Everything Else

Heh, I like 1920x1440 and up but its hard to find 4:3 monitors. These are going to be used on lower end systems where hooking them up to my 1920x1200 displays I use on a daily basis is impractical or non-sensical. It's best to have a monitor close to the native resolution when possible.

Nikkor 135mm DC f/2 lens.

I want one since I was 15 and I finally found a good deal.
There are better optics around there, but I'm a sucker for well built hardware - and this is pure metal and glass!

Attaching a picture of my camera and a sample photo taken at a garden near my place here in Prague. DSL was down, couldn't work, took a walk. =)

Nikon you mean? Nice! I enjoy photography too.

Raion-Fox wrote: Nikon you mean?

Nope, Nikkor is correct. They are a subsidiary of Nikon, they make all Nikon's lenses, and damn fine lenses they are...

The name Nikkō (日光) was already used by the company as an abbreviation of Nippon Kōgaku (日本光学), long before the introduction of the Nikon brand, and the new trademark was created by adding the suffix "-r", common for lens names.
The Anytar 12cm f/4.5 lens was consequently renamed Nikkor in 1932.

http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Nippon_Kōga ... efore_1945

I like fast prime lenses. I usually run Canon, and have a couple film bodies and a several revisions old crop sensor DSLR. I don't have enough primes though, just a 50/1.4. I would like to get the SIGMA 85/1.4 ART but it's a lot of money and it's a lot of weight. Now that it's getting bright out I can play with my EOS 1N RS some more.

On the Nikon side I bought a N90s to scratch an itch (remembering the Kodak DCS 420 I had access to when they were new) - it has a sticky button but otherwise nice, came with an AF 50/1.8 which seems to do a little nicer work than the Canon 50/1.8 so I haven't been bothered by it at all. I picked up a F100 at the store though and that led to finding one on ebay to replace the N90s which went to my wife who reluctantly started enjoying it after sticking with her FM10 for years. We had a roll of film get double exposures in the FM10 so it might be on it's way out. All this new film camera action led to picking up Nikkor AF 50/1.8 D for the F100 - it's smoother, but doesn't feel as solid as the non-D. Also an AF 28/2.8 and most recently AF 85/2.

As much fun as these lenses are on the film camera, my wife shoots a Nikon DSL and they're a great fun on it. It's crop too so it's like another set of lenses to learn.

japes wrote: On the Nikon side I bought a N90s to scratch an itch (remembering the Kodak DCS 420 I had access to when they were new) - it has a sticky button but otherwise nice, came with an AF 50/1.8 which seems to do a little nicer work than the Canon 50/1.8 so I haven't been bothered by it at all.

I have a Nikkor 50mm 1.8D. I don't like the bokeh that much, it is a bit harsh, but when you stop it down it is possibly the sharpest of their lenses. The newer 1.8G is not so sharp and has more distortion... not that it matters anyway.

When I lived in Russia, I shot exclusively a F80 and the 50mm 1.8D. Some of the best shots of my life were made at that time. I'm attaching an example. It was done with a 50mm, and a flash pointing to the ceiling. I was so busy trying to get the cat looking up that I forgot about the background, but it is still pretty good. The film is a standard Kodak Gold 200.

Also attaching the mandatory mirror selfie.

Although nowadays I mostly shoot my D7000, whenever I buy a lens I always think of getting the good ones (and preferably the ones compatible with older film bodies). Good glass doesn't get obsolete, and if you take good care of them, you can use them for ages. I have my 50mm since I was 11-12 years old.

The day my savings allow I plan to get a full frame DSLR.

guardian452 wrote: I found out recently one of my favourite prog-rock groups had more than one album. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_(Canadian_band ) I have FM's Black Noise on vinyl and CD You should listen to it. It didn't get me into music* But I eventually learned marimba and my dad gave me this record when I bought a record player in my teenage years. I was kinda into synths for a while... I've only owned a jp-8000 and it wasn't necessarily by choice (it was free), but I had a lot of fun with it.

**so, my uncle was a drummer and got me into that when I was barely old enough to sit upright. May have been to spite my mother

I saw FM a couple of times back around 1980 or so, when I presume you were still haploid! They opened for another Canadian act that you may have heard of, Rush, on a few tours. I remember when they turned off the arena lights (either Madison Square Garden in NYC or the Byrne Arena in NJ), and the bow for Ben Mink's electric violin lit up in rainbow colors. The young teenager version of me saw that and said, "Whoaaaa! Duuuuude!", and stuff like that, if I recall correctly.

