What? Nothing that special for most of you: a teal Indigo2, R4400 200MHz, Extreme, 2GB Seagate HDD, 128MB RAM when bought. Acquired in February, since upgraded with an additional 128MB RAM (I was lucky to have 4 32MB SIMMs of the right spec in the back of a cupboard from an old Compaq Deskpro XL) and a 9GB HDD in place of the 2GB it came with - the messages about the drive being 95% full when there was no apparent user data on there prompted that.
I've noted below some quirks and curiosities - if anyone can shed any light, it would be much appreciated. Apologies for the length and possible straying into territory better suited to another forum, but I've been mulling this for a while and would like to get it all down at once.
Why did I get it? In no particular order:
1. I once spent a couple of days with a couple of chaps at BioSym in San Diego, looking at the visualisation of complex (or so they seemed at the time) organic salts. That was in April 1995, and we were using a Personal IRIS and a teal Indigo2, which was then a fairly new toy in that research group. The "Insight" software for (among many things) turning x-ray diffraction data into images on screen seemed amazing, and while I have had nothing to do with that field for many years, I've not forgotten the experience, it would be good to see what else the I2 can turn its hand to.
2. It's a proper Unix machine, to compare with Linux (I have Ubuntu 11.04 and Debian stable/testing on other machines). First impression is that the organisation of directories is rather different, though that may be just the way the previous owner had set things up (/usr/people for user directories, rather than /home, for example).
3. It uses PS/2 keyboard and mouse, and I had a couple of free spaces on the KVM. Perhaps I should have gone for an O2, or - had I known one would come up 2 weeks later - an I2 Impact.
4. It's about the same vintage as my other classic, an Acorn RiscPC, a model launched in 1994 but heavily upgraded since (for those interested: Kinetic StrongARM at 233MHz, RISC OS Adjust 4.39, 384MB RAM and 2MB VRAM). Interesting to compare the two machines - two very different implementations of desktop computing.
5. The inexplicably pleasant sense of having acquired at very modest cost something that was once very expensive - so much desired but so out of reach.
No pictures yet, but I am sure you don't need any of a stock teal I2! Suffice to say that the condition seems very good, and it still has its locking bar and full fascia.
Quirks and curiosities so far:
A cold start sometimes fails, but things seem fine after pushing the reset button. Sometimes it fires up straight from cold.
The date remembered by the machine is July 1993, but a quick "date" command fixes that for the rest of the session - I assume the clock battery is dead.
The drive sled is blue plastic (though I've since acquired a metal one). Does a plastic sled present any problems? (other than the fact that it is awkward to slide in and out because of the little protrusion either side, making it just to wide for the gap in the skin).
I have managed to clone the 2GB drive's contents, but only by creating an xfsdump file, then as a separate command xfsrestore-ing that file onto the larger disk. Joining the commands with | did not work - early attempts produces screens of output but nothing written to the destination disk, as if the pipe was not passing things through properly - and when I have tried it again more recently xfsdump returns an error about the hostname being of zero length (I now want to move from a 9GB disk to 18GB or 73GB). I did try the alternative approach using tar, but that also failed - it was two months ago and I did not keep a note of the errors but again got the impression that the pipe was not acting as it should.
A Fujitsu MAP3147NP was recognised by fx but produced a loss of errors when trying to partition/mkfs, but a 73GB version of the same model seems to be fine. The MAP3xxxNP series is useful as it has a jumper to force narrow mode, so a passive 68-50pin adapter should be OK. I also have a Seagate 146GB drive lying around but that is wide-only, and the active adapter I have would not fit into the sled, but I might try an external enclosure for that.
It came with IRIX 6.5 (no indication of a sub-version number, so perhaps base 6.5 only) plus some freeware. Having cloned the disk, I put it away for safe keeping in case I need to go back to square one! I have installed all the patches/upgrades to 6.5.22 that did not involve conflicts, and upgraded from Netscape 4.0.5 to 4.8 using the package from SGI's website. However, after the 6.5.22 updates, autoconfig stumbled over xtimer, llc2 and snif - because xtimer.a is not present. I have overcome this temporarily by commenting out the relevant "USE" lines in irix.sm, and autoconfig then built a new kernel. Things seem to work, so:
- what functions do xtimer, llc2 and snif provide? and when would I notice their absence?
- is there any alternative software that provides the same functions? (assuming I do notice!)
After the updates, booting and shutting down seems to take much longer than it did before. Is this most likely a symptom of later 6.5 versions of core software stretching an R4400 / 256MB a bit further than the base 6.5 versions? Or would a 2GB IBM DCAS32160 tend to outperform a Seagate ST39173N, assuming both have XFS partitions made using mkfs defaults? (The 9GB has 0.5GB swap space, the rest as root; the IBM had proportionately less swap but also a single root partition rather than separate root and usr).
I had been expecting to install Linux or NetBSD (though the lack of X support is a bit off-putting), being aware that proprietary IRIX might make second user hobbyist use difficult. I have however been very impressed with the level of community support - primarily nekochan, but also the SGI techpubs/freeware resources and mapesdhs's technical notes.
What next?
1. Sort out the xfsdump/restore problem, so I can clone / migrate to a larger drive efficiently.
2. Sort out NFS exports so I can back up sensibly.
3. Fitting a DVD-ROM internally, once I've acquired a sled - I happen to have a Toshiba SM1401 on hand.
4. Perhaps more RAM, especially if it would speed things up appreciably, though the right 32MB SIMMs do not seem to common at what I would regard as a sensible price for my usage, so that may go by the by.
5. Exploring the SGI freeware and nekoware suites - lots to do there, obviously! A nice milestone will be logging on to nekochan using the I2 itself.
