The collected works of sgifanatic - Page 4

The LP170C Pico-ITX boards are all gone.

The rest is still available.

I've subscribed too. Thank you for archiving all this goodness for is.

Since you have the capture setup going, if you have time high you might consider system usage demonstrations, irix desktop interactions, examples of key sgi apps and so on. It would make for a great library that archives the SGI experience for new and futurecomers.

Yes, *that* Ed Zander. The one who is not loved by too many at Motorola.

No points for guessing who John and George are. Just look at the address book to the right.

smj wrote: How would you characterize Apple's ads over the years? ("1984," congratulating MSFT on Win95, etc)

I'm probably not the target customer for Apple products, but I personally don't like too many of the supposedly iconic Apple ads. I get that the 1984 concept was interesting, but I certainly don't think it one of the greatest ads of all time. Ditto for the Mac vs Pc ads. And the "Welcome, IBM" ad... That's the kind of pomposity I don't care much for.

That said, I did like the think different ads. I've seen them a couple of times and that's enough, however.

I liked the rs/6000 print ads with Hagar the Horrible no one ever talks much about them, but I like the simplicity and directness of period IBM ads, with that bit of humour big blue was able to incorporate into them.

Mash is a bit of a put off in general.

Hagar, on the other hand...

And here's Apple telling us they are actually cheaper than PCs:

Excellent!

We need a lot more of this sort of thing. How to install key sw, where to get it from, how to use key apps, video howtos on install over network, and other typical things new IRIX users would need. Easy to consume content makes a huge difference! The Commodore community has really been pretty good in this area.

Monkeys using touchscreens. You mean these guys?

Touch screens and MovieOS are the real world now, Pentium

guardian452 wrote: Once you've seen it, you can never unsee it...
http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/ ... -stop.html


@sgifanatic: what movie is that? LOL, my arm is sore already...

That, Sir, is not a movie. That is the Fox News news floor. All the fair and balanced stories originate from those giant touch screens.

guardian452 wrote: Oh, I try to avoid the news. It's too depressing. Besides, I don't have any TV service (cable, satellite, antenna, etc).

We're 100% Netflix and Amazon video now, with the odd torrent. We do have cable TV, but never watch it for the reasons you cited; depressing and idiotic.

I used to be a news junkie but have done a reasonable job of de-linking myself to quite a degree from the happenings in the world. I am getting to the age where I realize I cannot change anything outside of my immediate sphere of influence (if there!) And while I am aware of the suffering in the world, the constant assault of negativity, paid-for by insurance and drug ads, serves only to cause despair. Not worth it.

hamei wrote:

sgifanatic wrote: That is the Fox News news floor. All the fair and balanced stories originate from those giant touch screens.

But where do they get such big kindergarteners to play patty-cake all day ?

I've just heard rumors, so I may be off, but apparently, mostly Alabama and Mississippi.

Oskar45 wrote: Sorry, might be too old-fashioned - but what's the deal with yet another Jurassic-theme movie? Sure, I'd seen the previous three [the first one was really exciting] but nowadays I feel the concept has worn out long ago. I'm a Michael Crichton fan - having read almost all of his books, even the terribly weak ones - but I can't see how anything new could be culled out of his Jurassic canon at all. Yes, new people try to put together a fresh script - but how their fabrication will work remains to be determined...And: Jeff Blum - for me the most enjoyable actor of the trilogy - is apparently not casted anymore.

Prediction: the film will flop at box-offices...

My little boy - dino buff as he is - can't wait for it. This might be a bit in the vein of the Disney "re-release" cycle... most of the kids have seen the old movies. Now they get to see something that they can call their own, so to speak. It might still flop, but they'll be getting our money for sure.

Found another LP170C board. One BVU1000 gone. Still have one.

hamei wrote:

sgifanatic wrote: I've just heard rumors, so I may be off, but apparently, mostly Alabama and Mississippi.

That made me laugh out loud

But then I read about the Bay Bridge or try to charge my new N900 which was designed so that you can't charge the battery if it is low !! Now that was a real winner.

