The collected works of Intuition

I'd like to try this out. Is there a demo that would run on the O2 r12k?

Hello. I haven't been here in a while.

I still have my R12K O2 and it has Maya 4 and 5 as well as Lightwave and Softimage 3.x.x on it. Houdini as well.

I was looking at getting a maxxed out 400MHZ O2 or even seeing if I could get one of those modded 600mhz O2s.

My O2 was presetup from the purchase on Ebay loaded with software and goodies.

What I would like to do is just start from scratch with a base O2 that is clean with irix desktop and then just put the software on it that I want to run.

Only question is... how would one get these old software versions running? I mean I peruse Ebay here and there but irix versions of the old software are rare to see come up anymore. Is there a point where the Irix versions are now freeware/public domain or is there still a licensing/legal guideline to follow. I want to do it all legally but have no idea where to start. It is like digging up an old Egyptian tomb.

Thanks for any info you may have.

-Casey

I know about Blender. Pretty cool application. Not one of my faves but quite capable none the less.

I've been doing CGI for a living since 1995. I've used Maya, 3dsmax, Softimage, Lightwave, modo, and all the specialist apps (zbrush, mudbox, realflow, etc) all the plugins (fumefx, rayfire, ICE, etc) as well as the render engines (Renderman, Mental Ray, vray, etc) to complete many projects over the years at different facilities.

My LinkedIn profile....

https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-benn-3191b578

The whole goal of the new SGI machine is to recreate a workstation from the era as far as software is concerned. Though I may have to try out Blender on the current O2 just for a spin.

I just love Maya and Softimage culture and the entire CGI era of SGI from the 90s.

I got a few private messages from this thread which have lead me to a few options once I get a hold of an ideal O2.

Can anyone still get the 600MHZ O2 mods done? Is that still available or was that done by a specific person who doesn't do them anymore?

Thanks for any info.

vishnu wrote: There are a ton of threads hereabout on the 600MHz O2 mod, I never paid much attention because I've never owned an O2 and my Octane2 already has 2 600MHz CPUs. That said, a 600MHz O2 would run Maya 6.5 Unlimited very nicely.

Its like I have to have one just cause someone made a super O2.

Oh wow, you have a Next Cube!?

I've always wanted to try one out.

So cool.
---------- ON a separate Note... regarding above....

Here is the email I got about the 600MHZ Mods

---------------------------------------------------------------------His response in Blue..

Hello,

Found your page by way of the fellows at Nekochan.
A few questions about the 600 MHZ mod.

1. Do you still do this modification?
nope, sorry. I sold all the stuff to Khaled Schofield UK.
2. I saw you need a specific 5200 ish chipset?
It is the Xilinx "logic" chip - few bytes - that is different. Ask Khaled.
3. Cost if you still do it?
as far as I remember it has benn about 300 €, and a R5271 CPU was needed.

If you have a repair shop at hand ask if they can do BGA resoldering.
Not an easy task to do but no rocket science either.

Best if they have X-ray inspection at hand to see if all the balls are pretty.

Any other information you feel appropriate I would appreciate.

Thanks,
Casey B.

Cheers

So now I have to find Khaled Schofeild

I also think I found a Maya 6.5 Irix. Can't test until I get new O2 or my current O2 back in LA which will be 2nd week of August.

I mean, it looks like we have what we need overall. The CPU number and if a certain place can do BGA resoldering. Xray inspection best.

The only left over clue was inventory which he said he sold to Khaled so if we can find him. Maybe he has Khaled's contact info.

There is also IANs SGI Depot. Which seems to have lots of stuff available.

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/

So maybe we can get the CPUs from Ian.?

I was tempted by the 400MHZ o2+.

Did anyone ever use the Origin 200 as render nodes in combination with an O2 or Octanes?

I remember you could hook up two of them for four processors in all.

Mostly I think people used them as storage drives but since they are servers did anyone use them as farm render nodes?

As in having extra threads for rendering frames on a single render or just a nice way to have firepower for Maya batch renders utilizing the procs and render cpus?

Wow, just randomly today looking at old information stumbled upon an article which has a photo of a 1000 render node farm at PDI/Dreamworks in 2001 and lo a behold.... the nodes are all SGI Origin 200.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4803

That must have been a million dollars+ of Origin 200.

