SGI: Discussion

What do you use your SGI for? - Page 2

skywriter writes:
> ... the childish slags words you folks use. ...

That's a bit harsh. Those on the overclocking forums are just selecting terms to describe what they're doing, and I certainly would never
say their hobby is childish. These days there are few other 'techy' hobbies that a young person can have, given the massive black-box
nature and immense complexity of modern devices. It's not like the 80s when one could at least get to the guts of 8bit/16bit systems, write
code for robotics control or other device interfacing (the BBC Micro was excellent for this), doing assembly language, etc. Numerous
people kickstarted their careers on the back of that boom, including me.

I doubt very much that those who use these terms would in any way intend such use to be demeaning for what you're referring to. Since
there wasn't any existing jargon to describe what they're doing, one can hardly be surprised that words & terms are either created or
combined from others to suit. It is however certainly true that a lot of those who meddle with PC overclocking haven't the slightest idea
what (for example) voltage actually means (perhaps not helped by modern sw/BIOS tools making it easier than ever to do all this stuff,
often in an automated manner), but from all I've read there are definitely those who do delve more deeply to understand what it's all about
so they can achieve better results - this can only be a good thing.

Your comments remind me of someone I used to know in the late 90s, head technician at a university I worked at for a while. He really
shouldn't have been there, grossly overqualified man for the job; he ended up working there for family reasons (caring for his mother).
His original career was defense systems, eg. he helped design the guidance system for the Minuteman missile. He once said how in his
opinion the apparent intelligence of students seemed to be going right down the crapper, and I had to agree from what I often saw. He once
commented that 5X more people now were being awarded top-level degrees but that one could hardly conclude modern graduates were
magically 5X smarter. then when he was at Uni.


> To me it's basically a denigration of the profession I've spend my life on. Sorry if I'm a downer, but I suppose you kids would never
> understand how crappy it makes me feel to have my kind of work trivialized in the end.

I'm almost 42. Hardly a 'kid'. :D And there was me yesterday feeling like a grumpy old git...

I agree that it would certainly be a shame if the activities of those who mess about with PC overclocking never resulted in their taking up
electronics or electrical engineering in a more serious way. I'm sure some do, but what proportion? I've no idea. As long as it's not zero
though then who can say it's not worthwhile? It's hard enough as it is to get children and young people interested in science/etc., so I
say be grateful there's still something which is able to garner such interest. Schools these days sure as hell make no attempt to
encourage them.

When sites like tomshardware publish reviews of new CPUs, there are two types of readers. Most jump straight to the performance results;
this is the crowd who are IMO less likely to get more seriously interested in science, etc. Others though read the entire article, trying to
understand the explanation of how the new chip design works, what it means. These are the people we need to encourage. Don't belittle
them by saying what they do is trivialising your knowledge - they would never intend their hobby to have that effect. Better to help them
learn more about the foundations of what it is they're dealing with.

Heck, you should get your knowledge written down, build a website or something, pass on what you know.


> Oh well, everything is commoditized in the end even intelligence.

It certainly feels like there's a general dumbing-down (anyone in the UK watch Horizon yesterday, about the LHC? Ye gods it was so
slooow!), and numerous parties are to blame for that (media, the state, parents, teachers, etc.) but in a way I suppose it's inevitable that
as tech gets ever more powerful, it becomes easier to manufacture products which simplify how people can interact with technology
(touch sensitivity, voice recognition, facial recognition, movement tracking, etc.), leading to the irony of incredibly sophisticated devices
like the iPad being controlled by the most basic of hand gestures - in an odd sort of way it's like we're going back into the cave and are
scribbling on the walls once again.

The push from OS products like Windows and OSX is for GUIs that hide the guts of a system's functions (eg. Metro in Win8), a change
that seems unstoppable due to the rise of mobiles, smart phones & tablets. Ordinary citizens are able to do amazing things with modern
technology, but they haven't the slightest idea how it works. I agree that's a bad thing, but how to change it for the better without making
functionality more restrictive? I've no idea. The media continues to label people in IT and science/engineering in general as geeks, nerds,
boffins, etc., so no wonder prospective students avoid such subjects. Universities churn out endless lines of graduates in psychology,
media studies, hotel/catering, tourism, etc. - pretty much everything the modern economy doesn't need. Worse, retraining centers for the
unemployed only teach this sort of nonsense aswell.

