The collected works of chicaneuk - Page 2

Upgraded my MacBook Air no problems. Barely noticed any differences though if I'm honest! Stuffed like tabbed finder I'm unlikely to use for example.

I wanted to post this, to find out what reasons people have for collecting it - and actually to see if anyone else collects it like I do? Short able ahead..

I got my first SGI (an Indy) back in around 13 years ago from Ian Mapleson - I still have the email of the advert he'd drafted somewhere. A friend and I were at college and really getting into Linux and so forth back then. We got a lift off my dad, and we drove all the way up to his warehouse in Lincolnshire somewhere and entered into what could only be described as "nird-vana" - a huge industrial unit stuffed full of SGI workstations, NeXT cubes, and all kinds of awesome stuff. We put a pair of Indy's and matching 21" granite monitors into the boot of the car and drove home very happy. We both kept those systems for a few years, but never really actually USED them for anything productive. Just.. reinstalled them, played around with the 3D graphics apps, used them to telnet via to other boxes just for the novelty of using an SGI machine - but otherwise they did nothing. I eventually gave my Indy (and a subsequently acquired Indigo2) to a friend when I moved out as I had no room for them and pretty much gave up on SGI stuff.

After a few changes in my circumstances I came to be living alone again and began to seek out old hardware. The same friend re-gifted me an Indigo2 from his collection, I acquired an Indy from work, and also an O2 came up. The O2 took significant time to get working, but get it working I did (thankfully a few were being scrapped at the time and I managed to make a good one out of the spare hardware) - but since spending many late evenings at work, after office hours, just getting it working - I find myself doing the same thing with it. It boots, I play around with it a bit, but I don't actually use it for anything.

It seems for me the fascination is just with the machine itself, and to own these pieces of hardware that once cost tens of thousands of dollars and to know they're in good order and working. Is this a special kind of insanity, or do other folks own these for the same reason? I do all my normal day to day life stuff on Windows and OSX machines..

tl;dr - I don't actually do anything with IRIX - I just love the old hardware. And just getting a system bootable / usable is about as far as I go when I acquire old kit. Is it just me?

Trippynet wrote: I'm also strongly looking at buying an Indigo 2 from Ian Mapleson myself as it's the SGI machine I covet the most and I'd love to have a nice purple one sitting on my desk

I'm at the same point about wanting to buy an Octane now.. I'm hoping I might, again, be able to secure one from work but I'm just working out if I can come to terms in my mind with parting with a few hundred quid for an Octane that will essentially just become an ornament at home rather than a workstation that serves any other purpose. Thankfully logic seems to be winning for now and I doubt I'll pick up one now unless it's something being scrapped rather than something I need to part with money for!

Happy holidays everyone! Thanks for this fantastic resource

Did you have a price in mind for the Fuel? Any other SGI kit you'd be interested in trade?

zmttoxics wrote: I know its off topic, apologize a head of time, but I just wanted to say something.

Fuck cancer. No one should ever have to deal with something like cancer. Sorry to hear this.

I hope your computers go to a good home.

Can only echo these sentiments. Extremely saddening whenever you hear of fellow enthusiasts on a small community like this suffering such terrible health issues, and having to give up their hobbies and passions as a result. I hope you get fantastic care.

kjaer wrote: Shel's son Eric informed me this morning that Shel passed away on Sunday.

Holy cow - that came pretty quickly after his posting. How very sad

That's an unbelievable bargain - great find!

Does surprise me how little research some people are willing to do into things they own, just preferring to dump them cheaply. The guy could have sold that for many times more than £40!

I'm reasonably looking forward to it.. I became a Mac owner (again) last year with a purchase of a MacBook Air and that machine has surpassed my expectations in every way. It's brilliant. I do actually seem to be gelling with OSX much better this time around, after buying an iMac several years ago and quickly getting tired of it - that shipped with Leopard.

I think it was helped in no small part by Windows 8 which aggravated me so badly, I was desperate for an alternative. Windows 8.1 has improved things marginally but fundamentally I think the whole product is a steaming pile of confusion. OSX (regardless of version) is just such a clean, fast, well thought out product in comparison.

Talk about a loyal Apple customer.. jeez! I hate to think what he spent on that lot.

Useful guide - thanks for sharing! I keep meaning to try get a little Linux server setup for net-installing my SGI boxes as CDROM swap-fest that is an Irix installation does start to grate after a while

Not three different web servers, a half dozen incompatible browsers, three different help systems, two printing systems, six competing sets of fonts, two different music players, tools for applications that disappeared during the Flood ..

So cool - thanks for sharing!

Really must get some SGI mugs made up. If only I could find the damn old and new type fonts somewhere - they seem extremely elusive

To be fair there's a good bunch of generic SGI logos and system logos on the Nekochan FTP site so I should be covered.

Tough one.

The Indy always has a place in my heart as it's the first SGI I owned (complete with 20" hernia-inducing granite monitor), but it's so crazily slow compared to the later systems that it's not really something you could get a lot of work done.

