The collected works of eMGee - Page 2

Speaking of the GIMP , getting even the tablet to work under a common Linux distribution like Debian is a pain, involving building customized kernels (not that that's so complex in itself, but... ) and going through the X configuration files and manually adding the device(s). There's nowadays this package called “ wacom-tools ” (I believe it is , or based, on the Linux-Wacom project ), it's a total pain. It comes with some ‘tools’ to allegedly help you with the setup, but they're totally confusing and don't seem to handle certain configurations well. It used to be a lot easier without them, when you just had to manually build the driver, the kernel and adding the lines to XFree86 (back then) configuration and firing it up.

Does anyone else have, or ever had, experience with this?

Or the beautiful MIPS RISC instruction set and ccNUMA based architecture, to name a few things... (Also, didn't the Origin 3900 support several terabytes of RAM? The Altix line certainly does).

I agree with the OP, it looks like a lame thing. In fact, I don't really see the gigantic difference between (except for CPUs and cores, amount-wise) it and the Octane III , other than storage and graphics capabilities. Both boring x86/-64 blade servers.

The only thing ‘SGI’ I recognize in the tiny pictures of that kitschy monstrosity are the HDD brackets/trays, those appear to be similar to — if not the same as — the ones in my Tezro/O350 and the Prism (deskside), though pretty much commodity too...

( Edit : I see others remarked it before me, I should hit the refresh button more often).

I'm going to probably go for AIX , but I'll keep this in mind if I ever should want to dual-boot or go for Linux/BSD /whatever.

(Is there any particular reason why the GXT6500 and 4500 aren't supported as of yet?)

That sure is depressing architecture, rather sovietesque . Reminds me a bit of Rotterdam (where I luckily don't have to spend any time anymore).

What is the part number for the brackets? I recently ordered four of FRU 00N7281, and they don't fit in my 275!

Unfortunately, I can only find AGP versions of the card at the moment.

Edit : Never mind, I just found a GXT135P for only £ 10!

Please don't give them any ideas.

(By the way, shouldn't it be Onyx5 ?)

Is, or are , there [a] good Nekoware, TGCware, OpenCSW, Blastwave , etc. equivalent for AIX open source/freeware? I've so far only come across several, Bull being the more prominent one. But it has very little by the looks of it, certainly for 6.1, or am I looking in the wrong place?

I had an IBM DDS-4 drive, I decided to build it into my IntelliStation POWER system. But, is it me (or is there something missing from my system), but where is the power cable? Also, I don't get the 68p-F (HD) connector they placed onto the media bay assembly ‘tray,’ like that you need to get an unwieldy and rather long cable (unless you made one yourself) for a very short distance. I guess I'll order one, since I don't have a spare one handy. But then I still have a missing power cable...

Has anyone else had issues with this too? Any good solutions?

It's slightly disappointing that there's so little out there for AIX , a rather formidable UNIX implementation otherwise and nonetheless. But then I guess it's the kind of industry it caters to, though that's no excuse ( IRIX has had excellent public freeware for quite some time via the SGI OSS site, so does even — although non-UNIX — OpenVMS to some extent).

I've fairly recently gotten my hands on an DEC AlphaServer 1000 4/266 (with 256 MB RAM, a FireStorm framebuffer, FC adapter and so on). It's capable of running OpenVMS 8.3 (though I wouldn't want to try, it'd obviously be rather sluggish), but 7.3 works just fine. I'm amazed how snappy the system is for its age and specs. I guess in that sense, they must retain a lot of their value. Perhaps that businesses would be prepared and are capable of affording the prices asked. Else I couldn't explain the pricing either.

The exterior is rather fragile, yes, although I bought mine miraculously in one piece (it came from BMW ). The interior is not all too bad, nice and modular.

The problem is, the only enclosures I have at the moment are 50p SCSI (with ribbon cable) for older type SCSI CD/DVD-ROM drives, so I'd need a converter then (and those are on average more expensive than a suiting ribbon cable). I still have no idea where to get the electricity from... (The slimline DVD and floppy/diskette drive are powered by the custom ‘media bay’ SCA-like connector, obviously).

I've come across that site before, but now that you mention it, I must've ended up on another part of it. This looks like one of the best so far, if it'd be up (as in online). It seems to be down, the actual host where the repositories are located (like for 6.1)...

It's still offline, unfortunately.

Now it does.

Did you go through the settings in the display [viewport options] panel? There's a setting that allows interactive shaded viewport manipulation, maybe that'll fix the problem? It's not much, but worth trying I guess, it might indeed be a version that had some bugs.

I haven't checked the link out yet, but isn't this something that the standard LightWave 3D renderer claimed to have or to have been based on? (With some kind of awkward meshing algorithm, that didn't count the actual polygons but the visible edges and so on; I forgot the details).

Good find, great video. Dear lord, how much must that have cost back then!

NT for MIPS , I've seen people mentioning it (about wanting to try it with actual hardware), is it any good? To clarify, in so far it ever is any “good” ... more like a curiosity in this case.

