[bit1]

Now if only there was somebody besides Microchip making low-cost dev kits for these things, maybe we could have some fun and get a MIPS revival.

I can get ARM microcontroller boards for $10 - $20 from ST, Microchip (nee Atmel), SiLabs, etc. More powerful ARMs in any flavor of Pi that I want.

Where do I buy a low-end interAptive or microAptive board? The Creator CI20 is super interesting, but no on-board debugger included. The LinkIt MT7688 modules don't even bring out the JTAG pins.

[TickleSteve]

PIC32MZ are MIPS based, not quite what you want but close.

[bit1]

Agreed. The PIC32MZ is a neat MIPS microcontroller (if you're able to tolerate the MPLab Xpress IDE). Unfortunately the cheapest PIC32 board they offer is the DM320001 at $50. I picked up a SAMD10 "Xplained mini" for $9 from Digikey, and one can get sub-$2 STM32F103 boards from AliExpress.

Arguably the Cortex-M0+-based D10 isn't really comparable to the PIC32, but that's sort of the point. No Arduino-sized community is going to develop around an architecture with a $50 minimum entry point... Maybe I should stop complaining about it and try to fix it :-)