SGI: Hardware

Hello

I recently acquired a Chyron Centaur board for my Indigo R4400 Elan.

I was suprised that a connector to the right prevented to install this board (need 3 more milimeter) on a Indigo motherboard equipped with a R4400 150Mhz, as you can see on the picture. I think it will be ok with a R4000 or a modded R4400 heatsink (much smaller).

The strange things is that on Gerhard web site we can see his Centaur board fitted inside a R4400 150Mhz system with the original heatsink. These pins are nor present and the serial number on the board is in a different place. Mine is under the board, and the number is lower.

http://www.sgistuff.net/hardware/systems/images/indigo-ip20a-1000.jpg

The description of the auction was "R3000 Chyron Centaur board".

Is it possible that they made two different versions, one for R3000 and one for R4000/R4400 ? If it feet inside a modded R4400 or R4000, do I have any risk to install it ? I remember that JanJaap have made some scan of the installation manual, maybe I can find more inside.

Thanks in advance

That wouldn't be the one that was on ebay a while ago, was it?
The GIO interface should be all the same. Will it hust to see if you can desolder/bend back the connector?

I've got a Chyron Centaur in an Indigo, but IIRC that's an R3000 system. As soon as the system shows up again I'll have a look.

I put the PDF here: http://www.vdheijden-messerli.net/sgist ... tech60.pdf

I didn't scan it, it's something that floats around the net. I have the drivers too.

Chyron is frame-by-frame video I/O: you need a frame accurate deck or an Akebas or something to record a clip (render and output one frame at a time). A bit like VideFramer in the Personal IRIS. And it will take forever

I had one in an R4000. It fit with no problems. There are photos of the board in the neko galleries, maybe you can compare ?

Yeah it was on ebay, but last week only. It seems to be not very difficult to cut theses pins.




Thank's . Yes, I know, is pretty hard to have a working centaur system, but it was primarly to have a fully loaded Indigo, the classic SGI virus that many members have on this forum.... But we never know...



Thanks, I completely forget to check the neko gallery. I have found the photo here :

http://www.nekochan.net/gallery2/v/SGI_Photos/album132/album16/album99/chyron_3.jpg.html

No connectors . Some chips are also different. Maybe they made a later revision to fit R4400 system because the heatsink was not designed for Indigo1. I can't compare the serial number. I will certainly try to make the heatsink mod on my system, normally it will make the Indigo quieter. I have aslo a second Indigo with a R4000 so it will be ok. Maybe it's time to get a R3000 system...

Not positive, but that might fit a PM1 (100MHz) machine better than a PM2 machine.

I have a pdf somewhere of the manual for Liberty Paint, which is what I think the Chyron Centaur ran ? Not sure, it was pretty hard to find this info even ten years ago.

If it's not against the forum rules cf copyright material I can put it up here ...

http://videodesignsoftware.com/Products/Liberty.aspx has a bunch of brochures and manuals

They still have the Irix user manuals up (anything prior to version 8.3). Cool !


I wonder how they'd feel about re-releasing the Irix version ? Maybe an old one under a discount "hobbyist" rate, not for commercial use ? One of the advantages of a depression is that once-high-and-mighty companies can sometimes see the logic of selling a low-volume low-profit product. Ten bucks is better than no bucks,

I thought you understood U.S. business types better than that. They do that and they'll have to deal with people asking for support and also totally annihilate the market of people eager to pay $1k+ for the software. Besides, giving away something cheap with no hope of big bucks later is hard to explain to your board when you're trying to justify your request for a raise.

That and they'd have to go through and re-figure all of the royalty payments due on the software from bits taken from other companies (or clear that it is truly 100% theirs), find an old disttape, post it, figure out how to generate licenses, etc. It would cost them several thousand dollars to get the program up and ready to go, methinks.