Fossil Wrist PDA version 2.0 - a smartwatch that runs near full version of the Palm OS 4.0. A funny thing, but very functional.

A book about PCI. Hope to see the light out of the tunnel.

jirka wrote: Fossil Wrist PDA version 2.0 - a smartwatch that runs near full version of the Palm OS 4.0

MC68EZ328 cpu inside?

Probably yes - they state "Dragonball Super VZ at 66 MHz".

A HP 9000 Model 712/80 (w/maxed out RAM and additional VRAM module installed) thanks to FlasBurn .

Runs well with both OpenBSD 6.1 and Debian 9 unstable and is currently tested using openssl speed -elapsed . It gets a little hot around CPU, cache and crystal oscillator. I measured about 57 degrees Celsius on the heatsink during operation (case was just opened for a few seconds for the measurement).

OpenBSD (6.1) works diskless so far. I see a lot of "ie0: receive descriptors out of sync at [...]" and "ie0: TDR detected an open [...] clock(s) away" during kernel boot and from time to time though, but that didn't stop the show, only slows things down AFAICS:


Debian GNU/Linux (9 - unstable) also works diskless, but running apt is not recommended and can lock up the machine. apt is usable from a disk install though or when mounting and updating the FS from a more powerful PA-RISC machine (e.g. a c8000):

johnnym wrote: HP 9000 Model 712/80

I owned a 712*100Mhz/192MB of ram, it was good as X11 terminal, but with gentoo it took 15 weeks (24h/24) just to compile a minimal stage4

johnnym wrote: A HP 9000 Model 712/80 (w/maxed out RAM and additional VRAM module installed) thanks to FlasBurn .

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Nice. I've got a 712/100 with 192Mb which is quite slow, but probably one of my favourite machines. They were never speed demons - even back in the days these were current, they were mainly used as glorified xterminals where I worked (i.e. an xterminal but with a floppy drive, which is why they were chosen over proper xterminals by the guys in testing).

In terms of maxing it out, beyond RAM, its quite difficult out as the parts are rare. I've got probably the most useful GIO option: the 2nd VGA and Ethernet GIO Card with breakout cable, but you don't see them for sale much. The second (teleshare) slot is also impossible to find anything for, but pretty useless these days anyway. Even the floppy + matching bezel is very difficult to find outside of buying a complete system with one installed. There is also a nice matching external CDROM and HDD if you want to go for the full setup

Y888099 wrote:

johnnym wrote: HP 9000 Model 712/80

I owned a 712*100Mhz/192MB of ram, it was good as X11 terminal, but with gentoo it took 15 weeks (24h/24) just to compile a minimal stage4

Sounds like a good burn-in test. If it doesn't went up in flames during 105 days of continuous operation, heat might not be a problem for the electronics of this machine (although the 712/100 has a different system board then my 712/80).

kramlq wrote:

johnnym wrote: A HP 9000 Model 712/80 (w/maxed out RAM and additional VRAM module installed) thanks to FlasBurn .

[/code]

Nice. I've got a 712/100 with 192Mb which is quite slow, but probably one of my favourite machines. They were never speed demons - even back in the days these were current, they were mainly used as glorified xterminals where I worked (i.e. an xterminal but with a floppy drive, which is why they were chosen over proper xterminals by the guys in testing).

Actually speed is not that an issue, as long as there are other options to compile or update software. And especially for Debian on HPPA it's easy to just use a later machine for this work (same for OpenBSD and NetBSD I guess). Nevertheless I was shocked how demanding apt is nowadays. Of course I made it extra hard by using a NFS root FS over a 10 Mbps NIC.

kramlq wrote: In terms of maxing it out, beyond RAM, its quite difficult out as the parts are rare. I've got probably the most useful GIO option: the 2nd VGA and Ethernet GIO Card with breakout cable, but you don't see them for sale much.

Is this a 100 Mbps NIC then?

kramlq wrote: The second (teleshare) slot is also impossible to find anything for, but pretty useless these days anyway. Even the floppy + matching bezel is very difficult to find outside of buying a complete system with one installed.

