[geeks] Whee! Lightning strikes, AGAIN!

[nate at portents.com]

> On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 12:50:23PM -0400, nate at portents.com wrote:
>> > So far no one seems to have bothered to produce the equivalent of
>> DD-WRT
>> > or Tomato, etc (Linksys WRT54G-L router) Linux distributions for
>> > custom loading, nor have customization toolkits appeared for them.
>>
>> Probably because a lot of them are MIPS-X architecture and there's no
>> GCC
>> support for it:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS-X
>
> If GCC doesn't support it, wouldn't that suggest that they found it
> easier to port Linux to a new compiler than to just add support to GCC?

I think that cheap Chinese DVD players are MIPS-X and currently a lot do
not run Linux, but other embedded operating systems.

However other DVD players, which I think typically cost a lot more, are
based on things like the Sigma EM85XX chipset which has an ARM CPU in it,
and runs uClinux, an "Embedded Linux/Microcontroller" OS.

Back when Vizio was called V Inc, they had a DVD player based on this
chipset called the Bravo D1, which originally sold for $200 (it had
composite, s-video, component, VGA, and DVI-D outputs, and could upscale a
DVD to any of the HD outputs and didn't require HDCP).

The company which manufactured the DVD player for V Inc. decided a few
years after production had ceased of the Bravo D1 to start producing it
again, without consulting Vizio, and actually managed to get places like
Newegg to sell them for $35 (serial numbers were invalid of course).  So
that gives you a sense of just how cheap the Sigma chipset is, and should
give a vague idea about how incredibly cheap embedded MIPS-X stuff must
be.

- Nate