Btw, my step-Father worked his entire life as a research engineer at Kodak (aswell as the obvious film & photography, he specialised in
speaker design, audio, magnets, etc. - he used to build cinema speakers); I've heard numerous stories of what he was involved with, so I
have a healthy respect for the kind of engineering you're talking about. Sadly, engineering is not a respected discipline in most western
nations now, unless you happen to be lucky and live in Germany (or Mexico, so I'm told).


Nuke writes:
> ... but programming is a whole different thing. ...

Doing it well requires the ability to abstract, something which is not really taught anymore. Schools just want pupils to pass exams, so
encouraging free thinking is not part of the agenda. Pupils who try to progress beyond the schedule are discouraged or actively
penalised for doing so. At 16, I had, "You should not know this equation!", written in my physics textbook because I'd learned something
on my own; thankfully a different teacher had the opposite view - he loaned me his course notes & books on Special/General Relativity.

Talking to a woman on a train more recently, she told me her daughter had been marked down because she had tried to learn
beyond the prescribed material.

There are two types of computer courses I've come across: Computer Science (what I did) and Compu ting . The former normally
includes a lot of theoretical background, an emphasis on the mathematical/logical basis of computer-related topics, strong support for
research-oriented follow-up courses, more avdanced optional topics like AI, etc. The latter is nowhere near as detailed, often a year
shorter, doesn't cover advanced subjects, focuses entirely on practical aspects of computers (eg. "multimedia", a term I found
sickening when working as a sysadmin in academia), avoids general concepts and instead teaches highly specific things such as
one particular application or platform instead of a general language or theory, and is aimed at getting people into non-research jobs
as quickly as possible. Too many edu places (especially colleges, and universities that used to be colleges or polytechnics) teach
the latter kind of course, creating students who are of little use in real industry; they can't abstract and often have no idea about the
real foundations of what they think they know. The former type of course is harder & more demanding, so many avoid them.

Example: I was told of a "Computing" graduate who, on his first day at work, was asked to comment at a meeting about how the company
could better organise/process its data. The poor guy said how about using a bubble sort; everyone else in the meeting literally laughed
at him, but that's the level of material which students are being given along with a bit of paper saying they now have a degree. I feel
sorry for such students, most have no idea they're being intellectually conned.


> Heck, one time I recruited a guy who was in college for computer science that was 19, and he whined all day about doing his
> programs in C++ instead of Visual Basic. ...

QED. Exactly the kind of thing I encountered. I met students who thought multimedia meant only Macromedia Director, because that's
all they'd been taught. They knew nothing about the basics of imaging, video, audio, etc. They had a "degree" in Computing with
Multimedia, yet they'd never heard of PAL or NTSC, couldn't explain fields vs. frames, had no idea what RGB meant, interlacing, etc.
Ditto for equivlent audio concepts. It was depressing talking to them.


> ... gone off topic ...

Yeah, but I'm a chatty mood. :D

Besides, it's related in a way. What do I use my SGIs for? Partly to maintain a website which as much as I can helps people to learn
about SGIs and make best use of them, while slowly merging in data about modern systems in a manner which eventually I hope will
allow people to get the bost of both the old and the new.


And hey, skywriter, it's not all gloom! Last year I had to get rid of a dozen Indigo2s and many low-spec Octanes which were taking
up space, not worth enough to sell, etc. I advertised on the local Freecycle forum, strongest interest came from a group of young people
who spend their spare time doing all sorts of cool things with computer tech, a blend of hardware, Linux and electronics. One of them
was building a general machine which could act as a wide variety of different hw systems (it had multiple mbds for different types of
systems in the same box, with custom hw/sw and front end to drive it all). The guy who came to collect the 20+ systems was only about
19 I think. I found it reassuring that people doing this sort of thing still existed. They were delighted to have a bunch of SGIs with which
to expand their experimental work.

Ian.
*reads post*

I agree with much of this. They really need to stop penalizing students for getting ahead. And if I go to college, I don't think I'll learn anything, just because of what I've seen.

And yeah, that guy was absolutely hilarious with his insanity. Also, not knowing what RGB is? LOL, I'm nowhere near focused on art, and I know what RGB is.

And I don't have an SGI, afterall, I am only 15. Hah.
Overclocking and playing with modern hardware is pretty expensive hobby for average kids or younger people, and modern hardware is so complicated there is actually not much to learn from it really. To really be able to understand how something works one must start from the basics and some old 8-bit systems are much better for that purpose.

I would also argue that hardware side is not very interesting these days, but on the software side there is still much to do that will benefit the user much more than some extra MHz from the processor.


