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Wow man. Back in the day the Godson processors were supposed to be these MIPS chips from China that ran Linux. I wanted one just for the sheer curiosity of it a

Wow man. Back in the day the Godson processors were supposed to be these MIPS chips from China that ran Linux. I wanted one just for the sheer curiosity of it all but couldn’t get one here in the US. I wonder if there is a way to get them from Taiwan / Korea. I can’t go to mainland China.

cbmuser 10mo ago
You can buy LoongArch hardware on AliExpress, for example.
- renewiltord 10mo ago
  Always thought they’d ship me garbage. Not sure why. I’ve bought lots of stuff there. But I don’t know how to tell it’s not some rebadged Via chip before it arrives. Just the game, I suppose. To Aliexpress!
  - suprjami 10mo ago
    Buy from listings with many sales and good reviews. Look for reviews with real images and real seeming phrases in many languages, not 10 accounts all posting the same phrase with no pictures. Buy from stores with a name, preferably who have established a "brand" for themselves across many products. UGreen are a great example of this for USB gadgets. Don't buy from stores named Shop195772040, these will take your money and disappear or ship fakes. Don't buy suspiciously cheap items with no sales, these will do the same.
  - officeplant 10mo ago
    Experiences can vary from seller to seller, but I've owned a few oddball motherboards from china that shouldn't exist. (old server cpu sockets shoved onto a Micro ATX Board) Any time I've had issues getting a refund took maybe a week or two at most. Although the last issue I had was a few VRM components exploding and throwing shrapnel all over inside the case. So buy at your own risk on some things.
- DeathArrow 10mo ago
  I don't think LoongArch is the same thing with MIPS according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson
  - pantalaimon 10mo ago
    MIPS ist dead, so not much gain in keeping compatibility with it anymore.
  - cbmuser 10mo ago
    > I don't think LoongArch is the same thing with MIPS according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson Where did I make that claim? I never said that.
csmantle 10mo ago
There seems to be a community-run site about this: https://loongfans.cn/en/pages/intro.html#i-m-sold-where-can-i-buy-one https://loongfans.cn/en/pages/intro.html#i-m-sold-where-can-...
- Kwpolska 10mo ago
  This site links to https://areweloongyet.com/en/ https://areweloongyet.com/en/ > Even though the Loongson Corporation has yet to release the remaining volumes of the LoongArch manual, thanks to a wealth of public information such as publicly available QEMU and Linux changes, "undisclosed" information such as instruction encoding and behaviors is, in effect, already public. The absence of manuals can no longer hinder optimization efforts by The People. If the architecture is still undocumented, I would not consider Debian’s move to be wise.

cbmuser 10mo ago

You can buy LoongArch hardware on AliExpress, for example.

renewiltord 10mo ago
Always thought they’d ship me garbage. Not sure why. I’ve bought lots of stuff there. But I don’t know how to tell it’s not some rebadged Via chip before it arrives. Just the game, I suppose. To Aliexpress!
- suprjami 10mo ago
  Buy from listings with many sales and good reviews. Look for reviews with real images and real seeming phrases in many languages, not 10 accounts all posting the same phrase with no pictures. Buy from stores with a name, preferably who have established a "brand" for themselves across many products. UGreen are a great example of this for USB gadgets. Don't buy from stores named Shop195772040, these will take your money and disappear or ship fakes. Don't buy suspiciously cheap items with no sales, these will do the same.
- officeplant 10mo ago
  Experiences can vary from seller to seller, but I've owned a few oddball motherboards from china that shouldn't exist. (old server cpu sockets shoved onto a Micro ATX Board) Any time I've had issues getting a refund took maybe a week or two at most. Although the last issue I had was a few VRM components exploding and throwing shrapnel all over inside the case. So buy at your own risk on some things.
DeathArrow 10mo ago
I don't think LoongArch is the same thing with MIPS according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson
- pantalaimon 10mo ago
  MIPS ist dead, so not much gain in keeping compatibility with it anymore.
- cbmuser 10mo ago
  > I don't think LoongArch is the same thing with MIPS according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson Where did I make that claim? I never said that.

csmantle 10mo ago

There seems to be a community-run site about this: https://loongfans.cn/en/pages/intro.html#i-m-sold-where-can-i-buy-one https://loongfans.cn/en/pages/intro.html#i-m-sold-where-can-...

Kwpolska 10mo ago
This site links to https://areweloongyet.com/en/ https://areweloongyet.com/en/ > Even though the Loongson Corporation has yet to release the remaining volumes of the LoongArch manual, thanks to a wealth of public information such as publicly available QEMU and Linux changes, "undisclosed" information such as instruction encoding and behaviors is, in effect, already public. The absence of manuals can no longer hinder optimization efforts by The People. If the architecture is still undocumented, I would not consider Debian’s move to be wise.