The collected works of jdboyd - Page 2

jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Miro DC30 compared to O2 AV1 video at Jan. 11, 2008, 8:03 a.m...
hamei wrote:
bjames wrote: So does this mean I can drop in a RM7000 processor to replace my R10K 200mhz?

Yes, but you need a couple of parts. The R10/R12 cpu card sits farther off the mainboard so you need different connectors and maybe standoffs. There's an R-5 350 around here for a tad over a hundred $$ but maybe that's too much ?

Btw, you have an R10k-200 ? or 195 mhz ? People have overclocked the r5 is why I ask ... otherwise, you're liable to get people confused between the r5-200 if you call the 195 mhz r10k cpu a 200.


Wait, where is there a R5000 350 for a little over $100?
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Miro DC30 compared to O2 AV1 video at Jan. 11, 2008, 2 p.m...
GIJoe wrote:
jdboyd wrote: Of course, who says you have to encode on the same machine you edit on?


the OP seems to plan on doing the whole thing on the o2. even if only used for capture, the MJPEG the o2 spits out can be cumbersome to transfer to another platform and uncompressed footage is a whole other story. e.g. my r12k 270 machine was barely able to playback uncompressed PAL footage (frame sequences) from RAM at 25 fps... editing this in premiere, i'd rather not imagine.

what sense does it make to split the tasks? the analog video is not so unique, really. a decent canopus firewire video box will probably deliver atleast the same quality, go for less than any strange o2 cpu upgrade that won't make a huge difference anyway and spit out a format that modern day apps can actually work with without going through extra steps. ok, enough of the warnings now. there's a plethora of topcis regarding o2 and video here and in the newsgroups. enough to be turned on or away. ;)


I guess it depends on what the other platform is. I didn't have any trouble moving MJPEG to FFMPeg, but I guess some people might want to assorted crap on Windows or Mac instead of FFMPeg.

I'd rather not imagine using Premiere on the O2 either. I know it has serious short comings, but I found Movie Maker more usable.

It makes plenty of sense to split encoding off to a server somewhere. Why should you workstation sit busy for two hours instead of you being able to move onto something else at full speed?

Even with a new Mac and said firewire box, it would still make sense to do encoding on a seperate computer. Not that this is all that relevent here since the OP already followed up and said that he wanted to output to a DVD recorder or tape.

So redirecting to bjames, in my opinion you should feel free to use the O2 if you don't want to spend money. Although I still would probably use Movie Maker instead of Premiere. And Premiere isn't exactly going to be wonderfully stable. And I'm not sure that in any way shape or form will Premiere on your O2 be as fast as the dual P3 was.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Miro DC30 compared to O2 AV1 video at Jan. 14, 2008, 8:25 p.m...
ajerimez wrote: Yes, I just use the capture tools that come with IRIX, and the Cross-Platform Quicktime settings. I've never actually used Premiere on IRIX to do anything useful, in no small part because it doesn't include any modern codecs. So the captured video gets immediately shuffled across the network to my PeeCee, where it gets output to a targa sequence (to get around the timing problem), reassembled in Premiere, and compressed with whatever codec seems appropriate.

This whole process is cumbersome and eats up a good deal of disk space, so I've only used it for short clips. Capturing an entire feature film, or even a TV show, will require a better way of doing things. Better methodologies obviously exist, but I just haven't bothered to figure one out, since I don't do this on a regular basis.


I've used ffmpeg and/or mplayer quite happily either on Irix or Linux for all sorts of cross conversion tasks. I used to use my O2 at work quite happily for all sorts of recording and playback tasks.

Now I use a work provided Premiere Pro machine with much less satisfaction. Despite the O2 being picking about un-genlocked sources, Premiere Pro with the firewire converter box I'm using is way pickier.

Back to your workflow, you could either edit on the O2, then either convert on the O2, or transfer to a Mac, Linux, or Windows machine to transcode, or you can capture on the O2, transfer, convert using a ffmpeg derived program and edit on the other platform. ffmpeg should enable you to convert correctly without the mentioned timing problem.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Miro DC30 compared to O2 AV1 video at Jan. 15, 2008, 8:11 a.m...
fvador59 wrote: Hi all !
What about Smoke ? and forget oldies like premiere 5.
It's able to solve all your problems for ever 8-)


Sure, except that Smoke doesn't run on the O2.

