Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

Hi.

I'veen visiting this site for a while now and it's a great place for information on SGI. It helped me alot when I started with my Octane and O2. Thanks!

Here's my question:
I recently acquired an Indy and was wondering if it's possible to use it as a router? I know that the AUI port and the RJ45 port are the same interface, so I know that's out. But is there a card that I could put into the Indy to have 2 interfaces?

TIA

Your best bet is a Phobos G130, works fine in Indy and gives you a full duplex 10/100 separate from the built-in one. It also works in an Indigo. They show up on eBay for decent prices quite often.

Yes, the aforementioned Phobos card. You can get them for around $25 + shipping. On the software level, I don't know enough about networking in IRIX to say if you can actually make it into a router or not. I know from LInux reading that it is probably possible if you run Debian.

I don't want to go trumpeting my horn with unsolicited advice, since your business is your business, but I would not pick an Indy for use as a router. They run much to hot for comfort for something I would want to leave running all of the time, and there are no easy ways to mod them with fans. Furthermore a router would probably be as cheap as a Phobos ethernet card, and a router would probably do everything the Indy could do faster anyway.

What can you do with an Indy today? Honestly not much. Get the Indy Video Option + Cosmo Compress boardset and you could have a half-outdated video catpure rig, as opposed to just the completely outclassed Vino built in video. Actually, IVO can supposedly do quite well, although you're still looking at hours of work encoding those high-quality video files with a processor that is 12 years out of date... You can show your friends the Indy Cam if you have it, confuse the hell out of your pets with it. Alternatively you can still do some light video capture on Vino. Vino capture ability on an Indy can very greatly based on how much RAM you have, and to a lesser extent what CPU. I find with my R4600SC with 128 megs RAM I can capture a consistent 15 fps at 320x240 high-quality mode.

Do not get me wrong, I love my Indy. It's my first and so far only SGI experience. I enjoy tinkering with it much the same way one would enjoy R/C nitro cars, or model trains. It's a hobby, and nothing more. I got my Indy cheap (nearly free). Of course I've soaked about $50 in mods on it so far, with HDD and CPU upgrades, but hey, I'm having fun.

Anyway that is my opinion. I'm no expert on the matter. I don't want to discourage you, but there just aren't many great uses for the Indy these days. In fact, the more reading you do about the Indy, the more you realize that they weren't used by much of anybody. SGI had a lock on 3d design workstations back in the 90s. The Indy was designed to steal the 2d market from Apple. To a minor extent the Indy did succeed, but it was never an extremely popular graphical workstation. The Indy was in for 2 or 3 years, and then was replaced by the (far superior) O2.

If you're a musician, Indys can be used for sound, often times to surprisingly good results. You don't want to do your playback through the onboard speaker though obviously...

So, just my opinion. Hopefully I'm not giving you an idiot lesson- If I did at any point, I apologize.

CDG wrote: The Indy was in for 2 or 3 years, and then was replaced by the (far superior) O2.

C'mon, admit it - that was flamebait, right ? I had an r5-180 Indy while away from home for a while since it was easy to carry. I'd rather use that Indy than a low-spec O2. The r5-180 O2 is just awful while the Indy ain't half bad.

But yeah, as far as a router goes an Octane would be much better

heard a few stories about old machines like indy's on fire. as in: flames bursting out of the computer. too old, dried up parts, apparently. so better be careful when running this unattended.

hm, hamei's right: at the time the o2 had just been introduced, it wasn't so great in comparison to a decent r5k indy. buggy 6.3 and all. o2 was way more RAM-hungry and the standard setup was like 64 or 96 mbytes.
btw. 2-3 years used to be the product cycle and if sgi didn't screw it up, you could have expected a successor to the o2 (and octane) in 99-2000 or so i guess.

CDG wrote: In fact, the more reading you do about the Indy, the more you realize that they weren't used by much of anybody.

I dunno. When the 180MHz R5K WebForce Indys came out, we used one as the "authoring" system for a corporate intranet served from a 180 MHz R5k WebForce Challenge S (the latter was also serving as a router). For 1996, it was a terrific setup, and the combination served thousands of users. CosmoCode, Photoshop, and Illustrator on an Indy combined with a very good network stack and disk I/O on the Challenge (basically an Indy with a second, multi-channel SCSI card and, in our case, a FDDI card) were pretty neat back then.

That Indy worked great, and it's still in service as a terminal running 6.5.22 on a developer's desktop. It's kind of a fun story actually -- the developer codes for Windows and Solaris, and he wanted a second machine for his Solaris work, but he didn't like either CDE or Gnome. I offered him the Indy, and he decided to try it, even though he had no IRIX experience. Now he mounts his Solaris directories on his Indy and does all his coding in the IRIX environment, and he only logs in to the Solaris server to kick off compilations. By the way, he just bought an Octane for home use. The contagion spreads!

PS. Unfortunately, the CPU module died on the old Challenge S late last year, so that box is officially in "spare parts" mode...

OK so the O2 didn't initially displace the Indy right away, but an R5k Indy can't face down a loaded up R10k O2... An Indy can also still be capable for sound editing, photo editing (a bit slow, but sufficient for most purposes), and if it has the Cosmo board, high quality capture (althoupgh exporting those video files is going to be pretty slow). I had quite overlooked application and web development. Some people also use Vino for internet video- 1/4 NTSC size to get pretty high qualities.

I don't want to get into a pointless argument, but I would doubt that any Indy has ever caught fire. Not unless you wadded cotten around the GPU on the graphics board. I could see a spectacular l ight show if/when the PSU fails maybe, possible catching a stack of papers on fire, but tha tseems a little far-fetched to me. They don't run THAT hot... I've left mine running for 20 straight hours working on video encoding (obvioiusly there was some idle time in there, but mostly I was just feeding it clips and letting it crunch it all down). I felt the drives reach the outer comfort zone, but I never thought there would be any fire hazzard.

Incidentally, I did actually hear the PSU fan run on the Sony PSU. It isn't very loud, but it definately exists!

I suppose though I was harsh in my initial statement though

For use as a graphical workstation though, I would be pretty sure there are better choices. For use as a router, I'd get something that's actively cooled. I don't think it will start on fire, but at the same time, I don't think it will be particularly reliable either... Just my $0.02 though.

Monkichi57 wrote: I recently acquired an Indy and was wondering if it's possible to use it as a router? I know that the AUI port and the RJ45 port are the same interface, so I know that's out. But is there a card that I could put into the Indy to have 2 interfaces?

I have a Challenge S (basically an Indy without audio and video) which a major medical center here used as a router and fileserver until last year. They only gave it up because it was the last piece of 10baseT networking gear in the house, and the Challenge's external SCSI was all HVD.

Given an additional NIC and a proper IPfilter installation, I expect an Indy would make an OK router. It would be a lot more fun as a workstation, though.

-Shel

I have Indy with Set Engineering 10/100 GIO card which was used for years with IPFilter as router between cable modem (built in ethernet) and LAN (Set Engineering card). Nice setup but at some point wireless went in game so I move routing on Netgear WGT624 wifi router firewall.