Some days ago I diggged my old MSX2/MSX2+ system out from the closet and must confess spent couple hours just playing Bubble Bobble and Space Manbow. It really brought good memories from my younger days, and some of these days must go through those cardboxes with unbelievable amount of disks and find out what treasures are hidden there.
Nuke writes:
> I agree with much of this. They really need to stop penalizing students for getting ahead. And if I go to college, I don't think I'll learn
> anything, just because of what I've seen.

I guess it depends on where you live as to what extent you can learn at a faster rate than 'expected', obtain books ahead of time, etc.,
without driving teachers crazy. Helps a lot to have a sympathetic teacher, though in my case I was living on an island so there wasn't
that much the teacher could do to help (small school, few resources).

Also easier if you have an older brother/sister as I did.


> And I don't have an SGI, afterall, I am only 15. Hah.

If you're near where I live (Edinburgh, Scotland), come get a low-spec Octane for free. :D


theinonen writes:
> Overclocking and playing with modern hardware is pretty expensive hobby for average kids or younger people, ...

True in theory, but many youngsters these days have astonishing amounts of money to play with. Look at the smarphones they all seem to have now.


> ... and modern hardware is so complicated there is actually not much to learn from it really. ...

Usually, definitely yes.


> ... To really be able to understand how something works one must start from the basics and some
> old 8-bit systems are much better for that purpose.

True, but coming at tech from overclocking is still a start.


> I would also argue that hardware side is not very interesting these days,

I suppose it depends on one's point of view. eg. for some, it's what the iPad allows one to do which is important, while others are
more interested in how it works, tech specs, etc.


> but on the software side there is still much to do that will benefit the user much more than some extra MHz from the processor.

Someone said that home-brew apps for mobile devices is the closest thing akin to the 80s home-coding scene. Who knows.


> Some days ago I diggged my old MSX2/MSX2+ system out from the closet and must confess spent couple hours just playing Bubble Bobble and Space
> Manbow. ...

:D :D


> ... It really brought good memories from my younger days, and some of these days must go through those cardboxes with unbelievable amount of
> disks and find out what treasures are hidden there.

This is why I intend to expand my site at some point to cover vintage systems. I have a vast collection of machines - Spectrum, Commodore,
Atari, Amstrad, Acorn, Sony, CGL, T.I., Oric, Dragon, Tatung, etc. Fancy that as a bundle? Fuel + ZX81. :D

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/oldandnew.jpg

I have a domain ( www.vintage-micros.org.uk ) but not yet the time to sort it out.

Ian.
I wrote:
With my SGIs...

I dabble, I've built a little software like ThisForth, swi-prolog , and Hercules mainframe emulator , played with lots and lots of nekoware (thanks contributors), I dabble in animation with lightwave, SoftImnage, Shake, Smoke, Flame, Blender, and other CG tools, run a a mediawiki (neko PHP and neko Postgres) and use them as huge heaters and to astound visitors touring the facility with the heat, noise, and blinking lights. When stuff builds cleanly its fun to throw 16 CPUs and 16Gb RAM at a build.. But even my desktop at work has 16Gb RAM (and two thunderbolt ports) these day... I use them for reliving the glory days when UNIX ruled and I dreamed of having access to stuff like this, even the SGIs I used at university or in construction of a military flight simulator were never as powerful as the SGIs I have now.

I dabble in Stereographics with Crystal Eyes Shutter glasses, and mess about with spaceballs .

Another use is to capture screenshots as I update the wiki ..



I think I have a shorter answer. I use my SGIs as an unbounded creative outlet, a cathartic release from the stresses and strains of work ( 1a ) and fighting with the publisher/editors on my programming book.

Nuke wrote:
I agree with much of this. They really need to stop penalizing students for getting ahead. And if I go to college, I don't think I'll learn anything, just because of what I've seen.

Get a piece of paper son, you'll need it in the real world. Even if you don't learn anything. Also I had a lecturer say you almost know more about this subject than I do, during one 3rd subject. Questions in class were always of the format "Can anyone else think of how or why ... " conversations in class were almost private conversations with the rest of the class struggling to try to keep up with why my answer was correct but the more optional or elegant way was .. The first (two week) assignment, I handed it in the next day after it was given nicely typeset in LaTeX, while the rest of the class was lining up to complain about how hard the assignment was. I got 100% for that one and the next few assignment were briefly glanced at, 100% written on it and given back to me straight away. I assure you I never felt penalized for getting ahead, quite the opposite.

