The collected works of Trippynet - Page 4

Should be a good game, best of luck!

Hope you get your money back from that idiot. Maybe next time he'll learn to pack kit properly if he expects it to survive transit.

I'd recommend sending Ian's packaging instructions to anyone you're buying valuable/delicate kit from

I've had a few bits from him and his packaging is armageddon-proof. About the only downside is that it takes a good half an hour with a Stanley knife to cut through all the re-enforced cardboard and ream upon ream of duct-taped bubble wrap to get to the goodies inside. But on the plus side, they're always completely intact and damage-free!

Yes.

Full instructions are in the Wiki .

foetz wrote: this is about irix, not aix

Whoops, so it is. My bad

Jees, that really sucks. (

Hope someone can give it a good home, and hope you get some much better luck in your life soon.

Info is on Ian's site .

Basically, 201 watts under load for SolidIMPACT, 319 watts for MaxIMPACT.

It's also the reason why I've not pursued a MaxIMPACT board-set for my Indigo2. I simply do not do enough 3D stuff with it to justify the cost of the board and the extra heat/power consumption.

If I want to do any textured 3D stuff, that's what my Fuel is for

You've beaten me. I'm currently driving a 2000 VW Bora with 138,000 miles on it. It's in surprisingly good nick actually. No rust, all passenger seats present, even the air-con still works.

I think if I ditched the passenger seat though the wife would definitely make me replace it

I have a full mirror of the FTP site sitting on my machine somewhere. I wonder if it might be worth someone reaching out to SGI and seeing whether they could grant us permission to properly host a mirror of it here.

jan jaap wrote: PS: since I had the opportunity, I had the Dallas chips of an Indy, Indigo2, O2/Octane and O200/O2K X-rayed as well. That will be the subject of another post.

Nice, looking forward to that. Anything which helps our understanding of these things has got to be a good thing!

Glad it found a new home, never want to see a usable SGI thrown away...

You'd be wrong. Cricket balls from fast bowlers typically go at around 90mph and can exceed 100mph from the fastest bowlers ( linky ). There is also a lot of mental psychology going on between the players as the bowler tries all manner of tactics and different types of delivery to outwit the batsman and take his wicket.

I second using SCA drives and adapters. I have two SCSI drives in my Indigo2 like this, consisting of a 36GB 15K drive, and a 300GB 10K data drive. Both work fine and are nice and quiet.

I was admittedly lucky that we've been decommissioning a number of servers at work with SCA drives in them, so I've hoarded around 30 working drives as a result. On the plus side for yourself, the fact that plenty are coming into the market still does mean you can pick them up fairly cheaply online, and the SCA ones are a lot newer than 20 years old!

Do note, not all SCA drives will work with older SGI machines. I have found a number of drives that work fine in my O2 and Fuel, but which won't work in the Indigo 2. Hence, if you're thinking of getting one, best to check the model number first.

I sent the below in response to a PM, but then felt I'd post it publicly just in case it's of any use to anyone...

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I've tested the following drives with success in my Indigo2:

36GB, 15K, ST336754LC (Moderate noise)
36GB, 15K, ST336753LC (Low noise)
36GB, 15K, ST373455LC (VERY Low noise) - my current Indigo2 system drive

73GB, 15K, ST373454LC (Moderate noise)
73GB, 10K, ST373207LC (Low noise)
73GB, 10K, BD07285A25 (Quite noisy, I use one of these as an OS clone disk for my Indigo2)
73GB, 10K, ST173404LCV (1.8" high, noise level unknown as it was provided as an original OS clone disk with my system).

146GB, 15K, ST3146855LC (VERY Low noise)

300GB, 10K, ST3300007 (Moderate noise)
300GB, 10K, BD3008A4B6 (An HP re-badged Seagate Atlas 10K V) (Low noise) - my current Indigo2 data drive

Like I say, just in case anyone finds it remotely useful...

