IRIX and Software

Just wanted to ask if the Irix 5.3 variants are backward compatible on hardware. For example Irix 5.3 for R5000 will also on R4600, R4400, etc...

Thanks..

To an extent. IRIX 5.3 for Indy including R5000 works on all Indys (R4k, R5k), and may work on Indigo2 (probably will), but it will not work on any non-FastForward/IP22 (Indy IP24 is a small IP22) machine.

While it would have been very nice for SGI to qualify all releases for all supported systems, it would have taken way too much time to run the tests against everything, especially for the 5.3 releases.

Note that this doesn't work for everything, you want to look for the "including" (Indy including R5k) as there are some releases that are for a specific hardware version and won't work on others (the confusingly named "IRIX 5.3 for all Indigo2 IMPACT" only works on IP22 IMPACT machines and no others). The naming isn't even constant - IRIX 6.2 for Indigo2 R10k will work on Indigo2 R4k and Indy, but doesn't have the "including", so I guess you just have to know. Gerhard's pages are a good start, as are SGIs release notes and whatever is printed on the CD (sometimes a supported system list is printed)

Thanks... this help to explain why my Indgio2 impact Irix 5.3 is has weird behavior on my Indy...

Cheers

i have a copy of irix 5.3 w/XFS that installed on every r4k/r3k i ever tried it on; indy, indigo 1&2, crimson, skywriter, PI/2x, 4d/xxx, etc...

Supposedly that version has issues with the 2MB cache processor cards, R5k, and IMPACT graphics, other than that it's pretty general.