The Network Computing Devices HMX is an X Terminal from 1996 and originally sold for a list price of $3,495. I found one cheap on an auction site so of course I had to have it.
MIPS R4000 processor, 8MB onboard RAM, 2MB VRAM. Mine came with an additional 8 MB RAM in 2 x 4MB 72-pin SIMMs.
I naively thought this would boot to some sort of usable OS when powered up but no, this box loads a firmware off TFTP by default. Thankfully I was able to find a copy of the necessary firmware for this particular terminal (Xncdhmx) on a sketchy looking, unmaintained website. I knew I had hit gold when file told me I had a 32-bit MIPS ELF binary:
$ file Xncdhmx Xncdhmx: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-I version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped
So far the only thing I've done with it is push windows from other machines over to it. 8 bit color depth and a 10 MBit Ethernet connection is quite limiting so it isn't really practical for running most modern graphical software. In any case I had fun exporing this hardware and bringing it back to life for a bit.