And I've yet to see an affordable license for Smoke (by which I mean hardware with smoke included that is selling for an affordable amount). Cheapest I think I've ever seen was $10k, and that was quite a few versions old, which may or may not be a big deal.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Piranha vs. Shake Irix at Feb. 5, 2008, 10:24 a.m...
cybercow wrote: How many of you still uses this kind of software for effects on Irix ? and what are the differences ? I know both software apps require big bang octane2`s or tezro`s but i get a try to shake 3.5 on Indigo2 impact and for "minimal" things is quite usable, at least for user interface exploration and command hierarchy learning ... etc ... maybe for first steps too... in fact i was surprised how usable is this thing on 10 year old machine, ok this is classic constatation so i will skip this one ... i even maked some simple effects in few minutes that surprised me.


Piranha struck me as a significantly different program from shake. I'd almost think of Piranha as more Flint or After Effects like than Shake/Fusion/Nuke like. I wouldn't say one style is better than the other, just that they are better for different things.

I wonder if there is any chance of IFX ever being convinced to sell older versions for Irix cheaply.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Piranha vs. Shake Irix at Feb. 5, 2008, 6:53 p.m...
Timberoz wrote: How many people out there are genuinely interesting in purchasing legitimate versions of these software packages. If there were enough neko users out there with money to part with I would be interested in contacting companies on behalf of a "Group of buyers" to see if they would offer a 1 time limited release of the their legacy IRIX lines. Some of the Avid products also come to mind (Elastic Reality would be 1 of my 1st picks, Jaleo for the O2 would be another)


I don't that Avid would be convinced to do any such thing, but it could be worth a shot, since they do give away (or least until recently did) ProTools 3.4 (I guess this would be 12+ years old).

Smaller manufacturers seem a more likely target though.

BTW, Jaleo is from SGO, which is still in business, so that is likely another good target.

Although, I would rather see them just provide an unlimited license key for free for sufficiently old applications on platforms that are no longer supported.
jdboyd
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 10:47 a.m.
and authored 560 notes
Wrote on the subject of Ayam 1.16 at Feb. 19, 2008, 3:53 p.m...
yungjoon wrote:
Hi all,

I have 2 questions.

I tryied to install a compaq 3003 spaceball (latest xdriver) with my Octane (irix 6.5.27). During installation the driver detects correctly the spaceball on serial port 1 but after I have a blank window in xdriver control windows (can't see the test cube). Is there something to do before installation or something particuliar in installation?

Is there a way to use it in blender ?


There is a patch for that floating around that you can google, but I suspect that patch has never been tested on Irix. There are licensing issues that keep it from being integrated, as the patch relies on the official spaceball drivers.

I would love to see someone offer a patch that instead talks directly to the older serial units. Then maybe we would have a prayer of it being integrated.
jdboyd
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 10:47 a.m.
and authored 560 notes
Wrote on the subject of Ayam 1.16 at Feb. 20, 2008, 10:14 a.m...
skywriter wrote:
way back before blender became peecee heavy, Danial Dunbar made a script & module to use dials and buttons with blender, it would have been easy then to use a space ball as well. I'm afraid we would have to add it ourselves since we seem to be the only ones blessed with superior hardware.


This brings up an important looming point.

Blender is being completely redone for version 2.5. This is a good thing, except that if we don't start helping soon, we might find it is terrible to make it work on Irix. The approach being taken is to develop a new small framework for events and windows and such, and then to port the existing code base onto the new framework. I don't believe that they are looking to heavily shake up the actual scene data structures.

The relevance to the topic is that the point of the restructuring is largely to redo how events are handled to make it easier for actions to be triggered by any source, including external controllers. It should also make it simpler to support undo/redo or modeling history type actions.
jdboyd
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 10:47 a.m.
and authored 560 notes
Wrote on the subject of Ayam 1.16 at Feb. 21, 2008, 10:45 a.m...
skywriter wrote:
the blender development community historically has not been receptive to make any allowances for IRIX. if you want it done you have to get in and do it yourself, and watch it like a hawk because people will unknowingly break it and you'll constantly be fixing things just to stay in place. adding advanced SGI/IRIX features is usually impossible due to the maintenance of the basic IRIX functionality.

this stems from the wildly variable open source framework that requires retooling everything for IRIX; both blender code and development framework.


There aren't really much in the way of advanced Irix features that I want any more. Personally I no longer really care about trying to get movie lib support or live video output.

skywriter wrote:
i ran out of time years ago.


