The collected works of josehill - Page 2

josehill
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From New England, USA
Who joined June 6, 2005, 9:53 p.m.

Wrote on the subject of I'm going fiber at Jan. 16, 2008, 2:42 a.m...

jan-jaap wrote:

-ATM will make your head explode if you fail to fail to grasp the concept of packet switching.

I have only one machine with an ATM interface, so I can't comment. But somehow I expect the details of the implementation (packet switching) to be hidden by the tcp/ip stack.

Once an ATM network is set up, all the complexity is indeed generally hidden behind the TCP/IP stack, but hosts on ATM nets usually do require some driver tweaking and tuning.

However, getting an ATM network up and running can be much more complex and challenging than getting FDDI or ethernet running, regardless of the protocol which is going to run on it.

To complicate things further, getting good drivers for IRIX systems is a challenge, even with SGI-made network interfaces (the old Challenge L/XL ATM cards, for example). You'll often find cards that only have IRIX 6.2 drivers, or 6.3 drivers, or 6.4 drivers, or even 5.3 drivers, and for cards that have 6.5 drivers, they often have serious glitches.

For any hobbyist who wants to experiment with ATM, I highly recommend doing a lot of product research first and sticking as much as possible to a single hardware manufacturer for NICs and switches.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Apple item: Duo Dock at Jan. 17, 2008, 9:14 a.m...

pentium wrote: The latch that holds my DUO book 230 to the mini dock jammed and one of the arms broke off when I tried to free it. Now I can't get a reliable connection and it looks like it's time to upgrade. Anyone have a spare DUO Dock lying around?

You might try posting a WTB at the Low End Mac Swap List - http://groups.google.com/group/lemswap

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Apple item: Duo Dock at Jan. 17, 2008, 9:17 a.m...

Forgot to mention, the "Duo List" is also a good place to look for stuff - http://themacintoshguy.com/lists/duolistfaq.shtml

josehill
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From New England, USA
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Wrote on the subject of I'm going fiber at Jan. 17, 2008, 9:19 a.m...

The Keeper wrote: The FDDI network that I set up was all Digital Equipment Corporation gear, from end-to-end. DEChub 900 backplane, four power supplies, FDDI DECconcentrator 900MX, CDDI DECconcentrator 900TH, and a couple 32-port Ethernet DECrepeater 900TMs.

Yep - we had good success with DEC-based FDDI concentrators back in the day, too.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Apple item: Duo Dock at Jan. 17, 2008, 1:20 p.m...

pentium wrote:

josehill wrote: You might try posting a WTB at the Low End Mac Swap List - http://groups.google.com/group/lemswap

I gave up on posting there.
Nobody ever responds to me.

I hope that you don't use your "pentium" name -- it's a Motorola 68k crowd over there! :lol:

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of What next? at Feb. 17, 2008, 10:19 p.m...

RageX wrote: I'll add a couple to the list of must-haves:

Thanks for adding to the list! Here are a few more (maybe not all "must haves", but all are handy) from my Apps & Utilities folders.