Indeed, a fair point. Almost all those drives above are U320 FWIW. I think it would be good to put a fuller list together at some point, and also include noise etc. The difference I've found between the quieter drives and the noisy ones is incredible.

Indyboy wrote: The 36GB and 146GB 15k disks have the same model number

Fixed.

Although in doing so, I've found something interesting. The drive in question from my spares cupboard is out of an AS400. Now the model number definitely matches the 146GB drive (it wasn't a mistake), but it also has an IBM sticker on it with 36GB listed as the capacity. Maybe the IBM sticker is wrong, I'll have to test it. If it's actually a super-quiet 146GB drive then I'm not complaining!

Incidentally, I then pulled the system drive out my Indigo2, and that did have a different model number, which I've reflected above.

I ditched Firefox on my PC over a year ago now, ever since Australis came along and made me want to gouge out my eyes with a toothpick. I currently use Pale Moon as it's Firefox without the recent Mozilla kool-aid.

Nice little system! You'll have to post the full hinv

I think for that kind of money I would pretty much demand a full breakdown of exactly what components they replaced.

Indeed, it's about finding the right applications to run. My Indigo2 gets used for playing music via XMMS (300GB secondary hard drive full of tunes), for playing some ScummVM games, for messing around with Perl, and for general IRIX experimenting. Indigo2s can also be used to some degree for Blender and other 3D tasks, so long as you don't exceed the hardware's capabilities (ie, trying textured stuff with anything less than HighIMPACT). Of course, more complex work will always benefit from a higher spec machine, but I use my Indigo2 mainly because for nostalgia reasons, I have much more of a fondness for it than my Fuel, despite the additional performance that the Fuel offers.

For browsing the web or other modern tasks though, it's no good for this sort of thing, so you have to be realistic with expectations.

For obtaining a machine, I'd highly recommend a posting in "Wanted". There's often folk in the US wanting to move machines around, so if you're willing to drive a bit, you might be able to pick up a nice machine for very little.

EDIT: One quick note though, teal Indigo2s are usually MIPS R4400 processor systems. These are MIPS3, and so cannot use the main Nekoware repository. This requires MIPS4 (R5000/R7000 and R10000+). Of course with some customising of internal components, there's nothing to stop you putting the guts from a later R10000 Indigo2 into a teal case...

foetz wrote: which makes them the most versatile of all. they can run everything from irix 4 to 6.5.22

True, but if you want to "max out" an Indigo2, an R10000 will provide better performance, and I'd imagine he's more likely to want IRIX 6.5 than an earlier flavour.

I agree. You've bought a license to use the software, a valid license. If they refuse to activate it, I'd push them for a refund and see if that gets them to change their mind!

Although the biggest advantage of the R10000 Indigo2 (apart from increased performance over the R4400s and the higher RAM limit) is the ability to run the main Nekoware repository. I know you've compiled/provided a sizeable array of packages for earlier systems, and you can also always do a hamei and compile your own too, but if you simply want access to the biggest array of current stuff available with the least hassle, a MIPS4 system with IRIX 6.5.21+ will give the easiest way to run the widest range of stuff.

I've found my Indigo2 is perfectly capable of running IRIX 6.5 at a pleasant enough speed, along with XMMS, Dillo, ScummVM and a few other apps as well. Granted it chugs if you try SeaMonkey, Firefox or something like that, but there's certainly a number of things it'll run at a pleasant enough pace with IRIX 6.5. Like I say, it depends on what you want to do and how realistic your expectations are.

Of course, if he's considering a faster SGI as well at some point, then experimenting with an older release of IRIX on an Indigo2 may be an option, but from personal experience I find that my Indigo2 runs 6.5 and a chunk of Nekoware stuff just fine for me!

foetz wrote: i meant the "fat" commercial software.

Ahh, I see. I can't really comment there as most the software I run on my Indigo2 is open sauce stuff, so I'll take your word for it

I completely agree. It's a problem, and I'm not sure what the solution would be, given how few people still actively use these things on a regular basis.