Understandable.

skywriter wrote:
btw Ton forbid any new platform specific features like dials and buttons and spaceballs because they were not portable across platforms. apparently the fact that everything else was like that for IRIX escaped him. by that time he was off IRIX and on the Mac.


I am hoping that after this redo, it will be easier to implement support for various platform specific controllers using python. The spaceball patch (which I believe is for windows) is a C patch that requires a recompile and that seems unacceptable to me.
jdboyd
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
and authored 547 notes
Wrote on the subject of Piranha vs. Shake Irix at March 3, 2008, 4:22 p.m...
jan-jaap wrote:
Everything is hooked up, the 4D/25 is running IRIX 4.0.5, and I have connected a video camera to the 'vid out' BNC of the breakout box.


Shouldn't the video camera be hooked to an input rather than an output?
jdboyd
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
and authored 547 notes
Wrote on the subject of Piranha vs. Shake Irix at March 4, 2008, 7:47 a.m...
jan-jaap wrote:
jdboyd wrote:
Shouldn't the video camera be hooked to an input rather than an output?

No, I'm using the camera as a (tiny) TV screen. Genlock doesn't provide video input btw.


What does it use for a sync input if not a video signal then?
jdboyd
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 10:47 a.m.
and authored 560 notes
Wrote on the subject of Ayam 1.16 at March 5, 2008, 8:18 p.m...
skywriter wrote:
sgefant wrote:
I don't think an IRIX build is available, so unless you're able to build blender yourself, it probably is easier to wait for blender 2.5...


yeah that way spend all your time trying to port all the development infrastructure build systems and freeware GNU/libtool crap that the open source crowd will change in 2.5.

you'll never get your spaceball that way.

go back to 1.80 when it was simple to build and use.


I didn't know that the 1.8 source was available. I though it didn't get released until somewhere in the 2.x series, like maybe 2.23?

If you know where the 1.8 source is, could you point it out so we could start a blender 1.8 neko package for MIPS3 if nothing else? That was before IrisGL support was dropped, right?
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of An other great forum link at May 9, 2008, 6:46 p.m...
They fixed it today.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Wings available for Irix precompiled at June 27, 2008, 2:21 p.m...
figgles wrote: So I just compiled Wings3D for MIPS3...

I know someone was interested in its performance on older machines such as R4x00 Indigo2s with IMPACT graphics...so here is my report.

Wings3D 0.99.02
OTP R12B-2
SDL 1.2.13

The test machine is a teal Indigo2 with a R4400 @ 250MHz/2MB L2, 384MB of RAM, and ExtremeGraphics.

Unfortunately, Wings3D performance is terrible with this configuration. Adding a single, 4 polygon pyramid and rotating the camera causes the CPU usage to skyrocket to 100% and the frame draw extremely slowly (interactive FPS, but close to 5-10). I can almost guarantee that this is due to the way the menus/icons are being drawn: textures. As you all probably know, ExtremeGraphics doesn't do texturing in hardware.

I use Maya 5.0 on the same machine, and from playing with multiple thousand polygon models, I can say easily that Maya's performance far, far exceeds Wings3D, and I don't mean that in the way that a professional program written by a company owned by SGI at the time should perform better on SGI hardware versus a generic open source one. Wings3D is written in Erlang and interpreted, yes, but I've found that to be far less of a performance stumbling block even on low end (compared to Octane/Fuel) configs like R10000 @ 195MHz. It is the lack of texturing hardware makes this pretty much unusable unfortunately. Maya uses X11 and overlay planes to do its GUI, and as such, doesn't suffer the performance penalties I'm seeing here.

So, in short, if you want Wing3D on an Indigo, you're pretty much out of luck for getting anything usable. If you are looking for Wings3D on an Indigo2, you will probably want High/MaxIMPACT graphics. The menus on Wings3D aren't what I would consider "texture intensive", so 1MB is actually just fine, though I'm sure that if you are doing texturing in Wings3D, you'll want the full 4MB.

I have tested Wings3D on a purple Indigo2 (R10000@195MHz, 1GB RAM, MaxIMPACT/1TRAM) works great. I have a secondary SolidIMPACT in that machine, but I haven't tried running Wings3D on that monitor.