Look, haven't you learned anything at all from practitioners of the banking profession? Give unto those who are not in need. Why does this battery get so desperately low to begin with? Sloth and entitlement, of course. I can just expend everything and the charger will bail me out. Why couldn't it charge itself on time like all the other hardworking, responsible batteries? In a word: Drugs. And that sort of crap no self respecting charger should stand for. N900... The Rand Paul of chargers.

hamei wrote:

sgifanatic wrote: N900... The Rand Paul of chargers.

It's hard for me to understand how a company the size and experience of Nokia could do something so retarded. Such an elementary but necessary function, on a high-end expensive phone, but they screwed it up totally. If the battery gets low, it can't charge. Nor can you connect it to a power supply to use it, it just ignores the external power. When the battery gets low it's dead, Jim.

How stupid can people get and still remember to breathe ?

On a serious note, this was a problem with my old samsung focus also. I found that USB charging, or a low rated charger would not work at all when the battery was low. A high current charger would, however. If you have a charger with a higher current rating than what shipped with the 900, you might try that.

I know nothing about the n900, but if it has a removable battery, the other option is one of those RC hobbyist battery chargers. High current and lots of connector options to connect up different types of batteries.

This is not how you want to charge your phone, but am just offering solutions given the circumstances.

Good to have the site back online!

Very nice! I have a thing for cube computers and the cobalt qube is the only one I want that's missing from my collection. Next cube, game cube and g4 cube: all check!

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube

I saw that too LGR is fun, particularly tech tales and the thrifting episodes.

I've read a few early reviews and everyone that experienced this system seems to be raving about it. The images in the ARS piece are pretty amazing. Could be quite exciting!

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/ ... al-real/1/

This makes glass, oculus etc old hat. If it works as well as the reviewers say and the video suggests, I'm in, as is the rest of the fam.

The terrain mapping capability and placement of holographic objects on it in real time is amazing. And you essentially get real time texturization of reality and then some.

ClassicHasClass wrote: I don't hate Kinect. Kinect had some real possibilities. And if Microsoft ever realizes any of them, it'll be awesome. Until then, well.

To be fair, Kinect has been used not just by Microsoft, but in hundreds of other projects. The kinect API and books like Kinect hacks have allowed universities and developers all over to use it for what they wish. Microsoft shouldn't have to realize every possibility... Developers can/are doing that with Kinect.

Just take a look at http://www.kinecthacks.com/

robespierre wrote: Am I the only one who has read RISKS Digest? The potential for abuse here is kind of amazing.
Just move his glass coffee table 18 inches to the left...
Who would I trust with this thing? Not Microsoft.

Well, I just got done reading Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom, which is hundreds of pages of dense language, sparse on ideas, identifying all the various disaster scenarios with innovations in A(G)I. Chalk up my cavalier attitude to the burnout I've experienced thanks to the consumption of this tome, but technological advancement really won't be stopped. There are privacy and even existential concerns, but there is no way you can guarantee everyone will abide by any limitations on technology. It's a bit of the same argument that drives the impossibility of a totally nuke free world. I say I have none. Do you trust me? Trust is expensive in these scenarios.

Coming back to hololens, given that stuff like this will happen regardless, who would you rather trust? Apple, facebook, google, nsa? Open sourcerers? When compared with google/facebook personal information exploitation & stalking and Apple totalitarianism, Microsoft is hardly the evil empire it was accused of being in the 90s and early 2000s.

commodorejohn wrote: I thought we learned from Google Glass that all this stuff accomplishes is to make people into oblivious, insufferable assholes?

With apologies to the NRA, technology doesn't make people assholes, people make people assholes

hamei wrote: Mom Nature will be taking care of that real quick-like

She's had her chances... but she continues to give her children the benefit of doubt.

guardian452 wrote: you just put on your holo-lens, holo-nose, holo-tongue, and holo-suit and get in your self-driving googlemobile

Man, sometimes I wish there was a holo-nose... not a fan of far too many "natural" scents

We've gotten used to so much innovation, design, connectivity & interactivity over the last 20 years, it's hard to remember how cool a lot of these things appeared back in '95. The dancing bars in the resource monitor, the 3D video sequences, "wysiwyg" html, the notion of being able to connect with any brand/institution/person simply by typing in a web address... The video would have blown minds at many levels.

