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During the December quarter 1999, Cobalt established several strategic relationships including NTT DoCoMo, France Telecom and Gateway. The company began shipments of products to Gateway, which Gateway is marketing under the name Gateway Microserver.

So, the processor would appear to be SGI MIPS-based. StrongArm is 32-bit (and what Netwinders use)

During the December quarter 1999, Cobalt established several strategic relationships including NTT DoCoMo, France Telecom and Gateway. The company began shipments of products to Gateway, which Gateway is marketing under the name Gateway Microserver.

So, the processor would appear to be SGI MIPS-based. StrongArm is 32-bit (and what Netwinders use)

I've seen information indicating expressions of interest in a port of PalmOS to StrongARM; I'll believe in there being product when I actually see it on store shelves.

That' right -- like a PC. I guess non-Mac people just assume that Mac people don't know what they are talking about with no justification.

Read the spec sheet if you don't believe me.

On the other hand it could've been a simple mistake. I thought that the Raq 2's were x86 based as well, but the spec sheet for them talks about a "64-bit processor," probably the MIPS you mentioned. ...Not that a rack-mounted machine really counts a a PC under any stretch of the term "personal computer." The Raq 3's may have not been out when the guy first did this. I remember reading about someone making a 1 unit rack-mount out of a revison 1 iMac a long time ago, though I think it was on one of the Mac news sites and not Slashdot.

This guy means to tell us that a MIPS-based Linux rack-mount solution is a "PC"

The rack mounted cobalts aren't MIPS-based. They use Pentiums and Pentium clones.

Their Cobalt cube, or an earlier version is MIPS-based though.

Dig around on Cobalt's products page

• Open Source the Chilisoft ASP Package
• Offer PHP *supported* & *out of the box*

• Open Source the Chilisoft ASP Package
• Offer PHP *supported* & *out of the box*

Where's the big news in this? We've seen almost identical products before.

• 
  One
• another
• 2U
• a UK vendor

FWIW, the new RAQs are x86 based. Check out the press release.

I guess they get more bang per buck, development is a bit easier, and their customers may well be more comfortable running "normal" hardware.

Cobalt's products are cool - I just wish they were a bit cheaper...

For something similar, have a look at this product from rebel.com - they have some interesting bits of hardware generally.

...j

My point is, what is all the hype over Cobalt ? Sounds like they are leveraging heavily off the hype of Linux.

Cheers, Andy!

As somone else said, it's a MIPS chip. I think the distro is hand-made, more or less, by Cobalt. When I was inquiring about one a little while ago, the sales guy was hedging a lot about the distro. It prolly still has a 2.0 kernel due to the butt-pain of porting stuff to a newer one.

Yes, it is overpriced, if you're a hacker type, but the value of this thing is more in the fact that you can drop it on the network and it pops up and works, and it has a lot of sweet configuration utils.


Config util screen shots ->

It takes up to 64MB of ram. The other issue is that people aren't sposed to think of this as a 'computer,' it is not designed to be used as your workstation - it's an appliance.

It's still overpriced, imho, tho. ;)

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blue

Other folks have already posted the press release about the deal, which looks like a Good Thing to me. My bad. Hey, Rob, ever thought about letting posters moderate their own posts down?

The Gateway machine is a Cobalt Qube. See the Cobalt press release for details.

1. Linux was insecure and unmanaged.

2. Linux only supported 256 FD's, and later 1024 FD's.

The insecurity of linux in the begining was well known, it was a hackers OS. Plus, you'd have a lot of unknowns. No REAL packaging system besides tar files, it was a hit or miss proposition based on your admin.

However, File Descriptors (FD) is one of the major reasons. For all of the 1.x kernels, you only had 256 file descriptors. and it was a pain to hack in more. when 2.0 came out, I believe you were still limited to 256, but it was a bit easier to put more in. Some of the later 2.1.x kernels allowed 1024 by default, which 2.2.x does as well. Anyway, other OS's, like Solaris, default to unlimited soft FD's. (hard FD's are still at 256 though). For every IRC connection, you need a FD. So... by using linux, you're automatically limited to 256 or 1024 people. Even if you hack in more, you still have a hardcoded limit. Once again, it's the admin that makes the difference. and as the major irc nets take off, they want something more substantial than 'I heard this admin is good.'

Anyway, I base this on the fact that I used to run irc.ilstu.edu (EFnet) on an AIX machine. We could have ran it on a linux box, but it was just easier with the constant kernel thrash happening on linux to keep it on the AIX box. I now run chat.gamespy.com (and used to run 3dnet.net before it died) and that is on a linux box. and it was a pain to hack in the 4096 FD's we currently have. hence, I would have prefered Solaris at some points. However, Apache was much easier to setup on there, even though that required a lot more FD's as well. You have IRC nets all over the place that use Linux, it's just the history that stop it on the huge networks.

As far as the total article, I see things opposite, of less linux desktops and more linux servers. If you've seen the things that Cobalt is doing, you'd see what a server can do with a microkernel. But the business side of linux just isn't up to speed yet, so it will stay in the hands of geeks and out of the hands of biz guys. which is fine by me.

Gonzo "GoNINzo" Granzeau
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Gonzo Granzeau