On the PC side, Wings runs well on some extremely low end cards, like the Riva TNT or 3dfx voodoo3. If someone would fix the icons, it would probably perform very nicely.

Wings is written using SDL for the window and even management. SDL has the ability to blt rects directly, so perhaps someone could figure out how to change the drawing code for the icons to do that. Overlay planes would be cooler still, but I don't think that SDL supports those.
jdboyd
Addict
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
and authored 545 notes
Wrote on the subject of DIVO on Octane & Onyx2 at Aug. 26, 2008, 10:26 a.m...
87Porsche wrote:
So I finally get ahold of a component to SDI converter box. Hooked everything up to my Onyx2/DIVO combo and the live audio/video feed come through fine. I also have an Octane/DIVO combination as well. Everything works with that too. Vpaper, shatter, awesome... everything works.


Do you mean that you are using a Onyx2/Origin2000 style DIVO card in an Octane (with the latch modified, obviously)? Or do you have two different boards and you are just calling them both DIVO? Or am I just confused and they are actually both called DIVO even though they are two different boards?
jdboyd
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 10:47 a.m.
and authored 558 notes
Wrote on the subject of DM6? at Sept. 11, 2009, 9:15 p.m...
QuicksilverG4 wrote:
I get this the card recognized in the hinv but running mlquery as instructed in the manual doesn't detect it. I am most likely missing something most of you would consider painfully obvious due to my minimal IRIX knowledge.


Does hinv presence imply that the drivers are already installed? I would have thought they would have to be installed separately.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Nekochan.net operating costs? at Nov. 16, 2009, 10:07 a.m...
nekonoko wrote: No, the captcha works but it's really, really slow to come up. You just need to wait for it - can take a minute or more. Perl is excruciatingly slow under IRIX; I've been considering moving from Movable Type to WordPress for this reason.


I really like WordPress, although for reasonably high traffic levels, you might find you need a caching plugin, of which there are several simple to install choices.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of What are the differences between the XT-HD vs. DG5/TVO? at Jan. 25, 2010, 1:35 p.m...
What about 720x480 or 720x486 video?
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of node.js, JSDB; Which one compiles under Irix? at June 7, 2011, 7:16 a.m...
node.js requires the V8 javascript engine, and porting V8 to Irix would be a herculean task. Actually, it may be more accurate to say that porting V8 to MIPS is the herculean task. While V8 may run on Solaris, I've never seen it running on SPARC.

JSDB is more likely to work, depending on what version of spidermonkey it depends on.
jdboyd
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 10:47 a.m.
and authored 558 notes
Wrote on the subject of Editing 4k on MacBook Air video at Feb. 6, 2012, 1:22 p.m...
Of course, even with a MacPro, you still would have to buy the Red Rocket to get that performance.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of 2x Ros hyperSPARC CPUs at Feb. 12, 2012, 9:12 a.m...
These are part # 270-6214-58 and they have blue heatsinks. I believe they are 125 mhz.

I tested them when I got them (about 2 years ago), but I haven't retested them just now, so it might be best to consider these untested and AS-IS.

Make an offer. I'm kinda thinking $50, shipping included (for the US at least).

I'm not getting out of Sun stuff, I'm just trying to clean up and I generally prefer SuperSPARCs in my MBUS machines.

EDIT: And now they are gone.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Indigo 2 Extreme graphics option, for cost of shipping at Feb. 27, 2012, 6:41 p.m...
I have an Extreme graphics 3 card set. To be honest, I've never actually fired it up. It was thrown in with a Solid Impact machine that I was buying at the time.

I'll entertain any offer over the price of shipping it from 17603 (I think it will fit in a flat rate box, which would cost about $16) Or, I'd be willing to trade for possible items, like a serial Wacom (over 4x5) or a USB audio device that will work with a Fuel.

EDIT: The cardset is now gone.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Indigo 2 Extreme graphics option, for cost of shipping at March 1, 2012, 4:14 p.m...
So, we've reached the point where no one wants Extreme graphics.

Maybe it's time to recycle it after all. :(
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Indigo 2 Extreme graphics option, for cost of shipping at March 1, 2012, 6:24 p.m...
To Berlin (since I had to pick a city), UPS says a staggering $200. USPS says a more reasonable $75ish.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Free(ish): 3DLabs Oxygen GVX210 at March 6, 2012, 5:01 a.m...
This is a "pro" 3D card for PCs from circa 2000. It is an AGP pro card.