Fortunately for me FlasBurn had the original non-floppy bezel, which I like even more for a machine that should be used without disks.

kramlq wrote: There is also a nice matching external CDROM and HDD if you want to go for the full setup

Yeah, I've seen a few pictures of these external devices on the web. They look pretty cute. Sun had a similar idea for their lunchbox models. I got two SPARCclassics with matching CDROM and disk enclosures. Makes a nice tower.

Two blazingly fast 50 MHz MicroSPARCs, a high-speed CDROM and SCSI disk, all in one tower!
With the words of IBM - although they meant another machine - "[...] this system is a supersonic race car on the IT highway. [...]" (taken from http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/775/ ).

I wonder why SGI never thought about external enclosures for single CDROM and disk drives that match the design of the base machine (i.e. CDROM for Octane, etc.).

johnnym wrote: I wonder why SGI never thought about external enclosures for single CDROM and disk drives that match the design of the base machine (i.e. CDROM for Octane, etc.).

They did: The Indy had the Challenge Vault S, the Indigo2 had the Challenge Vault M, and the O200 had the Origin Vault.

johnnym wrote: Is this a 100 Mbps NIC then?

No, it only creates a second port which I believe has the same hardware as the first, so 10Mbps only.

johnnym wrote: I wonder why SGI never thought about external enclosures for single CDROM and disk drives that match the design of the base machine (i.e. CDROM for Octane, etc.).

They do! They offered granite enclosures to match the granite keyboard and mouse of the Indy, Indigo2 etc. I've got the CDROM, Floppy and DDS3 drive versions, which stack nicely just like the Sun boxes. I posted a picture on here many years ago: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=17035&p=132888#p132888

For Octane, there is also an external DVD in dark grey, and presumably tape, floppy as well.

johnnym wrote: Sounds like a good burn-in test. If it doesn't went up in flames during 105 days of continuous operation, heat might not be a problem for the electronics of this machine

Yes, it was a burn-in test
I was curious, at the end I understood these 712 machines are slow, but affordable.
They can be used as server.

Before selling I had also bought a second NIC+Uart card, which uses a strange "Y" cable.
It was useful to control a logic analyzer made by HP.


p.s.
One of the problems I had recompiling stuff was the C++ compiler. If you want to recompile things like cmake, you have to deal with C++, which eats *a lot of ram*, and since the machine was limited to 192MB (180MB usable for the userspace), you have to use the swap. The problem was ... I allocated 2GB of swap on a slow hard drive. It was less than 10Mbyte/sec. It didn't help.

robespierre wrote:

johnnym wrote: I wonder why SGI never thought about external enclosures for single CDROM and disk drives that match the design of the base machine (i.e. CDROM for Octane, etc.).

They did: The Indy had the Challenge Vault S, the Indigo2 had the Challenge Vault M, and the O200 had the Origin Vault.

I actually knew of these, but I thought more about external enclosures of smaller scale, for one single drive, like the ones for the 712 series pictured in the following images:

kramlq wrote:

johnnym wrote: I wonder why SGI never thought about external enclosures for single CDROM and disk drives that match the design of the base machine (i.e. CDROM for Octane, etc.).

They do! They offered granite enclosures to match the granite keyboard and mouse of the Indy, Indigo2 etc. I've got the CDROM, Floppy and DDS3 drive versions, which stack nicely just like the Sun boxes. I posted a picture on here many years ago: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=17035&p=132888#p132888

For Octane, there is also an external DVD in dark grey, and presumably tape, floppy as well.

Ok, I didn't knew these external enclosures were sold by SGI. I've seen some of them on the web but thought they were of generic source, also because I didn't recognize that the ones in lighter grey/beige actually have a granite look.

But compared to the machines itself, the smaller external enclosures have a pretty generic look don't you think?

Maybe SGI's intention was to emphasize the design of their machines by surrounding it with generic looking peripherals (apart from the granite look).

Newest member of the family: a Hofner violin bass. (Not sure exactly which model, but it's one of the fully hollow-body ones, not the one with a sustain block inside.) Picked it up because I've been wanting to try one and a guy on Craigslist was offering a good deal since he's in a Beatles cover band and already has two others. It's a bit scuffed up, but overall in good shape, and it sounds sweet as hell Pure bass on the lower strings with a nice woody pluck on the upper ones, plays beautifully, and sounds good even without an amp hooked up