> But let's also look at the options you have right now: > > o Eval boards end on ebay relativly rarely, but you can try anyway. > Another option is something like a surplus MIPS workstation. > o A bunch of wireless routers and other devices such as some > the Linksys > WRT54 models have been recycled for hacking use with good success. > o Routerboard which is not yet supported out of tree > (working in cleaing > the patches) would be another reasonably priced option. > Generally you > may want to look at the list of platforms supported by > http://openwrt.org/ - many of their platforms have > friendly price tags. > Of course alot of those are purpose built hw so may be a > bit quirky to > use. > o Apparently AMD Alchemy boards used to be fairly cheap, on > the order of > $100. I have not idea this is true or still true for the > new owner of > Alchemy Raza Microelectronics. > o For the meager investment of a few megabytes of disk space > Qemu is a > really nice and well performing system which also is > rapidly improving. > > Ralf Another possible option are the Roku HD series boxes. The old Roku HD's (also known as Photobridge) used a MIPS-based chip and Roku provided linux SDK for developers to download (see http://www.rokulabs.com/community_developers_sb.php). That box is no longer sold. However it appears they now have a new box called the Brightsign HD600 http://www.rokulabs.com/digital_brightsign.php which sells for $300. The manual says it uses a Nexperia chip. They may eventually provide a linux SDK for this box also. -earlm
