The collected works of Trevalin

Good afternoon neighbors,

Just wanted to say "hello" and introduce myself to the community here, looks like a fine place.

I am *hoping* to find/put together an Indigo2 or O2 system of the R10000 persuasion, to use for some hobby projects and indulge in a bit of nostalgia from my college days. From what I gather looking on eBay and craigslist/Atlanta, it seems it is going to be a bit of a scavenger hunt to find all the pieces, so any suggestions on other places to look and scavenge would be much appreciated.

In the meantime, nice to meet you folks :D

-Matt

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"Nothing good can come from staying with normal people."

SGI 320 dual 1 GHz, Apple Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz, Apple MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz
Much obliged folks, thanks for the kind welcomes and good advice!

In college back in the 90's we were using Indigo2 XZ's with PowerAnimator, then a little later O2's with Maya. I recently moved to a new apartment, and in unboxing things I've been finding all sorts of SGI and A/W swag that I accumulated during that time and its gotten me to thinking I'd like to find some sort of IRIX box I can play around with.

I'm leaning hard toward hunting for a purple Indigo2 Impact 10000, just because I was always enamored with the looks of them. The few I have seen on eBay though looked like rubbish (missing doors, logo's, badges, etc), so this might take a while. But that's ok, I'm not punching a time clock, this is strictly for fun and learning.

Looking forward to a geeky adventure! :lol:

-Matt

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"Nothing good can come from staying with normal people."

SGI 320 dual 1 GHz, Apple Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz, Apple MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz
Thanks for the kind words and advice also, vishnu!

I'm not at all averse to an O2 if I find one that strikes my fancy. Since I'm not pressed for time though, I shall bide my time and shop a bit. I'll see what I can do about posting some pics of the swag in the meantime if you are curious though :lol:

-Matt

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"Nothing good can come from staying with normal people."

SGI 320 dual 1 GHz, Apple Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz, Apple MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz
Okie dokie, I should have some time this weekend and I'll see about snapping some pics and posting :-)

-Matt

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"Nothing good can come from staying with normal people."

SGI 320 dual 1 GHz, Apple Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz, Apple MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz
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Good afternoon folks,

Last week a couple people asked about posting a few picts of some SGI and AW swag and promo stuff, here are a few of the things I've managed to hang onto over the years. Would love to see more :)

-Matt

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"Nothing good can come from staying with normal people."

SGI 320 dual 1 GHz, Apple Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz, Apple MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz
Hi folks,
I came across a stack of old 3D Design magazines I had saved from my college years last night, and found in the February 1997 issue this article reviewing the "new" (at the time) SGI O2 system running Alias/Wavefront PowerAnimator. I scanned the pages this morning and made the attached pdf of it. The same magazine also had a couple of adverts from SGI and AW, so I've scanned and attached them as well.

Enjoy! :D

-Matt

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"Nothing good can come from staying with normal people."

SGI 320 dual 1 GHz, Apple Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz, Apple MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz
Good afternoon folks,

As I continue to hunt for my IRIX dream machine, I was wondering if anyone could comment on their experiences using Maya 6.5 under IRIX? In particular I am interested in how usable is modeling performance on an Indigo2 (with either High or Max Impact), vs. O2 vs. Octane? I've looked at the old IRIX Qualification charts and I see that Indigo2 is "unsupported" and O2 is "untested", but I suspect that has not stopped folks from giving it a try.

By way of comparison, my last experience using Maya 6.5 was on an SGI 320 VW under Win2000 with dual 1 GHZ PIII's, and I'm wondering if there was a configuration of an IRIX box that would be somewhat similar in performance?

Any thoughts would me much appreciated!

-Matt
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"Nothing good can come from staying with normal people."

SGI 320 dual 1 GHz, Apple Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz, Apple MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz
Thank you all for the input, this is very useful information. To sort of summarize so far:

1) Any sort of R5000 O2 is ruled out
2) Fuel with 800mhz and V12 gets a thumbs up
3) Octane2 with dual 600mhz and V12 also gets a thumbs up

Now that I think about it, I seem to remember in college using Maya 1.0 on an Indigo2 XZ a couple of times, and it was painfully slow to model with much less animate anything, so I think I can rule that out as well. Can anyone comment with personal experiences on any other specific combinations? How about Octane with some of the other graphics options like MXE, or V8/V10? Or Indigo2 with perhaps Max Impact?

For what its worth, I found the qualification charts here ( http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/qu ... _IRIX.html ) but it does leave quite a bit listed as "unsupported" or "untested".

Again, thanks to everyone for your thoughts and suggestions!

-Matt
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"Nothing good can come from staying with normal people."

SGI 320 dual 1 GHz, Apple Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz, Apple MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz
That's good information, thank you! :-)

I guess it might help if I described my goals a bit more, which will primarily be character and spaceship modeling for a story I am writing, strictly as a personal creative project. So it will mostly be still images, and perhaps some short (10 seconds, give or take) animation clips rendered out at no bigger than 640x480.

From an artistic point of view, I could certainly make do with a more modern system for this project, but I would like the experience of learning how to properly put together my own IRIX machine as well, as all of this is strictly a hobby project.

Which reminds me of another question…is there any other method other than networking for moving files around? I'm sure its not as easy as throwing texture map files on a USB stick and moving them from one machine to another like we might do with macs or pc's, but is there any other method?

Please keep the suggestions and advice coming in, I very much appreciate it!

-Matt
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"Nothing good can come from staying with normal people."

SGI 320 dual 1 GHz, Apple Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz, Apple MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz