The collected works of maaarcooose - Page 1

The story of my SGI's in haiku:

Restore this old tape
It's 8 years old. What system?
It was SGI

Dragged out from old stores
A blue Octane is revived
But fails to boot up

I look for web help
I find Neko friendliness
Rackable spends big

The tape does not have
The data that was wanted
The Octane re-stored

Out in the scrap pile
My curiosity peaked
I must salvage them

From rain, wind and snow
They have risen like Phoenix
To impress again

All SGI scrapped
I give them all a good home
And see what will work

IRIX install done
The rusty machine are on
I must install Quake

No more beige boxes
Legendary machine is on
Welcome back to class


!m!

This is a problem I've had for years. I can't find a keyboard I like at all. At best I make do.
These days I have a stack of old Compaq keyboards that I swiped from the scrap at the school I worked at.
I just find them really nice to use. Not too soft and have some sort of possitive feedback and weight due to them still having some metal in them.

But for the best keyboards I've ever used....
I loved the keyboard from the old WYSE 120 terminals. They just felt great and used proper switches underneath, not rubber bits and membranes. Only problem with them was the caps lock and crtl keys were swaped from a PC layout. Screwed me right up for a while.
The other one has to be the keyboard from my old BBC Model B. Clunky, yes. Noisy, sure, but yet again the feel of it was great. I typed most of my school work on one until I got a PC.

The SGI one's I have are okay, but have suffered a little from being left outside in the rain for 2 years. If they'd been properly stored then they'd be fine.

Currentlly at work I'm using a Dell QuietKey thats a little older than the current models. I agree that the new ones are rubbish.

Everytime I go into a computer shop these days I try the keyboards, just to see if I get one I like as yet no luck.

My imposible quest continues.

!m!

Maybe I should take one of my granite ones apart and give it a seriously good clean.

!m!

The case on that looks exactlly like the one that our crappy SuperMicro cluster headnode is in.
I might have been built by Streamline.

Run!!!!

!m!

Hi everyone...

I've got a shedfull of random Octanes and SCSI gear in various states on function.
I want shot of it as I've got most of what I want out of it.
I'm gonna keep 1 or 2 of the Octanes and some bits, but the rest need to go.
If anyone in the UK wants to come down and have most of it, feel free.

I won't charge for any of the Octane bits as they have been left outside in my works junk space for a couple of years. Most of it does powerup, but get flashing lights of various types. Most of the graphics cards are fuzzy, I'm keeping the good couple I have. Cases are complete on most, but obviously the worse for wear.
Pretty much all the power supplies are functional. All the CPU modules seem to work. There are 300 singles, a 195 and possibly even a 400 dual (if you can pursuade me to part with it).
There is some Octane memory also that I cannot even remotelly guarantee.
I only have one Octane drive sled that I am keeping.

For things that I might charge a little for, I have some external SCSI hard disks, no bigger than 4GB.
I have lots of SCSI cables that I need to sort through which you are welcome to.
I also have a box of Octane speakers and some granite keyboards and mice.

I've also got a couple of O2's. One of them I got working, but the second is very dead. The working one stopped booting, probably due to me trying to sort out the memory in it. I'd probably part with them for a few quid.

I've also got a working SGI monitor and leads to fit for the Octanes. Yet again, a couple of quid and you can take it away.

I'm really not up for posting anything really, but if you want to come and get any, bring minimal funds, an empty car and a cuppa will be waiting for you.

If you feel like swapping me something for some of this stuff I'm open to that too. I'm looking at setting myself up a media and backup server so anything with a large case with plenty of hard drive bays would be nice (and hard drives )
Offer anything though.

Let me know if theres something specific you want and I'll have a look.

Try me. It's time to clear out.

I'm in Bedford, UK


!m!

It's all going in the dump next week if no one wants it. Might ebay some of it.

!m!

ginopilotino wrote: I'm interested in everything you can send me to italy
Let me know

To be honest, I could send a couple of bits, but it's either pick up or I'm dumping.


!m!

Don't mean to hammer home the point, but I'm really not up for shipping stuff and I don't have time to test anything.

Sorting it out this weekend and dumping tomorrow.

Any takers?????


!m!

I'm going to do a bit of an inventory this afternoon.

