SGI: Discussion

marius_can_15 wrote: I would like to reiterate the question that started this post 12 years ago. What can be the reason for one to use at home, or work for that mater, an SGI/IRIX machine?

well this thread has 20 pages now. if you can't find the answer in any of these you probably never will

Times have changed though foetz, and so have the answers. I think this thread is worthy of the test of time and continually being updated.

I was thinking about my first Silicon Graphics, a Personal Iris (Brown) followed by an Indigo with Elan Graphics, but for the life of me I can't recall why I fell in love with SGI. I did work with them for a period, but can't recall which came first. I worked with them in the 02 era, but did I buy the PI because of that? I just can't recall. I do recall though having a lot of old SUN stuff at the time, even the i386[?], so I may have been just lucky and bought one for no real reason.

Actually now I think about it, I did C, C++ cert on Indy so I must have fallen for it before. It wasn't Jurassic Park, I know that for sure.

uunix wrote: Times have changed though foetz, and so have the answers.

sure, times change but irix doesn't and the number of new programs is not exactly high either
but anyway, the more examples we have in here the better of course

I think this thread is worthy of the test of time and continually being updated.

of course and it is. we have 3 pages from 2015 already

Do we have a thread.. "Why you fell in love with SGI?" ?

uunix wrote: Do we have a thread.. "Why you fell in love with SGI?" ?

i guess this one comes close viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4521746

foetz wrote:

uunix wrote: Do we have a thread.. "Why you fell in love with SGI?" ?

i guess this one comes close viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4521746

I reckon that's close enough chap.. another nice long read. I hope by the time I get to the end I'll remember mine.

uunix wrote: I hope by the time I get to the end I'll remember mine.

I'll give the answer I always give, I use my SGI because the amount of money it would take to replace the software it has with their modern equivalents is vastly more than I care to spend. I'm talking about Maya, Pro/Engineer Wildfire, Shake, Catia, the final releases of those programs for Irix are still eminently useful...

unfortunately it's to applicable to electronic =(

i mean EagleCAD, OrCAD, Altium, Tina, etc: i can't see any equivalent software for Irix!

ivelegacy wrote: unfortunately it's to applicable to electronic =(

i mean EagleCAD, OrCAD, Altium, Tina, etc: i can't see any equivalent software for Irix!

Well, fortunately for me we have OrCAD 16 at work, but if you can get by with just capture, which is to say no PCB layout capability, LT Spice is awesome and a much better simulator than PSpice...

yes, buy those applications are targeted for PC , while I wish i had these applications for Irix.

Dina is more productive than PSpice, and EagleCAD is more interesting than OrCad, especially for PCB 2 layers design, small projects (~ 160x110mm ), this because It costs the less, 300 euro for a decent license, and it does a great job! I had a macOSX basic license of EagleCAD on my laptop for hobby purposes.

The only open source CAD i know is KiCad, but i haven't tried to compile it for Irix, yet, and probably can't justify the use of Irix instead of linux on a common PC.

ivelegacy wrote: yes, buy those applications are targeted for PC , while I wish i had these applications for Irix.

Dina is more productive than PSpice, and EagleCAD is more interesting than OrCad, especially for PCB 2 layers design, small projects (~ 160x110mm ), this because It costs the less, 300 euro for a decent license, and it does a great job! I had a macOSX basic license of EagleCAD on my laptop for hobby purposes.

The only open source CAD i know is KiCad, but i haven't tried to compile it for Irix, yet, and probably can't justify the use of Irix instead of linux on a common PC.

Well, IRIX doesn't have the wars like systemd vs init, Wayland vs Mir vs X11, bootloader wars, or any of that other nonsense for one. Sounds like justification to me.

armanox wrote: Sounds like justification to me

i am looking for purposed Applications for electronic & mechanical CADs, if they exist, for Irix.

xcircuit used to compile cleanly on Irix, I haven't diddled with it since the 90's so that may very well no longer be the case. Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to give it a try anyway. Or any of these for that matter:

http://www.gpleda.org/

I use eagle professionally (OSX) and tried kicad but didn't like it. I think for my next PCB project I will try to learn the gEDA packages, because I keep putting it off (I say this every time I start a new project, I will do it in, or at least try, gEDA... but it never happens) And I have to have my next project (new j1772 interface...) in time for summer. So maybe it will happen this time!

@guardian452
never tried, yet, but about kicad, why and what don't you like ?

i don't like Eagle/CAD so much, especially when i have to design a package like i had to do for the Playstation1's PAD and AVIN connectors (1). Also i do not like that packages are not exactly legacy-driven, i mean i have found a legacy-old-package for 68EZ328 (it's a pretty old CPU designed by motorola and used in PDA, it's 68000 core + built-in peripherals ) but i was not able to import into the current Eagle/CAD just because they completely changed the package-format without any feature to "import" legacy things.

That caused me to spend days re-designing all the packages from the scratches, and i had to use the Motorola/Freescale data sheet to have mechanical informations and quotes. Too boring, especially if i consider that the current OrCad for Windows is perfectly able to import everything i did on OrCad for DOS, and we are specking of projects done 20 years ago!



(1) it was a MAD project: the main purpose was to put an FPGA SoC inside the plastic case of the PSOne just to have a carrier for the RGB-S PSOne-LCD, i mean something portable to experiment HDL algorithms about … VDUs and graphical pipelines. The two Playstation connectors, the AVIN and the PAD, were used to connect the portable LCD, and "something" that provides a console. I routed two uarts in the PAD connector, one was used by the debugger, the other was used like CLI.

vishnu wrote: gpleda

never used yet, but i will

Id like to chime in on the value of this thread as well. I've been skulking around watching these forums for years now. While SGIs necessarily stand still the rest of the computing world shifts around. What we would use them for in 1995 is different from 2005 is different from 2015.

I myself came here looking specifically for this type of information, with current ideas. My specific google search being 'what can I do with my 02 SGI in 2015'. Seeing something come up that has a historical legacy is helpful. Someone like myself from today might just as well admit that I mainly use my SGIs to sit on a shelf, and thats just not helpful. Instead I get to go and read years worth of ideas without flitting about.

Keep it going people!

At the moment it seems the consensus is having a unix reference, media serving, and music playing. Works for me!

Are you claiming to an Aerospace Engineer Donald?

Donald_ET3 wrote:

skywriter wrote: when does a perfectly good adjective like 'low voltage' get replaced by techno-colloquial slang-verb garbage like 'undervolt'?

skywriter wrote: i know what they mean. they're not words knowledgeable engineers I know use.

When Apollo 13 had its mishap, the astronauts described it as an "undervolt"

astronaut: "We've had a MAIN B BUS UNDERVOLT."
Houston: "Roger. MAIN B UNDERVOLT."
...one and a half minutes later...
astronaut: "We got a MAIN BUS A UNDERVOLT now, too, showing."
Houston: "MAIN A UNDERVOLT."

Apparently the term "undervolt" has been used by NASA since 1970.

No, he's obviously claiming to be a rocket scientist.

(scnr)