6. by way of competition to the I2, finishing an install of NetBSD to the RiscPC - and accommodating the arrival of our first child in June! (where's a trepidation smilie when you need one?)
Cheers,
Andrew
I've noted below some quirks and curiosities - if anyone can shed any light, it would be much appreciated. Apologies for the length and possible straying into territory better suited to another forum, but I've been mulling this for a while and would like to get it all down at once.
Why did I get it? In no particular order:
1. I once spent a couple of days with a couple of chaps at BioSym in San Diego, looking at the visualisation of complex (or so they seemed at the time) organic salts. That was in April 1995, and we were using a Personal IRIS and a teal Indigo2, which was then a fairly new toy in that research group. The "Insight" software for (among many things) turning x-ray diffraction data into images on screen seemed amazing, and while I have had nothing to do with that field for many years, I've not forgotten the experience, it would be good to see what else the I2 can turn its hand to.
2. It's a proper Unix machine, to compare with Linux (I have Ubuntu 11.04 and Debian stable/testing on other machines). First impression is that the organisation of directories is rather different, though that may be just the way the previous owner had set things up (/usr/people for user directories, rather than /home, for example).
3. It uses PS/2 keyboard and mouse, and I had a couple of free spaces on the KVM. Perhaps I should have gone for an O2, or - had I known one would come up 2 weeks later - an I2 Impact.
4. It's about the same vintage as my other classic, an Acorn RiscPC, a model launched in 1994 but heavily upgraded since (for those interested: Kinetic StrongARM at 233MHz, RISC OS Adjust 4.39, 384MB RAM and 2MB VRAM). Interesting to compare the two machines - two very different implementations of desktop computing.
5. The inexplicably pleasant sense of having acquired at very modest cost something that was once very expensive - so much desired but so out of reach.
No pictures yet, but I am sure you don't need any of a stock teal I2! Suffice to say that the condition seems very good, and it still has its locking bar and full fascia.
Quirks and curiosities so far:
A cold start sometimes fails, but things seem fine after pushing the reset button. Sometimes it fires up straight from cold.
The date remembered by the machine is July 1993, but a quick "date" command fixes that for the rest of the session - I assume the clock battery is dead.
The drive sled is blue plastic (though I've since acquired a metal one). Does a plastic sled present any problems? (other than the fact that it is awkward to slide in and out because of the little protrusion either side, making it just to wide for the gap in the skin).
I have managed to clone the 2GB drive's contents, but only by creating an xfsdump file, then as a separate command xfsrestore-ing that file onto the larger disk. Joining the commands with | did not work - early attempts produces screens of output but nothing written to the destination disk, as if the pipe was not passing things through properly - and when I have tried it again more recently xfsdump returns an error about the hostname being of zero length (I now want to move from a 9GB disk to 18GB or 73GB). I did try the alternative approach using tar, but that also failed - it was two months ago and I did not keep a note of the errors but again got the impression that the pipe was not acting as it should.
A Fujitsu MAP3147NP was recognised by fx but produced a loss of errors when trying to partition/mkfs, but a 73GB version of the same model seems to be fine. The MAP3xxxNP series is useful as it has a jumper to force narrow mode, so a passive 68-50pin adapter should be OK. I also have a Seagate 146GB drive lying around but that is wide-only, and the active adapter I have would not fit into the sled, but I might try an external enclosure for that.
It came with IRIX 6.5 (no indication of a sub-version number, so perhaps base 6.5 only) plus some freeware. Having cloned the disk, I put it away for safe keeping in case I need to go back to square one! I have installed all the patches/upgrades to 6.5.22 that did not involve conflicts, and upgraded from Netscape 4.0.5 to 4.8 using the package from SGI's website. However, after the 6.5.22 updates, autoconfig stumbled over xtimer, llc2 and snif - because xtimer.a is not present. I have overcome this temporarily by commenting out the relevant "USE" lines in irix.sm, and autoconfig then built a new kernel. Things seem to work, so:
- what functions do xtimer, llc2 and snif provide? and when would I notice their absence?
- is there any alternative software that provides the same functions? (assuming I do notice!)
After the updates, booting and shutting down seems to take much longer than it did before. Is this most likely a symptom of later 6.5 versions of core software stretching an R4400 / 256MB a bit further than the base 6.5 versions? Or would a 2GB IBM DCAS32160 tend to outperform a Seagate ST39173N, assuming both have XFS partitions made using mkfs defaults? (The 9GB has 0.5GB swap space, the rest as root; the IBM had proportionately less swap but also a single root partition rather than separate root and usr).
I had been expecting to install Linux or NetBSD (though the lack of X support is a bit off-putting), being aware that proprietary IRIX might make second user hobbyist use difficult. I have however been very impressed with the level of community support - primarily nekochan, but also the SGI techpubs/freeware resources and mapesdhs's technical notes.
What next?
1. Sort out the xfsdump/restore problem, so I can clone / migrate to a larger drive efficiently.
2. Sort out NFS exports so I can back up sensibly.
3. Fitting a DVD-ROM internally, once I've acquired a sled - I happen to have a Toshiba SM1401 on hand.
4. Perhaps more RAM, especially if it would speed things up appreciably, though the right 32MB SIMMs do not seem to common at what I would regard as a sensible price for my usage, so that may go by the by.
5. Exploring the SGI freeware and nekoware suites - lots to do there, obviously! A nice milestone will be logging on to nekochan using the I2 itself.
6. by way of competition to the I2, finishing an install of NetBSD to the RiscPC - and accommodating the arrival of our first child in June! (where's a trepidation smilie when you need one?)
Cheers,
Andrew
Should really test a 2.5" SCA disk in one of these machines sometime..