coconutBattery - great battery monitoring tool
CSSEdit - useful for quick CSS edits
DiskWarrior - Excellent disk directory repair tool
Documents To Go - MS Office & PDF document viewer/editor for my Palm Treo 700p
Emailchemy - handy for importing and exporting email among many different formats
Flickr Uploadr - self explanatory
Flip4Mac - WMV player for Mac
GraphicConverter - Awesome image tool
Interarchy - convenient gui front end to a lot of file transfer tools
iStumbler - wireless tool
iWork '08 - finally starting to get within shouting distance of the MS stuff, and, in some limited areas, better. I find myself starting to open Numbers now instead of Excel for new projects; graphing seems easier than in Office.
Leopard Cache Cleaner - very useful, but potentially dangerous, maintenance and troubleshooting tool.
Lineform - surprisingly simple, yet full featured $79 vector drawing tool. Hated it at first, then watched the tutorial videos on their website, now I'm a big fan.
Lotus Notes, Microsoft Office 2004 on the G4, Microsoft Office 2008 on the Intel - Sometimes ya just gotta do what ya gotta do.
OmniGraffle - pretty good diagramming tool.
OmniOutliner - pretty good outlining tool. Kind of like what More would be if it were still being developed.
OnyX - nice utility. Handy for kicking off cron'd maintenance scripts on laptops that aren't always powered on and other "clean up" tasks.
Opera - Alternative browser. I use it for one of my online personalities, Firefox for another, and Safari for a third. (Basically, it makes it possible to be logged into three different google/yahoo/whatever identities at the same time, so I can switch between work/family/hobby workspaces very easily.)
Picasa Web Albums Uploader
recorder.xhead - Ever want to use your laptop as a sound-activated voice recorder? This is the tool.
SiteSucker - a nice gui tool for mirroring sites, downloading files, etc.
Stuffit - for old time's sake
TechTool Pro - commercial disk repair and hardware diagnostic utility
Tidy Up! - convenient way to find and manipulate duplicate files
TNEF's Enough - lets you unpack those ^$*#$@# winmail.dat files you get from Outlook users
VMware Fusion and Parallels (I lean very slightly towards Parallels, but I have a pile of VMware VMs that I've put together over the years on other platforms)
Yep - "iPhoto for PDFs." Sort of.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Upgrading to 6.5.22m from 6.5.6m? at April 28, 2008, 10:05 p.m...

Are you also loading your original IRIX Foundation CDs (1 & 2), too? If not, please do so, and the conflicts will be reduced.

Depending what else you may already have on your system, you may also need to load the Development Foundation CD, the Development Libraries CD, and perhaps an Applications CD.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of OpenBSD/sgi at May 3, 2008, 5:27 a.m...

Though I've always thought it a bit loopy to run anything but IRIX on SGI hardware, I notice that OpenBSD 4.3 has just been released, and that the SGI port (an O2 port, really) has gotten some attention:

Quote:

OpenBSD/sgi
Contains many new drivers, however the kernel requires an important errata fix.
* New gbe(4) driver for the SGI Graphics Back End (GBE) Frame Buffer on sgi.
* New mkbc(4) driver for the Moosehead PS/2 Controller on sgi.
* New power(4) driver for the power button on sgi.
* Support for X11 on sgi has been added.
* OpenBSD/sgi can now be installed using the glass console.

See http://www.openbsd.org/sgi.html#hardware for supported hardware.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of OpenBSD/sgi at May 3, 2008, 4:01 p.m...

tillin9 wrote:

Also, what's up with the O2 case on the linked page? Is that an OpenBSD logo by the O2 logo or some kind of extra button hack?

Looks like a sticker of the wireframe version of the OpenBSD "Puffy the Blowfish" logo . The OpenBSD folks usually bundle a sheet of stickers if you buy the official CD.

If you do try the 4.3 release on the O2, I'm sure that many Nekochanner's would be interested to hear what you think of it.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of OpenBSD/sgi at May 3, 2008, 8:09 p.m...

kramlq wrote:

Perhaps you should merge this with the existing thread here , which links to an interesting article on the same subject.

Thanks -- I missed the earlier thread. Merger complete!

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Amazing iMac G3 at May 17, 2008, 6:49 a.m...

Congratulations - that's great!

With over 256 MB RAM in your iMac, you might want to upgrade to 10.3.x ( Panther ) or 10.4.x ( Tiger ) in order to get more current security updates and better third party software support. Aside from open source stuff, most of the current third party software seems to require at least Mac OS 10.3.9 or, more commonly, 10.4.x. Tiger is still getting frequent updates from Apple, while Panther hasn't gotten one since Nov 2007.

There's a little bit of debate about whether Panther is faster than Tiger on older machines or vice versa, but they both have enough performance gains over Jaguar (10.2) that either is worthwhile.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Amazing iMac G3 at May 17, 2008, 9:30 a.m...

toxygen wrote: Don't even think about upgrading to 10.4 - it'll go slow as hell.

Like I said, there's a little debate on the matter.

If you have access to the OSes, I'd give them all a try in order to see what is the best fit before doing too much customization. Heck, you might even have some fun trying Linux on that machine!