This is free for the cost of shipping (I'd guess about $12 in the US).

I suspect this is destined for the trash, but I've seen people occasionally talking about piecing together vintage PC workstation style systems, I thought I'd offer it here before it hits the trash.

BTW, it seems that there was linux driver work as recently as 2010 for GLINT based cards.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of FS: Indigo2 Impact Video card, flex cables, and BOB at March 7, 2012, 8:24 p.m...
I believe this is the card for pre-Impact I2s. The assembly number is 030-0662-005.

The BOB says Galileo Video.

I am missing the 26 pin cable to connect the BOB to the card, but I believe that is obtainable, or at least that you can wire one together yourself.

Shipping in the US would probably be about $16.

I've shipped a bunch of stuff recently for about the cost of shipping, but it would be nice for this if I could get a little more than that.

Edit: This is now gone.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of FS: Indigo2 Impact Video card, flex cables, and BOB at March 8, 2012, 2:03 p.m...
I do believe it is EV1 instead of EV3, but I do wish I could find a reliable looking page giving the EV1 and EV3 part numbers to check against.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Free(ish): 3DLabs Oxygen GVX210 at March 8, 2012, 9:45 p.m...
Nobody?

What if I threaten to toss it in the trash?

[[C|-|E]] wrote: That card was a monster back in time. Reminds me my old Elsa Gloria XXL, although the Elsa was less powerful by far. I would take it if it was PCI :) .


If it was PCI, that would have probably meant I'd have actually gotten some use out of it. Oh well.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Hedera project update (IRIX 5.3) at March 14, 2012, 10:06 p.m...
SAQ wrote: Third: I'm strongly considering some sort of revision control. I know it sounds somewhat silly for a single-person project, but I'm getting tired of having to start over from the beginning with packages, especially given some of the IRIX packaging utilities' penchant for zeroing out my IDB files now and then :x . What systems have people used successfully with IRIX? I've never had to get involved with these before, but since XFS isn't a versioning file system I'm having problems.


I use version control for all my single person projects, and the ones I don't use it for, I probably should be using it anyway.

I've used cvs and git on irix, but I suspect that the best option is svn (I say that presuming that you are dealing with moderately large binary files).
jdboyd
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 10:47 a.m.
and authored 558 notes
Wrote on the subject of FS: HP GigE for HP 9000 A4929-60001 at Jan. 5, 2013, 9:52 a.m...
I have a 64bit PCI gige card labeled HP A4929-60001. This appears to be for HP 9000 computers only. This is untested as I have no such machines.

It is available on a sliding scale. If you want to pick it up in 17603, then it is free. It is $10 (shipping included) in the US. Internationally, it is $10 plus shipping.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Lucasfilm EditDroid & SoundDroid brochures at June 13, 2013, 3:18 p.m...
Wow, the quality of that first PDF is stunning. Thank you for posting this.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Indy: Upgrade from XL8 to XZ, Irix 5.3 at Aug. 10, 2013, 10:17 p.m...
What packages need installed (and perhaps tracked down first) to be able to make XZ work? I don't like the suggestion I've seen (elsewhere) for re-installing.

I thought a quick question might save me a lot of time trying experimentally, especially since I've never seriously used Irix 5.3 before.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Indigo R3000 at Feb. 2, 2015, 4:27 p.m...
I have an Indigo R3000 machine that I haven't touched in probably 8 years that I think should find a home that will love it more.

I can look into it more if there is serious interest, but off the top of my head, I believe it has 64MB RAM, and XS or better graphics. That is all I can actually remember about it, and I certainly haven't powered it on in forever.

I personally would expect that it would be best to be picked up in 17603, however, I'll never tell someone else that a machine isn't worth shipping if they feel like paying for it.

I can dig it out and try turning it on. I'm not sure if I have any keyboards and mice for it, so might not be able to go past looking to see if it has a hard drive and seeing if it powers on.

Anyway, ask questions or make an offer.
jdboyd
From Southern PA
Who joined Aug. 21, 2003, 11:47 a.m.
Wrote on the subject of Indigo R3000 at March 21, 2015, 6:20 p.m...
I ended up spending some time sick and didn't get to digging out and looking at the machine promptly.

The skins are really good. Completely intact, minimal scuffing.

It turns out that it doesn't power on though.

It does have disk sleds, but no disk. I didn't have time yet to open it up to inventory the cards.