Pretty cool SGI video that I had not seen before.

chicaneuk wrote: When you come across as being so militant and strongly opinionated in your beliefs it just turns people off from listening to you. Couple that with, frankly, the rather crazy looking appearance and the average person who has no knowledge about free software and so forth will basically cross the road to avoid him and his message.

Agreed. If you behave in a repulsive manner, guess what, people will be repulsed by you. Abusing them further for being repulsed will not help either.

The message and the messenger are two different things, true, but if the messenger goes out of his way to conduct himself in a manner that compromises the success of the message, he has put his self/ego above the message. He is hurting his "cause" more than anyone else can.

GL1zdA wrote: This is so sad: http://www.digital.com/

A bit of a punch in the stomach, that.

I remember visiting the DEC booth at the very first recruiting fair I attended while still in school. UT Austin. The job fair was held at the Frank Erwin center.



While a student research assistant, I also administered two AlphaServers at UT. They were non-trivial to maintain, but I somehow muddled through. That was my first exposure to CDE.

I recently started reading "DEC is Dead, Long live DEC", but had to put that on hold as I got distracted with other things. Here's the URL if someone else is interested:

This thread is a good - if somewhat depressing - reminder that I need to finish that...

Thanks so much, Spiroyster! That was good advice. Some games were actually showing an icon after I loaded up workbench, but they wouldn't run. The method you described - plugging them in directly after the KS icon shows up - works pretty well!

Now I need to setup some convenient way to write Amiga floppies and get some non-game apps going! This system came with a trumpcard drive but after much fidgeting and many attempts to make it work, it simply didn't. It is now a two-floppy system.

I don't know the reasons why, but I would guess at atleast two:

First, the term pizza box was almost a category descriptor at the time, thanks to Sun. NeXT did the unconventional cube and then moved to the pizza box design also. I think Unix workstation vendors felt they needed a "pizza box" to be in the pizza box workstation business. This form factor, prior to xU-standardized rack mounted equipment, also allowed for greater density when placed in racks.

Second, the Indigo2 implemented EISA and since this bus originated in the PC world, the most convenient way to accommodate EISA card dimensions was to go for a PC style chassis form-factor. Which is roughly what the Indigo2 was.

And yes, placing the monitor on top of the desktop case could have been a third reason. It makes logical sense.

No.

Very cool! What kind of computer are you building? Do you have a motherboard/processor in mind? If you want to replicate a 68K Mac, Basilisk might be what you're looking for:

ivelegacy wrote: [img]I do not want to have to deal with Basilisk and macOS/Classic , the Woody Box aims only to mimic the design of the Macintosh/SE, I am going to use an fpga in where to design the VDU and my personal soft core, something that is a mash-up between R2K and m88K

the fw will be written in assembly, so It will be a toy, off course

It may be I will also interface the VDU with my 68060 board, in this case I will port XINU as ROMed OS.

That sounds like a great plan... and a much more ambitious plan than I would have the courage to embark upon! I will watch with interest as you take this further. Good luck!

Welcome to the world of SGI and vintage computing... Very satisfying hobby!

Would definitely recommend Irix. Will simply be a better experience.

Second, using an octane as an nfs server is great, and yes, you can use free PC software to mount NFS volumes from windows clients. But, I would imagine you will enjoy the SGI desktop experience... There is a possibility you may not, but now that you have the box, might be worth a giving it a go.

Search eBay for 13w3 sgi vga and you should find an adaptor for ~$30-35.

Good luck and would love to see pics when you can take some.

Oh wow, thanks for the details and the great pics! Really having a fab time following your progress with this.

Not sure if you guys have seen this one before... I quite liked the picture. Found in an old BYTE.

I tried to. Couldn't quite get through the first episode... maybe I was distracted. Or maybe it gets better. Does it?