Having said all that, Panther is the last version officially supported on the 266 MHz iMac, and with the relatively small hard drive, there isn't a lot of overhead available, so toxygen's opinion is probably the right one.

For performance reasons, it's also probably worth dropping the display depth to "thousands of colors" rather than "millions of colors."

Check out http://lowendmac.com/imacs/rev-c-imac-g3-266-mhz.html for additional info, and, once again, congrats on getting the machine.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Amazing iMac G3 at May 17, 2008, 9:35 a.m...

SAQ wrote: What is the problem with Apple software developers? Many Windows apps can still run on 2000, I'd say most Sun apps run back to Solaris 8, AIX is usually back to 5.3 or 5.1 - but Macintosh apps are almost invariably compiled for N-1 (or even current only), and Apple updates ~every 2 years.

Often it's just a matter of "official" support rather than whether or not the programs will actually work, but it is definitely an issue.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of SGI in the 80s at June 3, 2008, 9:01 a.m...

http://sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/hardware/timeline.php

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Signature line computer icons. at July 1, 2008, 6:07 p.m...

Dexter is back! All is right in the land of Nekochan tonight.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of TIP: .sw/.idb distribution image format at July 1, 2008, 7:02 p.m...

Nice one!

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of GFX_CFG_ERR at Aug. 3, 2008, 7:27 p.m...

sybrfreq wrote: pretty funky mousepad you got there too.

That one's a classic. SGI used to give those away in the late 90s. IIRC, they came in the box with some new machines, and they gave them away at some of their training courses. Every now and then you'll see them on eBay.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of DNS doozy, is there a 6.5.22m fix for this? at Aug. 5, 2008, 4:27 p.m...

Might be worth it if a Nekochanner with a service contract opens a case just to get the scoop on when/whether there will be an official fix or a workaround. Unfortunately, I let my contract lapse a little while ago...

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of DNS doozy, is there a 6.5.22m fix for this? at Aug. 6, 2008, 12:07 p.m...

porter wrote:

I was under the impression this also required a client fix (so that the magic number in the DNS packet sent was randomized rather than incremented) so that would need a change to libc.so and/or libnsl.so.

Brief discussion of this in the OS X Leopard context at http://db.tidbits.com/article/9721 , presumably IRIX could be similar.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of SGI Cube Demo reloaded at Aug. 8, 2008, 9:19 a.m...

Great question!

I've been a little skeptical of the whole Second Life phenomenon, but I've come across some very interesting 2nd Life spaces with health care angles. (I do a little "Health 2.0" work professionally, hence my interest.) For example, there is a group of paraplegics that get together for virtual dances, and at least one group of autistic folks who use 2nd Life to practice building social interaction skills in a safe environment.

That said, I don't really use Second Life. Just not enough hours in the day to explore it.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of For download: IRIX netboot appliance at Aug. 12, 2008, 2:40 p.m...

Bravo, but unable to reach the site at the moment. Could it be that 2158 Nekochanners are trying to reach it at once?

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of For download: IRIX netboot appliance at Aug. 13, 2008, 12:01 p.m...

Hi Thomas,

As the others have indicated, a .torrent file contains a link that peer-to-peer clients know how to handle. There are lots of clients to choose from. Once you get a Torrent client, you'll be able to download deBug's virtual machine, which arrives as a 300 megabyte .zip file. It might take a while to finish the download -- it took twelve hours for mine to finish, but as more people "seed" the torrent, the speed should improve. (For example, since I was probably one of the first people to start downloading, I was only getting throughput around 0.5 kB/s. Now that I have the file, however, I'm pushing it to other folks at 50 kB/s. 1.5 GB pushed so far!)

To run the virtual machine, you'll need either the free VMware Player for Linux and Windows , or the commercial VMware Fusion for Mac , or the commercial VMware Workstation for Linux/Windows .

Best regards,
JH

josehill
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From New England, USA
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Wrote on the subject of For download: IRIX netboot appliance at Aug. 15, 2008, 1:05 p.m...