Personally, I simply lack the understanding necessary to comment on most of the lower-level libraries. I install them because a later package requires them, but it's difficult to say whether they're working properly or not when you do not know how much (or little) use of them is made by an actual application. I think that's probably one of the reasons so many of them have sat there for so long. Confirming whether or not a ported library fully works is not straightforward.

With an end user app like Dillo, it's much easier for people like myself to test that and confirm that everything seems to be working as it should (or maybe not as the case may be), and for things like this, I have tried to give my feedback where I can.

Of course on the other hand, even a repository of partially beta stuff is better than nothing, given that hardly anything these days comes with IRIX support any more, and given how increasingly difficult it is to compile most modern stuff under IRIX even if you try.

I went for periodic table names for mine, but tried to get the names to have some sort of meaning for the type of machine they're for. My O2 was (boringly) Oxygen, the Indigo2 is Nitrogen (a Nitrogen deficiency in plants turns them purple), and the Fuel is Lithium (burns with a red flame).

I don't really have a naming convention for my PC(s), it's restricted to my SGI machines!

This one cropped up a month or two ago, but I've only just discovered it.

Essentially, Lenovo are considering making a new ThinkPad laptop, but with lots of more "retro" features implemented into it. So, either a 16:10 or 3:2 screen, classic 7-row keyboard (with blue Enter key), loads of status LEDs, physical buttons on the trackpad, all that sort of thing. Sounds pretty good to me!

If you're interested, there's 4 surveys on the Lenovo blog asking all the questions there and you can effectively tell them what you would be interested (or not interested in) should they make such a laptop. And of course, the more people that fill in the survey, the more chance of Lenovo deciding it's commercially viable to make a new "classic" ThinkPad.

The blog with the article for this and the 4 surveys is here , if you're interested in reading further into it.

Personally, I'd love the opportunity to get a new laptop without a shit 16:9 screen and with a proper keyboard and trackpad!

4:3 is highly unlikely from what I read, simply because nobody makes panels that size any more. 16:10 or 3:2 seem to be the realistic possibilities. Personally, I'd be happy with either of those aspect ratios. I don't mind widescreen monitors, I just think that 16:9 is pushing it to extreme levels.

I've had chance to play with a 3:2 Surface Pro 3 at work and it's amazing how much more breathing space you have with the screen. It blows the pants off other 16:9 portables. If only it wasn't glossy...

Edit: Completely agree about Lenovo's dodgy malware tactics lately. The only thing that helps here is that in both cases, the ThinkPad has been immune to Lenovo's software stupidity so far...

guardian452 wrote: I would rather have one big screen than a bunch of little ones, and I like having as much horizontal space as possible. Even the craptastic 1366x768 12" TN panel on my x220 has the same vertical space as the old x40, but enough horizontal space to hold two pages next to each other. And it is far more ideal for movies and games. Your screen width cannot typically be made smaller than the width of the keyboard.

My problem with horizontal space is when it comes at the expense of vertical space. For example, a 16:10 screen fits very nicely into most laptop chassis and matches the overall shape of a modern laptop quite well. 16:9 however doesn't . Seriously, look at most 16:9 laptops and you'll see the bezel around the screen is much fatter at the top and the bottom than it is at the sides. The aspect ratio is actually a poor fit for the shape of a modern laptop, but manufacturers still shoehorn them in because they're cheap (and yes, this is the sole reason why they all use 16:9 - because it's cheap).

My X201 has a 16:10 screen, and it's a FAR better fit for the shape of the laptop (bezel is pretty uniform around all sides). a 3:2 screen would also fit the chassis far more naturally and efficiently than a 16:9 screen.

Basically, all current laptops either have ugly fat bezels at the top and bottom, or the companies have to start using drop hinges or other tricks to try and hide the fact that the screen is just too short in height for a modern laptop chassis.

