SGI: Hardware

I have a chance to pick up VW 320. Unfortunately it comes with no OS installed. I have a little knowledge about this class of SGI machines, but I suppose the proprietary components of it may require specific drivers supplied from SGI, not included into standard NT 4.0 or W2000 distribution. Is that true? If so, are those drivers possible to find? Is VW worthless w/o those drivers?

No disk at all or wiped disk? Either way you'll need the SGI specific installation media, I doubt if they sell it any longer but it can't hurt to contact them to find out. Relevant links
at techpubs and ars technica

The hard drive was recycled and replaced with a new, blank one. So without that impossible to find NT media VW is useless? No graphics acceleration, no access to built-in vidio I/O devices?

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/SGI_Visual_Workstation#Installing_Windows_2000

Is this "Supplemental Software Kit" ( ftp://patches.sgi.com/pub/win2k/sgi_ssk.exe ) all I need to get the full power of VW?

Looks like all required drivers are still available from Rackable:



Geoman , thanks for pointing me the right direction!

nongrato wrote: I have a chance to pick up VW 320.

They make a pretty nice high-quality Windows 2000 computer. Or NT, if you're happy with that.

After a while tho ... they are big, and the sliding door thing on the front looks cool but it's a pita to use, the memory is kind of flaky, after a while you get tired of it. Then you can pass it along for someone else to play with

hamei wrote: They make a pretty nice high-quality Windows 2000 computer.

the memory is kind of flaky, after a while you get tired of it.

Finally I'm gonna have a Windows PC in my house. What does "flaky" mean, btw?

nongrato wrote: Finally I'm gonna have a Windows PC in my house.

It's a nice Windows peecee .. it's just kind of huge. Of all the Windowses, 2000 is the nicest (imo).

What does "flaky" mean, btw?

If you move the box six inches, the memory will need to be reseated. Maybe because the sticks are so short ? They don't seem very stable at all, physically.

That might have been just me, though. If it's breakable, I'm the guy to find out

IO had one years back, in fact I could still have one in the elusive magic loft that is my ex's.

As hamei says, nice to play with but they get boring pretty soon. Mine came with the 1600sw I'm still using.

I recall spending a lot of time putting Linux on it and not really getting anything half decent.

Thanks for the info, guys!

There are 12 memory modules with a total amount of 1024 megs. How on earth 1024 divides by 12?!

Does that Cobalt chip support any version of DirectX? Does anyone have any experience running games that require graphics acceleration?

nongrato wrote: Does anyone have any experience running games that require graphics acceleration?

If I remember right, the selling point of the machine was the OpenGL support. Mine came with Pro/E installed and the graphics were always nice. Seems to me at that time that the Matrox G400 was about the best card in the Windows world. Good for 2d but not that great for 3d. Most of the 3d cards were gaming cards and not very good. The Oxygen 3d cards were several thousand dollars.

It's possible that you could even turn off the onboard grahics and use a pci card but what would be the point of that ? Except for dual-head, that is ...

There was an excellent VW320 website around that went into great detail. It might be archived somewhere ?

Thanks for the help! I exect the machine to arrive by the end of the week, so Ill be back with more questions soon!

It's a nice system if you want to run Windows NT or 2000. Linux support seems to be lacking (I don't think there's accelerated X for Cobalt).

hamei wrote: Of all the Windowses, 2000 is the nicest (imo)

My vote too.

Geoman wrote: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/SGI_Visual_Workstation#Installing_Windows_2000

Never thought it will be useful the same day I've added it to the wiki.

hamei wrote: If you move the box six inches, the memory will need to be reseated. Maybe because the sticks are so short ? They don't seem very stable at all, physically.

My 540 arrived the day before yesterday from Germany and the DIMMs work OK, so I think they are stable

nongrato wrote: There are 12 memory modules with a total amount of 1024 megs. How on earth 1024 divides by 12?!

Because you install them in threes - these are basically common DIMMs broken in three pieces. 1 GB means a maxed out 320, so you don't have to worry about finding the right modules.

nongrato wrote: Does that Cobalt chip support any version of DirectX? Does anyone have any experience running games that require graphics acceleration?

Don't know about DirectX. Carmack used it (along with an Intergraph GT1) to develop Quake III and he got 10-15 FPS at 1600x1024 . I'll install Quake III on my 540 (graphics is the same, but it has 2 Pentium III Xeons at 500 MHz with 2 MB cache) today, do some benchmarks and report back.

hamei wrote: There was an excellent VW320 website around that went into great detail. It might be archived somewhere ?

There are links on our wiki to these sites.

Good to see there are so many VW( not Volkswagen)fans around. Thanks, guys, you're de best!

Just benchmarked it. GLQuake gave a steady 60 FPS at 640x480 with 15 bitdepth, but it was 20 FPS at 1600x1200 with 32 bitdepth. Quake III Arena was between 15-30 FPS @1600x1200x32, 30-50 FPS @1024x768x32.

Reading with interest.

I picked up a VW 320 for cheap some years ago but (still!) haven't yet found the time to fire it up ...

It came with a bag full of extra memory sticks. Spares, I guess!

ok, finally the box has arrived.



W2k is on the way



overall the system seems to be in a decent condition, although needs alot of care: cleaning, replacing missing part, etc. And, yes, Hamei, you were right- the memory is "flaky".

I have a 550 with vr7. I look at it as a generic PC and run Ubuntu on it. My main use for it is to read/write SCSI disks. Recently I installed RT11 on a full height SCSI disk using simh on the 550 and moved that disk to a MicroPDP-11/73.

Pontus wrote: I look at it as a generic PC and run Ubuntu on it.

Indeed, because 550 IS a generic PC, probably just a rebadged Intergraph, while 320 is based on unique architecture and I don't think you can run Ubuntu on it.