On the topic of students. I went through university with some straight-"A" students who could quote directly anything in the course notes or text book but give them a real world practical topic and they were just clueless... I also knew other students who got average to better than average grades but had the ability to with little more than a paper clip and a few lines of anything from perl to assembler hack something together had power gloves and VR goggles in their dorm room, etc. Guess which ones got plush jobs and fast track to management.

I've talked with a well paid MSc in computer science who have never held a soldering iron or seen anything below the Java JVM and said as much.

nuke wrote:
In any case, he never got paid, so he doesn't matter.
:evil: :evil: :twisted:

Fscking people over is very very uncool, no matter what the reason. One day you'll piss off someone who does something like deleting the firmware off the routers the day they leave and wait for your next network issue and someone to reboot the routers months after they have left... or worse. What goes around comes around.

R.


1a . For the next few months I am doing poker machine stuff in C/C++, OpenGL on Linux. It is far less glamourous than you think.. After a fews days debugging/testing, I really can't understand how people would actually put money in those machines just to sit there for hours but I have been through the more remote parts of Nevada and even the PX'es on base have poker machines with people sitting there for hours.

_________________
死の神はりんごだけ食べる

アレゲはアレゲ以上のなにものでもなさげ -- アレゲ研究家

:Tezro: :Tezro: :Onyx2R: :Onyx2RE: :Onyx2: :O3x04R: :O3x0: :O200: :Octane: :Octane2: :O2: :O2: :Indigo2IMP: :PI: :PI: :1600SW: :1600SW: :Indy: :Indy: :Indy: :Indy: :Indy:
:hpserv: J5600, 2 x Mac, 3 x SUN, Alpha DS20E, Alpha 800 5/550, 3 x RS/6000, Amiga 4000 VideoToaster, Amiga4000 -030, 733MHz Sam440 AmigaOS 4.1 update 1. Tandem Himalaya S-Series Nonstop S72000 ServerNet.

Sold: :Indy: :Indy: :Indy: :Indigo:

Cortex ---> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cortex-th ... 11?sk=info
Minnie ---> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Minnie-th ... 02?sk=info
Book ----> http://pymblesoftware.com/book/
Github ---> https://github.com/pymblesoftware
Visit http://www.pymblesoftware.com
Search for "Pymble", "InstaElf", "CryWhy" or "Cricket Score Sheet" in the iPad App store or search for "Pymble" or "CryWhy" in the iPhone App store.
@mapesdhs
I live in Louisiana, in America. Lol. Thank you for the offer, however :)

And yeah, kids these days seem to have tons of debt...er, I mean, money. At school, all I hear about is Mac and Alienware. It's funny when the really Mac obsessed kids say that I'm some sort of Microsoft junkie and I say I run Linux and they get mad.
Nuke wrote:
. It's funny when the really Mac obsessed kids say that I'm some sort of Microsoft junkie and I say I run Linux and they get mad.


that's because you're telling people that run a rational system (OS X) to try something that isn't put together well at all (Linux). say something meaningful, and you'll get better responses.

_________________
:Skywriter:

DECUS Member 368596
skywriter wrote:
Nuke wrote:
. It's funny when the really Mac obsessed kids say that I'm some sort of Microsoft junkie and I say I run Linux and they get mad.


that's because you're telling people that run a rational system (OS X) to try something that isn't put together well at all (Linux). say something meaningful, and you'll get better responses.

Nah. It's not that. It's that I don't use Mac. It's more like these two or three kids who will actively hate whoever doesn't use Mac. I actually do use Linux, though. However, I'm not telling them to use Linux. They just rage for no apparent reason and make me laugh at them. After this, it typically goes to iPhones being used in India while Linux is only used in the US, me saying "Other way around, kid.", one kid going "YOU MAD BECAUSE YOU CAN'T AFFORD A MAC?", me saying no, then a kid raging and telling the teacher, and then the teacher laughing at them. It goes in this exact order.

But yeah, you can see why I think it's funny. Especially the last part.
I would never bet against an older engineer who's good. Today companies tend to throw lots of programmable devices and actives at problems, but many of the older approaches are very elegant and show a great deal of understanding of the underlying systems and science.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Systems available for remote access on request.

:Indigo: :Octane: :Indigo2: :Indigo2IMP: :Indy: :PI: :O200: :ChallengeL: :O2000R: (single-CM)
PymbleSoftware wrote:
I wrote:
With my SGIs...

