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The NEC RISCstation was a line of computer workstations made by NEC in the mid-1990s, based on MIPS RISC microprocessors and designed to run Microsoft Windows NT. A series of nearly identical machines were also sold by NEC in headless (i.e., no video card or framebuffer) configuration as the RISCserver series, and were intended for use as Windows NT workgroup servers.
Historical development
The RISCstations were based on a modified Jazz architecture licensed from MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. (and which was originally designed by Microsoft). Although architecturally similar to contemporaneous Intel 386-based personal computers (including, for example, a PCI bus), the RISCstations offered a performance advantage over the Pentium-based workstations of the time.
Although based on the Jazz design, the RISCstations did not include the proprietary G364 framebuffer, and instead included an S3 S3 968-based video card in a PCI slot for video output.
Form factor
Each of the RISCstations used a standard IBM AT-style tower or minitower case, a motherboard which also met the AT form factor standard, and used PCI peripherals (such as the video card) for peripheral expansion.
Operating systems
Like all Jazz-based MIPS computers (such as the MIPS Magnum), the RISCstations ran the ARC console firmware to boot Windows NT in little-endian mode (the MIPS III architecture being capable of either little-endian or big-endian operation).
However, with the cessation of support by Microsoft for the MIPS architecture in Windows NT after version 4.0, the RISCstation line also ceased production in 1996.
In addition to Windows NT, NEC ported a version of UNIX System V to the RISCstation.
Although support is lacking from Linux/MIPS for the RISCstation series, they are supported by NetBSD (the correct port is NetBSD/arc) and, to a lesser extent, by OpenBSD.
Models
The RISCstation line included:
- RISCstation 2200
- RISCstation 2250
- RISCstation 4400
- Dual-CPU SMP system including 2x MIPS R4400 microprocessor running at 250 MHz
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