Also worth noting is that the move to 16:9 has generally arrived with a reduction in screen resolution. When laptops went from 4:3 to 16:10, a 1600x1200 screen became 1920x1200 (same vertical resolution, and extra space at the sides). However, over the last few years this has then been cut to 1920x1080. And it's crazy! At work, we're refreshing old Dell workstations with 1920x1200 screens with new ones that have a lower screen resolution, a fatter bezel, and less screen area than the old ones. And all because it's cheaper for Dell. I wouldn't mind on a budget laptop, but these are £2,000 professional mobile workstations. And it annoys me intensely seeing Dell sticking a deliberately worse screen onto a two grand laptop, just to save a few quid in construction costs.

Personally, I despise 16:9. It's a nasty and unpleasant aspect ratio designed for watching TV on, not for doing proper work. If Lenovo finally decide to buck the current trend and design a new laptop for proper work, rather than just watching Netflix on then I think that would be fantastic. Currently, if you want a new laptop with a screen designed for proper work, the only company making them still is Apple (the Macbook Pro is 16:10, as is the new Macbook).

guardian452 wrote: Right, but we are talking thinkpad here, which means windows, which means games (at least to me). Most games are made for 16x9. I love the streaming feature in the new xbox app and that alone makes up for all of the thinkpad's other shortcomings.

Ironically a lot of modern games are still NOT designed to work properly on a 16:9 computer screen. This is because a lot of game designers still lock the field of view at a low figure such as 75 (or even less in some cases). This displays fine on a 4:3 computer monitor, and also looks fine on a TV when you're sat 6 metres away from it on a sofa. But on a widescreen computer monitor where you're typically less than a metre away, it's awful and can cause motion sickness, headaches, nausea etc.

Slowly but surely some games are coming with options to tweak the FOV, but they're still in the minority as most are just quick console ports. Most games therefore still require unofficial fixes such as tweaking ini files, typing commands into the game console, or in some cases even modifying data files before they'll properly support the necessary FOV on a widescreen PC monitor.

Resolution wise, games are designed these days to support a range of resolutions. My 16:10 monitor has had full resolution support from every single modern game I've played on it. Add in a FOV tweak here and there as necessary, and I have never felt that I'm missing anything by not having a 16:9 screen. The only thing I'd lose is vertical resolution (1920x1200 compared with only 1920x1080 for 16:9). Actually, there's another benefit as well, which is that older games that don't support widescreen display pixel perfect on it (1600x1200 in the centre of a 1920x1200 screen).

However, as armanox rightly said, ThinkPads are supposed to be professional machines for work, not gaming machines. If you want a gaming laptop, you'd be better off with an XPS, or a cheaper "consumer grade" laptop than a ThinkPad. And if you just want to watch TV and play the odd game, then of course a cheaper 16:9 laptop will be fine. But if you're trying to do proper work (coding and whatnot), the lack of vertical space on a 16:9 laptop is really annoying.

Welcome! Looking forward to seeing some pictures of the Fuel, and a hinv once it's up and running.

Note that even a bottom end Fuel is still a nice little system overall, so as long as it works then I think you've picked up a bargain there!

I'd love to see a newer Amiga emulator ported. There's a very old version of UAE floating around, but it's quite dated and simple by today's standards (no real fullscreen support, and tweakable options are limited).

I wonder how easy it'd be to compile PUAE under IRIX. The source is here: https://github.com/voorhees1979/PUAE

I keep meaning to have a quick try myself, but haven't found the time yet. That and my porting skills are practically zero

Really hope they pack it well. It looks in very nice cosmetic condition. Even the front flap is intact!

Fingers crossed! You'll see all manner of previous nightmare stories here about dreadful packaging, poor shipping, and people having to pour the broken bits of plastic out of the box.

Of course on the other hand, there's good sellers too. Both my main systems in my signature came from Ian on these forums. He's well known for his armageddon-proof packaging, and is evidence that SGIs can easily survive rough shipping if they're packed properly.

Hopefully the good feedback means your seller will fall into the latter category

guardian452 wrote: Bullshit, my thinkpad plays games and movies great.

