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Comment by klodolph | Hacker News Reader

Back from the era when MIPS was exciting. The PlayStation 2 has a 64-bit MIPS III processor (with some MIPS IV stuff), which was really cool before x86 ate the world. You can still see support for the PlayStation 2 in GCC + Binutils (unlike the PlayStation or Nintendo 64… even though those systems both both have MIPS II or MIPS III processors, they aren’t really big enough to run a more modern OS comfortably, and don’t have Ethernet).

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Not sure where new MIPS CPUs are used nowadays, but i do have a handheld[0] that uses a MIPS-based CPU (Ingenic JZ4770) at 1GHz with 512MB of RAM and a 3D accelerator using an open source Linux-based OS. This is from 2013-2014 but there have been some more recent clones, like the RG350 series by Anbernic[2] (which runs the same OS and software).

Though it is basically just a Linux system, nothing special about it aside from the instruction set. When i ported a DOS game i made some time ago to it[3] all i did was install Debian and Free Pascal on a MIPS QEMU system, make sure it compiles with SDL and package the binary in the package format its launcher uses (OPK, which IIRC is essentially a squashfs image).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCW_Zero

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenic_Semiconductor

[2] https://retrododo.com/rg350/

[3] https://i.imgur.com/coFBWXx.jpg

> they aren’t really big enough to run a more modern OS comfortably

I'm sure there are a few asterisks to this, but the WRT54G (the iconic Linksys blue and black wifi router) has a MIPS 32-bit CPU that's ~4x as fast as the PSX and ~1/2x as fast as the PS2.

Well, modern OpenWRT doesn't run on original WRT54G at all, and barely on the upgraded WRT54GS version, so there is that.

32MB of RAM that the PS2 had would be really tight for modern kernels.

https://openwrt.org/supported_devices/432_warning

But CPU-wise I don't foresee that ~300MHz MIPS would be any sort of major roadblock.

Currently OpenWrt uses Kernel 5.10 or 5.4.

When WRT54G was available kernel was 2.2 or 2.4

My mind is blown. Especially when knowing my WRT54G would buckle if you so much as send it more than a dozen ICMP packets per second.

The 4x that’s important is that the smallest iteration of the WRT54G still has 4x as much RAM as a PlayStation. The CPU speed is enough, to be sure. Newer versions of OpenWrt or Linux are going to have problems with such a small amount of RAM. Note that it’s definitely possible, it’s just not comfortable.

The limiting factor on the PS1 would have been RAM. It only had 2 MB -- the WRT54G had 16 MB.

Specially because Sony was still welcoming to Linux, having PS2Linux as well.

I did have some fun with that kit, despite the typical monitor issues, even with a sanctioned distribution.

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