I have the NT 4 CD somewhere, I was wanting to try it with an AlphaServer of mine. But then I wondered, is it really worth it? The only interesting ‘third party’ NT AXP software was LightWave 3D (5.6 being the only version, if I'm not mistaken, the same and only version that also appeared for IRIX ) and to have to track that down would be a pain... Besides, NT AXP wasn't as rare as NT MIPS or PowerPC (both received relatively the poorest support, from what I remember).

I think it does support the shift buttons, caps lock and properly capitalized input. Ever heard of those things? Pretty interesting stuff, provided you know how to utilize it of course.

Are you unemployed? (Seriously though, let it rest. This is the last I've said about it, please don't provoke me again in replying to your drivel. )

Back on-topic, would anyone know perhaps if it's possible — and if so, how — to boot off an ISO image? Is it also possible to increase the virtual RAM? Needless to say, I'm new to this emulator. I gave it a try for the first time today.

I didn't say that, you're putting words in my mouth. I'm one step away from putting you in my ignore list. I don't have time for this. This is last I've said about this, I hope you'll be adult enough to let it finally go.

Thank you indyman007, it seems that some of the younger people are more adult than the actual so-called ‘adults.’



I don't “condemn” anyone (nice melodramatic touch there), I don't care what you do, I was merely returning the favour. I regret having done so, I didn't realize I was dealing with a very immature individual. Also, I seem to remember that you started this by making a rather unnecessary and off-topic remark, now didn't you? In fact, you're still continuing to derail this thread.

This is the last I've said regarding this. (I already said that two posts ago, so this is final).

I wonder if it'd be, or rather would've been, cheaper to buy a bunch of desktop units (like O2 s, the Indigo² s were most likely ‘left-overs’; I'm willing to bet) than just a few full-sized rack systems. I mean, considering in the late 1990s low-end O2s still cost over $ 10K!

I recently bought one of these cables, but it doesn't work! I can't also find anything about the pin-out, or whatever, regarding the power socket on the ‘media bay’ assembly...

It works just fine on an VPro graphics IP35 system, I can tell you.

I've just sent some inquiries to IBM about this whole ‘situation,’ I hope they'll get back to me and as excellently as SGI (even after having they had acquired).

I'll give 8.3 a try then! How is it under DECwindows though?

As for 8.4F, I didn't know it was out yet, or are you employed at a customer of HP entitled to the early release program?

I found these on YouTube , these are videos are from 1995. The period when M$ apparently owned S OFTIMAGE |3D for a short while. At first it seemed like your ordinary promotion & testimonial material, but it was really just a bunch of anti- SGI drivel. Constantly harping on how “NT” gave ‘you’ so much more ‘choice’ and lots of the usual jargon-laden buzzwords on alleged performance-benefits and so on.

Anyway, here they are:

• № 1 / 2
• № 2 / 2

Houdini was at some point released for Itanium and later Itanium 2 (and, unfortunately, it was pretty much ‘ Windows only’ I fear), but the support was apparently dropped later on. I mean, I haven't seen any IA64 builds in a while...

SESI press releases:

• « Houdini leverages the power of advanced processing technology from HP »
• « Houdini to support HP's Intel Itanium-based systems »

(Pretty specific to certain HP systems, as well).

Sorry, I'm not following you here, you're upset that Windows won't run on your hardware anymore?!

With all those high-level programming ‘object-oriented miracles’ one would need all the AMD64 CPUs that money can buy... What a wonderful market the whole ICT industry is, isn't it?

I think I'm going to give up buying anything new if the last RISC, or otherwise solid *N*X or VMS-capable and proven, architecture should at some point die off...

Good point sybrfreq.

Would VMS run on it? Or would that be pretty much limited to the Integrity systems? Due to the lack of SRM and so on (I only have ran VMS on AXP, so I wouldn't know...)

If you want to try something, maybe it'd be worth to build Blender and do some benchmarks? (Like the one on Ian [Mapleson]'s excellent site). Or, you could try to see if there's an archived version of Houdini Apprentice somewhere; although I'm not sure if it ever appeared for IA64 Linux, only for Windows I believe. (But I'm not 100% sure).

You're on a roll, great system!

A bit less cool that they had to slag off SGI with all the throwing of meaningless ‘company man’ jargon, whilst still big on SGI (as can be seen in the footage), with S OFTIMAGE eventually reverting back to being recognized as superior on IRIX (even on the O2 , compared to some big and expensive Intergraph peecees that were no match for it).

I remember how amazed I was at how speedy the O2 was back then, I first saw them at work at a graphic design college here in the Netherlands. I found it hard to believe such a ‘small computer’ (although one I couldn't afford, I had learned that much about it by then!) harnessed so much power and in such an appealing ‘shell’ too...

From the OpenVMS systems — “Ask the Wizard” section :

It's not the brand, well, not so much as it is — indeed — the feeling.