Hello nekochan, I just wanted to say hi to the great people here.
I'm not really new but it's been a long time since I've last posted. After my Trinitron display gave up the ghost (the only sync-on-green monitor I owned), I stashed the Octane in the closet where it sat neglected for the next few years. Recently my girlfriend and I moved into a new place, and this was the second time she had seen me lug the big green thing into a new closet. Naturally she asked wether I was going to hold onto it or maybe sell it/get rid of it. I can understand the question, it was kind of silly to just keep it sitting in the closet for so long. Well, I decided it was finally time to get her up and running again.
I hit up craigslist and found a decent-ish Dell LCD that supports SOG for $25.
The first thing I realized upon boot was that the white LED bulb in the lightbar had gone out. Other than that everything is okay. It's good to have an IRIX box again.
Yesterday I went ahead and did a little restoration on the skin, based on recommendations from a couple of threads here. I used Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and Mother's Back to Black.
Here is the front panel prior to the cleaning:
And here it is after scrubbing the paint/blemishes off with the magic eraser pad:
It works very well, but be aware (and this has been mentioned by others) that this can definitely take off some of the texture in the plastic and leave you with an un-even looking surface. Use as little pressure as you can to remove the paint/blemishes. Either way I would not recommend using these pads unless you are also going to apply some kind of wax as well.
Here are a couple of pics of the machine after applying Mother's Back to Black:
It's probably hard to tell in the photos, but it gives the color a noticeable bit of extra luster without making the surface too shiny. I like it a lot.
Other random thoughts/questions:
I would have thought Octane drive sleds would be more plentiful and easier to come by.
External SCSI CD ROM drives are a bit more expensive than I was expecting. What models do you folks use?
Are there any compact PS2 keyboards that work well with sgi boxes?
And finally... I think I have the bug again. The Octane will soon be joined by a Fuel.
Cheers all.
I'm not really new but it's been a long time since I've last posted. After my Trinitron display gave up the ghost (the only sync-on-green monitor I owned), I stashed the Octane in the closet where it sat neglected for the next few years. Recently my girlfriend and I moved into a new place, and this was the second time she had seen me lug the big green thing into a new closet. Naturally she asked wether I was going to hold onto it or maybe sell it/get rid of it. I can understand the question, it was kind of silly to just keep it sitting in the closet for so long. Well, I decided it was finally time to get her up and running again.
I hit up craigslist and found a decent-ish Dell LCD that supports SOG for $25.
The first thing I realized upon boot was that the white LED bulb in the lightbar had gone out. Other than that everything is okay. It's good to have an IRIX box again.
Yesterday I went ahead and did a little restoration on the skin, based on recommendations from a couple of threads here. I used Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and Mother's Back to Black.
Here is the front panel prior to the cleaning:
And here it is after scrubbing the paint/blemishes off with the magic eraser pad:
It works very well, but be aware (and this has been mentioned by others) that this can definitely take off some of the texture in the plastic and leave you with an un-even looking surface. Use as little pressure as you can to remove the paint/blemishes. Either way I would not recommend using these pads unless you are also going to apply some kind of wax as well.
Here are a couple of pics of the machine after applying Mother's Back to Black:
It's probably hard to tell in the photos, but it gives the color a noticeable bit of extra luster without making the surface too shiny. I like it a lot.
Other random thoughts/questions:
I would have thought Octane drive sleds would be more plentiful and easier to come by.
External SCSI CD ROM drives are a bit more expensive than I was expecting. What models do you folks use?
Are there any compact PS2 keyboards that work well with sgi boxes?
And finally... I think I have the bug again. The Octane will soon be joined by a Fuel.
Cheers all.
Octane - (Montrealais) - R12K - 2*360MHZ - 1024MB RAM - EMXI. - 6.5.30