I never said they couldn't do it, I said it's not what they're primarily designed for.

I watch movies and play games on my ThinkPad as well from time to time, and it does a surprisingly good job too. But when I stop doing that and fire up some real work such as programming on it, the extra screen height of the 16:10 screen makes a real difference over the crappy 16:9 panel in my work laptop.

Apple laptops aren't too bad, but I have gone off them somewhat lately after they started soldering everything in and sealing them together with large quantities of glue. I like to be able to meddle and tweak with my computing kit

guardian452 wrote: The disconnect here is my thinkpad has a crappy (1366x768) 16:9 screen but my work-supplied MacBook has a 16:10 very nice (2560x1600) screen.

The only meddling and tweaking I've done in probably the past 5 years is add a subwoofer out to my thunderbolt display. Which is quite easy to work on, held together by magnets. My air 2010 which this thinkpad was supposed to replace was also "sealed and irrepairable" but lo! somehow I could add a larger disk and replace the battery just fine! Apple sells them for $119, 60 less than Lenovo charges for the x220 battery

Yeah, my systems are the other way around and it's my works laptop that has the crappy 1366x768 screen and my ThinkPad which has a nicer 16:10 display (although not anywhere near the res of your Macbook).

Mod wise, I got the ThinkPad a few years ago from a former company I worked for. It had a badly worn keyboard, 2GB of RAM and a slow mechanical hard drive. Took all of 10 minutes to replace the keyboard with a new one, up the RAM to 8GB and slap a 256GB SSD into it. I also have two batteries for it, which is useful for travelling.

I can't help but feel with a Macbook that Apple deliberately designs them to be disposable. They are designed to be thrown in the bin and replaced every few years. And as someone who collects old computers, I guess I have a problem with this design mentality

That's a nice, standard SGI keyboard and ball mouse - not a Logitech one. I exactly the same pair here for my Fuel and Indigo2 and they work fine (despite their age), so long as you clean the rollers every few months of course!

They're disposable in the manner of if you want more RAM (even in the more professional Macbook Pro), you have to bin it and buy a new one. If the battery dies (which they do), you have to bin it and buy a new one. If you damage the screen, you have to bin it and buy a new one. If the headphone jack becomes loose, you have to bin it and buy a new one (used to be on a separate daughter board, now soldered direct to the motherboard). Essentially, they aren't upgradable and are very, very difficult and expensive to repair.

Of course, this is deliberate from Apple. After your MBP is 3-4 years old and has a stuffed battery, only 4GB of RAM and a flaky headphone jack, they want you to throw it in the bin and buy a new one, not replace the battery and upgrade/fix it. They're doing it to other devices too. The new Mac Mini comes in *exactly* the same chassis as the old one, but in the old one you could pop the bottom off and upgrade the RAM, but in the new one it's soldered down.

Making devices so they can't be repaired or upgraded is essentially making them disposable - especially when parts such as batteries have a very real and limited shelf life. Don't get me wrong, I fully understand this in particularly slim devices such as the Macbook Air, but it's much more unforgivable when they do it to bigger machines like the MBP and Mac Mini.

Yeah, I can replace the LCD panel on a ThinkPad, Precision or Latitude in about 10 minutes, and have the motherboard out of one in under 20 minutes. When someone heavily breaks a laptop at work, it specifically goes into a "spare parts" pile, so we can rob keyboards, chassis, screens and other such parts to fix the other laptops we have. With Apple laptops, they'd just all go in the bin. This approach of binning entire machines just because one part needs replacing is very wasteful and something I'm quite against.

That's what I like about my own ThinkPad. Took me barely 10 minutes with a screwdriver to completely revamp and revitalise it when I got it. If it was stuck with a knackered keyboard, 2GB of RAM and a clunky old HDD, I'd probably have binned and replaced it by now. Anyway, this is why I'd very much like a new "classic" ThinkPad to come along!