If space, power consumption and money were no object, I'd love an Onyx2 deskside but in reality just a well specced Octane2 would be the best compromise

Wow. I really hope it goes to an enthusiast on here!

Did it go to anyone on here?

Are you thinking of parting any out, or hoping to keep them complete?

After a dual-400MHz or better CPU for my Octane 2..

Would be able to post you back my single 400MHz in exchange if you wanted to keep the system complete / resellable.

OK - nevermind Always worth asking though. Thanks.

Part of me was hoping there would be a scene in the new movie where they go to the original building and have the original computers, including a big Crimson, etc. Pretty unlikely though.

If someone did indeed land that for $4 they got the bargain of the century!

So glad the site is back up - thanks for persevering and getting it sorted with AT&T!

Stupid question but what is it that's missing in the shot of the rear, above the power supply?

Awesome result Hopefully it's a reasonably decent spec!

Adrenaline wrote: Those were the days, I remember my 12 year old self immediately after putting a Voodoo 1 (Diamond Monster 3D) into my Pentium and booting Quake II, I just sat in that opening corridor with the pistol watching the light from the blast go from the barrel down the hall and into the wall at the end, lighting up the room as it went. I'm sure others have similar recollections of the first time they launched a game with their newly acquired 3Dfx card.

Very similar memories. Couldn't believe how good it looked.

Used to love seeing that little 3Dfx logo spin up when a game started.

It's seemed a little quiet on the hinv section for a while, so it seemed a good excuse to put up the details of my Indy. Another scrapper from work, this was absolutely barebones with a 100MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, 8 bit graphics and some extremely loud old drives measured in MB not GB It's duly received several upgrades to make it a bit more usable, and I also put in a 15K 146GB SCSI drive.

hinv output:



gfxinfo output:



Couple of bad pictures..





Cheers.

The monitor does indeed seem to be SOG and is connected up by a DIY cable a friend of mine made up for me The problem with the monitor is that the native res isn't supported on any of my kit (1680x1050).

jan-jaap wrote:

chicaneuk wrote: Another scrapper from work, this was absolutely barebones with a 100MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, 8 bit graphics and some extremely loud old drives measured in MB not GB

Yup, had one exactly like that in my first real job ... did real work with it too.

I guess in it's defence, IRIX was a bit less bloated back then so probably booted and ran a bit quicker!

Nice Hope it's running well. See you bumped the RAM a smidgin as well.

Be sure to stick up some pictures and a hinv in the Hinv section I know it'll look the same as any other Onxy2 but.. I love to see em as it's a system I yearn to own some day!

Who says Windows isn't reliable?



Let's not talk about the fact that of course this system hadn't been patched in all that time as well... thankfully took this just before we decommissioned it!

Oh - found another!

Yep - first one is 2000 Server and the next one was 2003 Server

So I’d been on the lookout for an SGI 20” granite monitor. I have a TFT that works on my SGI kit but I wanted a proper monitor for originalities sake. I found one on eBay fairly cheap and got talking to the seller and established that he also had an Indigo2 he wanted to shift. We talked back and forth a bit and I didn’t think I was interested because I already have an Indigo2 but purely in the interests of it going to a good home and not to recycling, we brokered a deal of a part exchange for a spare Android tablet I had and some cash. Went to go and pick it all up today.

Very pleased overall with it in the end. Skins aren’t perfect but pretty good overall. As you can see from the specs below it’s an R10K 195MHz, with 384MB RAM and HighImpact (Non-HighAA, 1MB TRAM only) graphics and with the added bonus of a 10/100 network card too (Phobos EISA) and the vertical stand feet. And for extra fun as you can see in the pictures, it comes in the original box! That made it worth the 160 mile round trip alone Also came with an external HDD enclosure, external SCSI CDROM AND a DAT drive too as well as the keyboard & mouse - so quite a collection of spares all told.

I’m rather surprised at how fast the system feels - actually feels more nimble than my R12K O2 that I sold a few months back, though I guess it could all be just in my mind.

Didn’t seem to be any juicy software installed, so broke out the IRIX 6.5.22 media to reinstall it only to find that it was packing a whopping 2GB internal drive - and IRIX complained there wasn’t enough space to install, so liberated a 72GB 15K Ultra320 SCSI disk out of another system and reinstalled it successfully on that.





Few piccies to follow once I get them off my phone.

It's back again Thanks, nekonono for keeping this valued resource going!

For some reason I always assumed that Nekochan was hosted on SGI hardware. Though that would be an expensive way of running a forum so in hindsight wouldn't make much sense

The NIC is a strange one actually. I've installed the driver from Ian Mapleson's site, and forced it into 100mbit mode. Admittedly I'm only using a power line ethernet adaptor at home which maxes out at I think 70mbit, but the fastest I've seen so far has only been about 1.2MB/sec transfers. Will need to do some more testing.

I'll sort out some of the pictures now

OK - see attached









The Idiot Outside sticker was jettisoned pretty quickly

Yeah I noticed the effect on CPU load. I have forced the card into 100mbit full duplex but still doesn't seem to be exactly er.. performant I should try get it on a proper 100mbit switch with a fast machine at the other end and see what it can manage.