Thanks again for putting this together, deBug. Would you have a "cookbook" of how DINA differs from a default NetBSD installation, e.g. configs, any extra sw installed? Just curious...

PS. 2.5 GB seeded...

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Install the Debian on SGI Altix 350 at Aug. 25, 2008, 5:42 p.m...

rbhuang wrote: By the way, I just freely downloaded SLES 9 sp3 from Novel wweb site, and it seems to me that this version of SUSE may be free to everyone as long as you register an account in Novel web site.

IIRC, SLES is free to try, but you need to buy an entitlement code to get certain features, like software updates through Yast, multi cpu support, etc.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Install the Debian on SGI Altix 350 at Aug. 26, 2008, 10:43 a.m...

I've personally tended towards SLES in my own commercial Linux work (i.e. stuff that's important enough to pay for Linux maintenance contracts), though RedHat is clearly more popular in the USA and with ISVs, which is why I tend to recommend CentOS to people looking for freebie "enterprisey" distros.

IBM is a big SLES supporter, too, so I think that it will stick around for a while.

My biggest general knock on SLES is that it seems a little less finalized/unified in terms of configuration tools, gui, etc., but I've been happy with it. I haven't tried OpenSUSE yet.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Licenses? at Sept. 4, 2008, 4:30 p.m...

dc_v01 wrote:

InPerson - pretty sure this obsolete?

An IRIX-only video iChat. Way, way ahead of its time. Cool to play with if you have enough machines and IRIX geeks on a local net.

dc_v01 wrote:

Mineset Server,Client

Very interesting early GUI-based exploratory data analysis suite. Could still be worth some money to people.

The pcp stuff could be interesting for folks who admin larger (challenge/origin) boxen.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Licenses? at Sept. 4, 2008, 4:55 p.m...

dc_v01 wrote:

Yeah, I remember reading about that, the next Y2K bug. But since you can apparently make them permanent, it did seem kinda lazy to just make them the largest int you can fit.

IIRC, "permanent" is synonymous with "2038" in those versions of FLEXlm, so it's a matter of semantics, not a matter of being lazy.

I haven't kept up with the current status. That might be a good question for someone with a service contract to ask SGI. Obviously, they won't be supporting IRIX in 2038, but they should be able to say whether or not certain things are likely to work. Also, keep in mind that even if IRIX itself might support post-2038 dates, that is no guarantee that specific applications will support 2038+, particularly third party systems like FLEXlm license management.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Licenses? at Sept. 5, 2008, 11:20 a.m...

dc_v01 wrote:

josehill wrote:

The pcp stuff could be interesting for folks who admin larger (challenge/origin) boxen.

Yeah, I didn't think it would be that useful on a lowly I2.

Yep. A typical use would be to use a graphical workstation to collect and analyze raw pcp data from larger systems. I still think that pcp provides one of the best GUI dashboard views of systems, large or small, but especially large. Kind of like gr_osview on steroids, and with lots of customizable options.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Unix Emulation at Nov. 2, 2008, 9:25 p.m...

No one has done it, at least for IRIX.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Fuel prototype (BLUE!) at Dec. 8, 2008, 7:13 p.m...

sybrfreq wrote: 500mhz with a v10... whats so + about it?

...but, it's shiny!

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Fuel V12, R16K 900MHz (8MB L2), 4GB at Dec. 22, 2008, 7:41 p.m...

Looks like Christmas came early to Edinburgh!

Have a great holiday season, Ian!

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Fuel V12, R16K 900MHz (8MB L2), 4GB at Dec. 23, 2008, 4:51 p.m...

R-ten-K wrote: The 900Mhz R16K must be rarer than hen's teeth... how did you manage the score?

I suspect Ian's answer might begin, "Many Bothans died..."

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of IRIX 6.5 backup and restore manager ? at Jan. 3, 2009, 12:17 a.m...

leaknoil wrote: What is the Backup and Restore Manager using internally ?

The first few results from a google search for the words irix backup restore give the correct answer, and this has been covered a few times here on Nekochan.