I dabble, I've built a little software like ThisForth, swi-prolog , and Hercules mainframe emulator , played with lots and lots of nekoware (thanks contributors), I dabble in animation with lightwave, SoftImnage, Shake, Smoke, Flame, Blender, and other CG tools, run a a mediawiki (neko PHP and neko Postgres) and use them as huge heaters and to astound visitors touring the facility with the heat, noise, and blinking lights. When stuff builds cleanly its fun to throw 16 CPUs and 16Gb RAM at a build.. But even my desktop at work has 16Gb RAM (and two thunderbolt ports) these day... I use them for reliving the glory days when UNIX ruled and I dreamed of having access to stuff like this, even the SGIs I used at university or in construction of a military flight simulator were never as powerful as the SGIs I have now.

I dabble in Stereographics with Crystal Eyes Shutter glasses, and mess about with spaceballs .

Another use is to capture screenshots as I update the wiki ..



I think I have a shorter answer. I use my SGIs as an unbounded creative outlet, a cathartic release from the stresses and strains of work ( 1a ) and fighting with the publisher/editors on my programming book.

Nuke wrote:
I agree with much of this. They really need to stop penalizing students for getting ahead. And if I go to college, I don't think I'll learn anything, just because of what I've seen.

Get a piece of paper son, you'll need it in the real world. Even if you don't learn anything. Also I had a lecturer say you almost know more about this subject than I do, during one 3rd subject. Questions in class were always of the format "Can anyone else think of how or why ... " conversations in class were almost private conversations with the rest of the class struggling to try to keep up with why my answer was correct but the more optional or elegant way was .. The first (two week) assignment, I handed it in the next day after it was given nicely typeset in LaTeX, while the rest of the class was lining up to complain about how hard the assignment was. I got 100% for that one and the next few assignment were briefly glanced at, 100% written on it and given back to me straight away. I assure you I never felt penalized for getting ahead, quite the opposite.

On the topic of students. I went through university with some straight-"A" students who could quote directly anything in the course notes or text book but give them a real world practical topic and they were just clueless... I also knew other students who got average to better than average grades but had the ability to with little more than a paper clip and a few lines of anything from perl to assembler hack something together had power gloves and VR goggles in their dorm room, etc. Guess which ones got plush jobs and fast track to management.

I've talked with a well paid MSc in computer science who have never held a soldering iron or seen anything below the Java JVM and said as much.

nuke wrote:
In any case, he never got paid, so he doesn't matter.
:evil: :evil: :twisted:

Fscking people over is very very uncool, no matter what the reason. One day you'll piss off someone who does something like deleting the firmware off the routers the day they leave and wait for your next network issue and someone to reboot the routers months after they have left... or worse. What goes around comes around.

R.


1a . For the next few months I am doing poker machine stuff in C/C++, OpenGL on Linux. It is far less glamourous than you think.. After a fews days debugging/testing, I really can't understand how people would actually put money in those machines just to sit there for hours but I have been through the more remote parts of Nevada and even the PX'es on base have poker machines with people sitting there for hours.

Oh sorry! I didn't see this post. I'll respond to it now. I mainly understand the first half of your response to me. But I have an explanation for the second half.

Actually, we had a bit of an agreement from the beginning where he would take an undisclosed amount of the profits, and when I fired him, he raged and said that I can keep his share of the profits. And so, I did not. It's a bit of ridiculousness, too, where he's attempted to sabotage my business because his "company" (Which is actually a forum on Zetaboards claiming to be a company.) that he established after being fired won't be able to get ahead while it rips off my ideas and advertises a link to a website that's on a free forum host. Also, he claims that he quit.
Hold on to your horses "kids". Just to pull this back on-topic and clarify my NetBSD adventure: I got my O2 for free, inherited it from a former colleague who retired and didn't have a place for it in his home. It's a beautiful box that I'll be happy to put to use as a hobbyist plaything . I have no history with IRIX whatsoever and I have no specific IRIX apps I'd like to run on it. For everything the O2 does with multimedia, I have a contemporary Mac that runs circles around it so that's not the point. What I specifically like about the O2 is the combination of it being a physically small but well-built machine capable of running UNIX graphically on a large monitor. Sure I could get that from Linux on the first slimline budget PC I find at the local discount store these days, but why would I do that if there's a perfectly functional and very pretty machine sitting on my desk right now?
My lack of success in upgrading IRIX properly (probably my own fault) means I'm effectively stuck with a working environment from 1998 without a properly working C(++) compiler (no license). I'm very sorry if it hurts your sensibilities, but for me that sucks no matter how cool IRIX is otherwise. NetBSD gives me what I need and it does so legally and for free. I don't see how this would make the machine any less of an O2 than others that are actually running IRIX. A Dell isn't any less Dell if it runs Haiku OS instead of Windows 7 either.
bvdwiel wrote:
NetBSD gives me what I need and it does so legally and for free. I don't see how this would make the machine any less of an O2 than others that are actually running IRIX. A Dell isn't any less Dell if it runs Haiku OS instead of Windows 7 either.