JEEZ

My first O2 was sent from Acronym Systems. It was packed so good. I could have used the packed to soften a fall and the computer would have been fine.

The latest arrival... just bits everywhere. When I am finished with fixing the O2 blue cover I'll post pics showing all the tiny bits that broke off and were in the bottom of the box. Lots of little tabs and chips.

So. If I download the Houdini hosted here I can get a license from side effects since the 8.x lic works for it?

That'll be cool. Would love to see old school Houdini

Been a while since I purchased all the goods.

Been so busy didn't have time to play.

Going to finally put the adapter into the 400mhz o2 so I can use the sw1600 properly.

Then I can test all the stuff on the newly made drive.

Updates soon.

Ok so I put the adapter in the 400 MHz o2.

Pretty straightforward. I'm not sure if others removed more parts to install it. I was able to get it in there by just sliding it around Tetris style.

Only problem is that I don't have the power supply for the monitor. It came with an ac cord but the little block unit with the cable that goes to the back of the screen is missing.

I wonder how hard it is to find one?

Other pics

Fired up the 300mhz today. Hasn't been on in a while.

New errors on screen. It froze up. I assume this is ram since it says dimm.

I can't turn on the sw1600 until I get an ac adapter. I see a few on eBay but the connector on the back of the monitor looks like it takes a larger connection than the stock photos on eBay.

Any help on buying the right ac adapter for the sw1600 appreciated.

Fired up ol Softimage.

I've used softimage. Maya. Lightwave. 3Dsmax. Houdini etc for years in Los Angeles. Since 1995. What is amazing is how Maya has many more features since the irix sgi days but is basically the same program.

Softimage though, having gone through its various incarnations from irix to windows then to Autodesk is a completely different beast on the ui level.

The basic philosophy is still there. You create items and then get the info tab up to modify the attributes. But the shortcuts could not be more different. Though x,c,v are still the translate, rotate, scale shortcuts.

Most surprising though is how an old mental ray 2.1 can render smooth spline surfaces and create soft shadows. I even was able to create a fresnel looking reflection.

In 2016 I tried to contact my friends at Pixar who work on Renderman. Many for over 10-15+ years.

I told them I have an old legit Maya and sgi O2 and wanted to see if I could purchase an additional license of renderman for Maya, which wasn't even called that in Irix releases, so I could run it on my o2.

Ian (@pixar not depot) told me have the builds but no way to give me a license. The server no longer sends the license the way they used to and couldn't be setup that way.

So I asked for a nodelocked which they won't do anymore. Even for an old build that could be of little use compared to modern free engines out there.

To me it was/is about preserving a historical hardware/software experience from the 90s.

So I guess if you have a Maya running renderman animation tools on irix and its local node locked you have something very very rare.

Mental Ray was a nice alternative to renderman. It fell behind due to most other render engines being far easier to learn. Though mental ray came out of box with Maya, softimage, and 3dsmax, once you needed additional tender nodes it was very expensive. Essentially was an engine for only the big vfx film and commercial houses.

Ultimately Vray, Renderman, 3Delight, and even Lightwave's fPrime kept Mental Ray from completely dominating.

Though Mental Ray's integration with XSI was so good that I was able to go back to Maya after using it in XSI and found that quite a few options were available in XSI were not available in the Maya ui. Had to Mel script certain things just to check a few boxes so you could make final gather actually use the photon cast to really smooth out the final gi solution vs ending up with splotchy flickers every where. This was changed/fixed between Maya 7 and Maya 2009.

Anyways. I'll try to do a video running through Softimage, Maya, and Lightwave on the o2 400mhz. The best o2 possible and they are actually decently usable in this configuration.

Here is an actual render from Softimage instead of a photo of the screen with my phone. Previously I couldn't get the internet to work on the o2. All fixed now.

I still haven't tried to fire up my o200 yet. It was new in box. No plastics or door.

The guy who sold it to me was a 3rd party dev for SGI products. They used it to test some things and it was turned on and used very little then put right back in the box.

I have the o200 in practically brand new condition except for the fact that it is now dusty.

I have yet to fire it up. My goal was to have it utilized by the O2 as a render node. I used to run Maya and Lightwave like this on PCs using the PCs on the network to run as render nodes. Never set up an SGI this way or even know where to start.