Will post it up and see if it's worth anyone's drive.


!m!

Okay.....

Here comes the list of stuff.

4 Octanes - One empty of bits except the front plane.
2 with various faults.
1 Almost completey working, just a fuzzy graphics card.
No disks in any.
2 O2's - One does boot, but gets a crash during the boot process and shuts down again. Suspect a reload will sort out. Has a 4GB HDD in it.
The second is dead. It's power supply and probably mother board is dead.
3 Octane power supplies. - 2 working fine, 1 unkown.
1 Granite monitor, fully working.
3 Granite Keyboards.
3 External SCSI Hard disks
1 External SCSI CDROM case.
1 SCSI DVD ram drive. Caddy type. Not 100% sure if this works.
9 SCSI Cables. Large - Large Centronics.
5 (Possibly more) 13w3 Octane monitor leads.
1 300Mhz Octane Single CPU
1 Unknown Octane Single CPU
9 SCSI Terminators
4 sets of Octane Speakers (Untested, but the set I am using came from the same source and is fine.)
7 SGI Mice. 2 small ones, 5 larger.
2 Octane memory covers.
1 Original SGI Mouse mat.

And just to wet your appitite, here's a few pics.






Speak now or it goes to the town dump. Must get rid of it all this week.

!m!

ginopilotino wrote: Think about symbolic price

For postage to Italy, I presume you mean?

I really don't want to post things, besides the O2 posted is gonna be a bit pricey.

Look, I really only feel comfortable with people coming to look at the stuff before they have it as it's not in the best of condition, and some water damage to the machines themselves. The SCSI HDD's are fine though.

Seriously, pick up in one lot or it goes. I really don't fancy boxing up lots of different bits for different people.


!m!

Okay....

Last chance. I can probably ship some small parts if someone wants, but it's mostly going in the bin.

Would have thought that someone in the UK would want some free SGI bits.

!m!

Octanes stripped and gone.
SCSI drives gone.
Dead O2 stripped of memory and gone.

Will mark thread closed soon.

!m!

I just found an archive box in our storage full of IRIX CD's.

Recon I've got every overlay pack from SGI from 6.5 - 6.5.14 along with some 5.x CD's, MIPS Pro, other compilers and a couple of Indyzone CD's.

Will try and list them when I get a moment.

!m!

I started learning using Pimmslers Japanese.

It's very American, but very good.

!m!

There is of course the Amiga X1000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOne_X1000

I saw one running at the Vintage Computer Fair last year at Bletchley Park. It was at a distance though. I couldn't get that close due to the massive crowd of Amiga heads drooling over it. They had a whole tent that was almost exclusively Amigas.

Nice looking machine.

I also liked the look of....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimig

Based on what I saw at the fest, there is still lots of people who love the Amiga.

Personally, I was an Atari ST man.


!m!

Hmmmm.....

I might try this with my broken Octane DIMMS.

Anyone tried it with memory sticks?

!m!

Sold my 2 dual 400 octane chips a while back when I really needed some money.
I now have 2 working machines with single 300's, about 3 spares and one dual 195 chip sat around doing nothing.

!m!

There was a really good report all about the quake on Channel 4 last week here in the UK.
I recommend it to anyone.

Also just to put some sanity into the nuclear issue:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/25 ... ng_debunk/

Everyone needs to stop worrying about the reactor and worry about the people who are missing or have no homes.

!m!

And as a small addition:

Radiation levels away from the reactor buildings themselves appear to be dropping as of the early hours this morning UK time. Japan's nuclear regulators reported as of the early hours this morning (17th March) that readings at the plant gates had dropped from 0.7 millisievert/hour to 0.3 over the previous 12 hours: workers would be able to endure such levels for months if required, as these hourly doses are equivalent to those sustained by everyone on Earth from background radiation every few weeks.

!m!

urbancamo wrote: Hi guys,
Given the size of the venue I am not entertaining extending this invitation to our 8-bit friends as I believe this is a community better served by VCF-GB which I am informed will be making a repeat appearance in 2012.

If the VCF is on in 2012, I think we should try and organise as many UK (and nearby) NekoChanners to have a stand there.

The 2010 event was seriously lacking in SGI hardware.

!m!