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question on puchaseing mips and sparc cpu and motherboards.

S

ShadowVVL

Senior member
I don't know alot about them and I have never really used one of these chips except for Mips in game consoles and other things.
AnYwh00T, I want to try one or both for programming,learning and experimental fun, maybe even OCing if they are not locked🙂

Can get 1 that is not embedded so I can try different memory and motherboards?

Also I have been looking around and I haven't found a place I can buy them.
Can I buy them or do I need to call special oder or buy a high cost server or something?

If not then is their any other chips besides x86 and ARM?

Sry if any of this is hard to read.I have really let my grammar,punctuation and some spelling go to hell over the last 10 years and I'm in the process of relearning it again.
 
RISC chips like MIPS, SPARC, and POWER don't really have the same aftermarket ecosystem that x86 does. They're generally packaged as complete systems. Memory and expansion cards are going to be the most you'll be able to change, and that's only in a high-end workstation or server variant.

As far as programming, they aren't really all that different from x86 unless you're writing assembly. Any higher-level language will abstract the differences between the chips: indeed that was one of the original purposes of high-level languages.

If you still really want to play with a RISC chip with changeable memory and expansion cards, a used Sun SPARC workstation is probably your best bet.
 
Thanks, sorry for the late reply,I have been away for a wile.

Yes I was planning on doing C and trying assembly with it.
I think I will do more research on them then maybe pick one up in the future.
 
These chips are very different from x86, and generally will offer you no advantages as a consumer.


You'd be better off using the an emulator like QEMU if you just want to play around with writing assembly code for other architectures.
http://www.makestuff.eu/wordpress/running-debian-for-arm-powerpc-on-qemu/
http://www.elinux.org/Virtual_Development_Board
http://www.aurel32.net/info/debian_arm_qemu.php
http://www.aurel32.net/info/debian_mips_qemu.php
http://www.aurel32.net/info/debian_sparc_qemu.php


If you want to buy actual hardware, your best options are repurposing consumer gear.
You have the Raspberry Pi or Samsung Chromebook for ARM.
Almost any router will have a MIPS processor, just get one that's hackable.
SPARC and PowerPC will be a little tougher to acquire. For PowerPC, you can buy an old PowerMac desktop or old Apple laptop.
 
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