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I hope this isn't too OT, but there doesn't seem to be a more appropriate forum for this question.
I want to start a project both out of interest and hopefully to make some money off my friends in the process I want to buy the components and assemble a custom desktop that is non-x86 (not intel or amd). I want to do this for as little money as possible too. I then plan to learn the assembly of whatever processor I end up using and begin developing an OS for that platform. I would really prefer a RISC processor and is very inexpensive, but it's extremely hard to find not well-known processor manufacturers using Google which retrieves the most well-known first
Anyway I would be extremely grateful if anyone can offer any information. Thanks a bunch guys.
Have you ever tought about a Mac mini.It's about 400$-500$ and has 4 USBs,Fireware,DVI,Network card and wireless.Almost everything.The new Mac minis has Intel Core Dup CPUs.The old ones have a RISC CPUs.
There also ARM 7 CPUs.They are oriented to embeded systems but have a lot of usefull features(Video decoder,MP3 decoder,etc. peripherals).
"All parts should go together without forcing. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer." -- IBM maintenance manual, 1975
Maybe you could be interested in Genesi's PegasosPPC (http://www.pegasosppc.com/). If you are lucky, you can get one rather cheap now (the series is being discontinued and a new successor coming up). It's equipped with a Freescale PowerPC CPU, so docs about the processor architecture are easily available.
Your best bet is ARM, i am doing the same for Dex4u OS (soon to be dex OS).
The test bed i uses is a ARM9 in the form of GP2X.
Its got a open source bootloader, so loading your OS is easy and all the coding is done using FasmARM, there also alot of doc for it . http://jas2o.forthworks.com/dexforum/in ... opic=142.0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2X
I want to buy the components and assemble a custom desktop that is non-x86 (not intel or amd). I want to do this for as little money as possible too. I then plan to learn the assembly of whatever processor I end up using and begin developing an OS for that platform. I would really prefer a RISC processor and is very inexpensive, but it's extremely hard to find not well-known processor manufacturers using Google which retrieves the most well-known first 
