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These machines have several things that we don't see much these days: "Made in USA", which the author mentions, a CPU that takes so little power that it doesn't
by johnklos 4y ago
These machines have several things that we don't see much these days: "Made in USA", which the author mentions, a CPU that takes so little power that it doesn't require a heat sink, and a low power design that means the whole system doesn't even need a fan at all. Some have fans, and some come without fans.
The hardware is incredibly reliable. I've been running one RaQ for two decades now, and it has compiled continuously for years. It compiles all of the NetBSD binary packages for mipsel found here:
https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/mipsel/9.0_2022Q4/All/ https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/mipsel/9.0...
Another RaQ had a power supply that failed. I took a power supply from an old external drive enclosure, connected +5 and +12 volts, and everything worked. It's amazing how much can be done with so little power.
- mmastrac 4y agoAs a curiousity - would running qemu-mips on a modern system be faster/more efficient?
- betaby 4y agoI was using qemu-mips quite often around 2012. It was definitely faster, probably more power efficient too.
- johnklos 4y agoProbably. As a general rule, though, we use actual hardware where possible. There have been differences between real hardware and emulated machines, such as floating point issues with m68k in qemu, for instance. At some point, though, some of these kinds of builds will move to qemu and friends.