I decided to set out to try to get at least one example of each major RISC processor architecture, plus a few notable extras. I have yet to succeed, but I'm working on it. Many of these machines were picked up very, very cheap on eBay and are not tested yet for lack of drives or appropriate cabling and keyboards. As I get the chance to test them, hopefully more configuration information will come here... along with photos and links to sites with useful information on each architecture.
MIPS:
Little-endian: Two DEC Decstation 5000/200 (33mhz R3000, IIRC) each with an
unknown amount of memory, no hard drives, and no keyboard/mouse. One has two
frambuffers, the other has one. Neither is tested yet.
Big-endian: SGI Indigo2 (175mhz R4400, IIRC) with an unknown amount of
memory and two hard drives of unknown size (2gb and 1gb?). Uses standard PC
keyboards and mice, and I have a matching SGI monitor (17" 13w3 cable,
Sync-on-green so it won't work with SUNs).
PA-RISC:
HP 712/100 -- I'm not sure what's in this one, but it's got memory and a hard
drive
HP C110 -- 120mhz processor, 256mb RAM, not sure of the HD size.
These use standard PC keyboars and mice; the 712 came with an HP Internet
keyboard, clearly not the original (recycled from one of their consumer PCs,
most likely) that's now in use with my work PC
VAX:
Vaxstation 4000/60 with 96mb of ram and a 245mb HD (which will likely get
replaced with a 1gb or 2gb)
OK, VAX isn't RISC but it's a significant architecture nonetheless, and they
defintely were workstations with a choice of VMS or Ultrix.
POWER (IBM RS/6000):
Powerstation 340 (model 7012) -- The most recent arrival, I'm pretty sure
this is original POWER, not POWER2. It's got two big ram boards, and two
very chunky-looking (and probably low-capacity) narrow SCSI hard drives.
Possibly all of the RS/6000s should fall under one category, though I'm not
clear on how different POWER/POWER2/POWER4 are from each other, and PowerPC
is a slightly different beast
Intel i960:
I got a "Network General" system with an i960 processor in it for $6 plus
shipping; I have no idea what it is or if it even qualifies here (it may
just be a particularly chunk X-Terminal) but I'll have a much closer look
when it arrives.
What I still want:
The two main architectures I'm missing at this point:
A 680x0 based workstation -- a Sun3, probably, though there were a fair number
of other manufacturers making 68k based workstations as well
A DEC Alpha based machine. I'm continually surprised at how expensive
surplus Alphas are, so this may take quite a while, My preference would be
for a TurboChannel-based one, as it's more interesting than another
PCI-based machine.
On the 8-bit side, given the wonderful emultators available for most 8-bit
architectures, it just doesn't seem quite as interesting to collect anymore.
I'd still love to have a working Apple II (perhaps a IIgs or a Laser 128)
and as long as I can find more space I wouldn't mind an Atari (8-bit or ST
or both) or an Amiga.