For 6.5, the format is cpio.
For 6.3 and 6.4, the format is tar.
For 5.3-6.2, the format is bru.

Also, DAT tapes are not known for their long term reliability. It is entirely possible, perhaps even probable, that the problem is with the tape itself.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of IRIX 6.5 backup and restore manager ? at Jan. 3, 2009, 9:22 a.m...

recondas wrote: edit the copy as described in this wiki: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... r_IRIX_6.5

Hey, Recondas - I hadn't noticed that wiki entry before - nice job!

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Windows 7... at Jan. 9, 2009, 4:01 p.m...

Gray Fox wrote: I did some reading that some people are using Server 2K8 with some add-ons as a Desktop (some call it Workstation) OS, instead of using Vista.

A friend of mine did that, and he is very happy with the results performance-wise. Server 2008 is more or less the Vista kernel with different tunings and different bundled userland apps. Way too expensive to do it just for kicks, but definitely worth a try if you work at a company with a site license or if you are an MSDN OS subscriber. There are a few glitches, however, with 3rd party apps, as they assume they are running on Vista, and I guess that there are subtle differences that break some apps. I've also seen a few articles on how to make a Vista installation behave as much like a Server 2008 installation as possible; that may be a better approach for many people.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Windows 7... at Jan. 10, 2009, 12:40 a.m...

pentium wrote: So....as an example, Windows 7 compared to Vista is Windows 2000 compared to Windows ME?

Depends how you look at it. From a commercial/reputation perspective, that's probably right, but from a technical perspective it's probably 7 to Vista is like XP to 2000.

XP was mostly a technical refinement of 2000, likewise 7 and Vista, whereas 2000 was generally a different beast from ME.

PS. I have Vista on one of my test boxes, just to keep an eye on what MS does. Vista Service Pack 1 really does address a lot of the glaring problems of the original Vista release (among other things, responsiveness is noticeably snappier), but to the degree I need to use Windows to run specific business apps in production, I'm using XP Pro, and I don't see that changing for a while.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of What about Japanese girls? at Jan. 21, 2009, 9:56 p.m...

pentium wrote:

What about Canadians?

Back in grad school, I shared an apartment with a couple of female students. One of them was Canadian. Demure, soft spoken, very intellectual, and absolutely a homicidal psychopath when it came to hockey. Awesome combination.

One year, her hometown team (Vancouver Canucks) played one of the NY area teams in the playoffs (that's where we were at the time). I turned on the tv, we got comfortable on the couch to watch the game, and as soon as the puck dropped, she was screaming, yelling, moaning, groaning, on the floor, pounding the wall with her fists, occasional blasts of profanity, etc., etc. -- for the entire length of the game. Of course, when the Canucks scored, she'd scream, "YES! YES!!! Oh, God!!! YESSSSSSSS!!!!!" I wish I had a tape recorder!

The next morning, I was taking the garbage out to the curb, and my next door neighbor came out, and asked me -- in total seriousness -- how I "lasted so long." I just winked back at him. The girl in the apartment across the hall was also very friendly to me after that!

The best part of it was that my roommate really was very innocent, and she had no idea how her umm, "noises" were construed by the neighbors. Eventually I told her, she turned deep red, and she was never able to look the neighbors in the eye again.

I have no idea why I didn't marry that girl, besides the fact that I'm an idiot. :lol:

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Quiet SCSI harddrives at Jan. 26, 2009, 8:29 p.m...

nekobean wrote: I will also look for a quieter drive, because I sit next to my Fuel all day, and my head starts to spin half way through the day.

Between the power supply and the drives, the best investment might be a good set of noise canceling headphones! I love my Fuel, but it is definitely not a quiet box.

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of New additions... at Jan. 28, 2009, 6:38 a.m...

Wow - Nekochan becomes a baby board!

Congrats!

josehill
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Wrote on the subject of Open Transport Tycon Deluxe - openTTD for IRIX at Feb. 1, 2009, 7:49 a.m...

dennisjunior wrote:

I created an OpenTTD icon, based on the original OpenTTD logo. This is my first Irix icon

Very nice! Thanks!