.

Assuming us and Waldorf can get 50 board purchases together seems like a
good guess would be.  

$100		$5000 for the production kits, cpu's, and plans / 50 boards
		(can we get the gerber files for free as mentioned on the list?)
$300		mips 4000 PC or less for a 4200
$100		appropiate size motherboard, drilled etc.
$300		vram, sims slots, support chips (MCT-ADR, 2*MCT-DP), scsi
		support, video support, etc.
----------------------------------
$800  for 64 bit 50 Mhz external 100 Mhz internal workstation on a board.

Hopefully it could be alot cheaper.

If we can pin these numbers down we can make a decision an send our checks
to Neil, or Waldorf ,and start the process of getting the boards.

I hate seeing no discusion on the list, I'd hate to see it die.

-- 
Bill					1st>	[email-masked]
[email-masked] <2nd 	3rd> 	             [email-masked]
Linux is great.         Bike to live, live to bike.                      PGP-ok

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From: [email-masked] (Tor Arntsen)
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1993 15:43:54 +0200

On Aug 3,  2:21pm, Andreas Busse wrote:

>We should try tro decide between R3xxx and R4xxx solutions. If
>we all agree over a R4xxx machine things will be clearer.
>When we have enough information about the different flavours
>of R4xxx CPUs we can decide which one to use.
>
>Agreed ?

I would vote for R4xxx.

Tor ([email-masked])

(I have been on vacation for a while (still am), not following the 
 discussions.  I guess others are as well, causing the quietness on the list..)

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From: Alan Krantz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 93 04:33:26 MDT

I'm just a customer and not a designer but i would vote for an R4200. The
other chips mainly enhance floating point and cost significantly more.

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From: Jens Decker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 93 13:13:06 +0200

IMHO enhanced floating point performance is the main reason for such a 
project.

Jens Decker, University of Regensburg

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 04 Aug 93 09:50:00 EDT

Hello,
     I wanted to throw out some thoughs about this project and see what
people thought.  It seems to me that two things are certain:

	1) The price/performance ratio of RISC processors will only get
	   better in the future.
	
	2) It will take a (fairly) long to design and debug this thing.

I know that it would be difficult, but given the above, I believe that it
would be good to try to predict how long it will take to design the board
and its operating system, and to try to predict what the cost of the components
will be at that time, and design on the basis of that.  I realize that this
approach is full of risks, and would be difficult to do, but I am afraid that
if this approach is not taken, the board my be obsolete by the time it is
usable.

Jim Nance

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From: Andreas Busse <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 93 09:00:22 +0200

> [lots of stuff deleted]
>
> Speaking of kernel development for the MIPS : we need to start a discussion
> on how to best make the kernel sources multi-architecture, so that one 
> release of Linux runs on MIPS, Intel, and Motorola platforms.
> 
> The AMIGA people didn't bother to do this, so they need a different 
> kernel distribution and can never take advantage of new features 
> when they're added.

Yes, this is right and I was already thinking about. The simplest
way would be a lot of #ifdef's, but that would make the code really
ugly. We should talk to Linus if it's possible to separate the
CPU-dependent stuff into several files, so that the CPU decision
can be made by compiling and linking different files. I'm sure
this is not always possible, but at least for things like the kernel boot
code it should not make any problem (and is necessary there).

Andy

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From: Tommy Thorn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1993 18:37:40 +0200

From: Bill Broadley <[email-masked]>
   Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1993 18:08:43 -0500 (EDT)
   Sender: [email-masked]

   Well I personally prefer the powerpc.  It run's gcc, gets more done per Mhz,
   very elegant, reasonably priced, and has the largest onchip cache.  But the 
   simple fact that there exists a mips 4000 board design outweighs any 
   advantages the powerpc has over the mips 4000 series.  Unless we find
   a ready to use powerpc motherboard design of course.

My *personal* *taste* for the processors ranks Alpha, R4000, and
PowerPC, in this order, but that irrelevant of course. Why do you keep
pointing out that gcc exits for the powerpc, when the same is the case
for the mips?

In fact setting up a gas+binutils+gcc cross compilation enviroment +
spim (mips 3000 simulator) makes it possible to experiment with the
mips architechure already today.

I've tried to get information on the R4000 series the last two days,
but to no avail. Whats the difference from a R3000 (from a programming
view, and yes, I know it's 64 bit ;^)? Can anyone point me to
documentation?

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