Umm, no. What you are saying is that a Fiberfab Valkyrie is the same as a GT-40. It isn't. It's fine that you run NetBSD, no problems with that, your computer etc etc. But unless you are also running the SGI software that actually uses that O2 hardware, it ain't really an O2. It's the combination that makes it what it is.
If I were to use IRIX on my O2, I wouldn't be using any more of the hardware than I am using now. I don't do any A/V-work or 3D graphics anymore at all (MP3 playback works, but that doesn't really count). For my purposes NetBSD makes the O2's hardware do what I need, something IRIX doesn't give me without me needing to spend a wad of cash on the missing odds and ends from SGI. Or I could pirate the bits, of course. Given that choice, I choose to keep my O2 in working order and productive using freely available software. It's either that or I scrap it and buy a cheap Core i3 that someone proposed earlier. Personally I feel landfills are full enough with fully functional, needlessly discarded technology as it is. My O2 is an O2 because it says so on the box and it has the same innards it had when it was first sold. If SGI had gone on and developed a radically different IRIX 7 similar to what Apple did to its OS around 2000, that wouldn't have made my blue box any less of an O2 either.
no, Hamei had it right; you don't have an O2. you have a MIPS CPU in a tasteful package. the things you eschew because you are not running IRIX are what makes it an O2. since the O2 hardware isn't functional, the product isn't either.

_________________
:Skywriter:

DECUS Member 368596
That's just ludicrous. What you're saying, is that if I were to just install IRIX and *still* not use any of the 3D and A/V functionality then my system would be an O2. Not that I really care enough to spin this out into a huge discussion, but I don't see any logic in your line of reasoning. I used to own a cheaply built Acer laptop that just happened to make a 100% compatible hackintosh, running Mac OS X 100% perfectly with everything fully working. Following your train of thought, that machine should by rights be called a Mac. I'd disagree with that. But all things considered, I'm happily using my 100% original SGI hardware in combination with an alternative OS. If I recall correctly, the topic title was: What do you use your SGI for? Well, I use it to develop software while using an OS of my own choosing.
This isn't really that difficult a concept. If you take a C-Type Jaguar and put a nice small-block Ford in it, the car still looks like a C-Type and probably runs better than any C-Type ever did, but it is no longer really a C-Type. The whole is the sum of the parts, not the sum of some parts along with some other parts. That would be a different whole. Maybe a better whole, this isn't a value judgement, but not the whole that is implied by saying "I use an O2." What you use is O2 hardware that is running NetBSD.

It's a fine and dandy thing but not the same.
Netbsd on O2: good for you. The partially accelerated X is useful and because of it the browser you get does much better than the old sea monkey we're stuck with in irix. No 3d accel though. I do have a line to the author of the patches but hes busy hacking on powerpc, or growing up. I have tried to explore the poss for unlocking the ICE chip for more accel (there is a reason it's not been done).

Anyway it will run for a bit, then kernel fault. Irix is the only sensible choice.

What do I use my sgi for: nothing. It serves as an icon of mid90s design.
I would like to use it but every project I dream up either exceeds my featureset or budget.

I made it silent running, run at 1600x1000, and a little opengl in glut/C. I wont light it in blue LEDs, install a mini-itx or get rid of it :)
R12 300 O2, nice case. Not giving up yet!
Did I neglect to mention that I have an Octane sitting under the same desk which is actually running IRIX? ;)
bvdwiel wrote:
Did I neglect to mention that I have an Octane sitting under the same desk which is actually running IRIX? ;)


that part was redundant.

_________________
:Skywriter:

DECUS Member 368596
I've run gentoo on an octane once upon a time :twisted:

_________________
:Onyx: (Maradona) :Octane: (DavidVilla) A1186 (Xavi)
A1370 (Messi) dp43tf (Puyol) A1387 (Abidal) A1408 (Guardiola)

"InfiniteReality Graphics - Power Through Complexity"