The collected works of sgtprobe - Page 2

Nothing wrong with cables in them self as a technical solution, but they are ugly (well, in general, there are nice looking cables too). And I do prefer a modular system like the Octane. Same with lose cables laying around on the floor at home. Brrrrrrr... Ugly. Be gone you ugly mess. If your going to use cables, atleast put them in an orderly fashion so you have some harmony atleast.

So, nothing more special than that, no hidden agenda or beliefs in some holy magics. It's simply in aesthetics and mechanical excellence

And yes, I agree, it's silly, but whatever floats your boat, right?

/Jonas

Oh, I missed this last time I checked this topic. Very nice of you Urbancamo.

Knock knock on wood, but looks like I might have one here with me this coming weekend. Turned out that a long lost friend I just reconnected with on Facebook last week had one cable, brand new in it's original packaging. What are the odds? A cable from the days when we did motion graphics for the local firms on our Amiga computers.

Life sure is good at times. A blast from the past to the rescue in the "future", present time. lol

Cheers

/Jonas

Hello

Since I don't have a way of connecting a CDROM to my Indigo2, I'm stuck with irix 6.5 with nothing extra that was installed when I bought it.

So I have tried different ways of getting myself out on the internet, and so I have downloaded the mips3 version of Firefox and Seamonkey. But none of them will work. Nothing happens when I try to launch them.

Same with the Gftp program, that will launch, but pretty much crash when trying to set up my ftp.

Is that because I need the full 6.5 installation with overlays and such? If that's the case, I'm pretty much stuck until I get my external CDROM cable.


/Jonas

Hello Hamei.

Thanks for your long and nice explanation.

Yeah, my plan is to uppdate my indigo2 to 6.5.22 since that is what I got at home. But since I can't get a network going between my SGI´s and my PC the normal way, I have never thought about trying to network between my SGI's. Maybe that's easy to get up and running? Never tried that before.

If I do a complete new install and going to 6.5.22 directly, is there a need for a patch? I might have that patch somewhere, not sure though.

Anyway, I wasn't going to be running my Indigo2 with standard 6.5 from the outset, but since I saw no other options since I haven't so far managed to get my computers showing up on the network, I tried to do the most of it and play around until I got my SCSI cable for my CDROM. But hey, if it' easy peasy setting up network between the SGI's, that's even better.

I can ping every PC I have at home atleast, and go out on the internet, but anything more than that have been a complete failure.

Anyway, thanks again Hamei. Will try this and see how it goes.

Cheers!

/Jonas

OH,sweet, nice, that's interesting. Going to test that tomorrow, but now I must go to bed. Damnit. Have an important meeting with a client tomorrow (ehrm, make that today) and now I wont be able to think about anything except that.

Yeah, Static IP for all my IRIX machines, going to set up my main workstation for a static IP too, but haven't come that far since it never changes anyway thanks to my apparently very conservative dhcp on the router. But better safe than sorry, right?

/Jonas

Wouldn't you believe it, I'm actually networking between my Fuel and my Indgio2. Wow

Strange thing is that I had my PC to show up and actually mounted it too, with sharity. But no files I put there showed up on my SGI's. Anyway, gonna try and solve that later, main thing is, I got my SGI's to actually talk to each others, and it was super easy to do. Just put the IP and a name for every machine in the host file, and they showed up at once when I searched for them. I'm feeling so damn 1337 now.


But there seems to be some problems after all, even if it works. Copying files to my Indigo2 is really slow. I know that the Indigo2 only has 10Mbps interface (my Fuel has a Gigabit interface, thanks Ian ), but it is going way slower than that. Any idea what I have might done wrong, or any tips or places that I should look in?

Anyway, I'm so excited about this, learning some new stuff everyday.

/Jonas

Oh, yeah, and a big thanks to Hamei and Vishnu.

Cheers

/Jonas

Patch installed already and pretty much ready to go when i "wake up". Laying in bed and can't sleep and thought about 'maintenance stream' or 'feature stream' for my indigo2 extreme, so picked up my ipad and asked this question bugging my mind. :p


Which one should I use?


\Zzzzzlepy dude

Ok, I see.

From what you said I just selected maintenance stream.

It seems to be working with only one conflict. Don't remember which one. Hopefully it all works when done upgrading

Thanks

/Jonas

Here is my Indigo2

hinv -vm



/usr/gfx/gfxinfo -vv


uname -aR


Images:




Isn't she lovely? :)

haha

yeah, well. I'm happy that I now can run Softimage retrostyle, which was the whole Idea with my Indigo2 Amazing really, back in the day I had my Amiga 4000 and dreamed about real time 3D graphics, and now I'm having a system from that period and it's still pretty good. Wish I had this computer back then.

But there seems to be problems with the date and clock settings, surely the Dallas chip doing it's thing which is more or less f***ing up the license. So I have to set the date every time I start the system.

Ironically my Fuel seems to be having problems with time too, just started yesterday while my trusty old ware horse, the Octane2, just works and works.

Thanks for all the help Guy's, you are truly awesome

Cheers

/Jonas

Must be a way to split those suckers up, and connect a ordinary battery holder or something.

Haha

He already did, but I can't spare anyone, Actually, I need another one for my 6th Sgi, my VW320. That poor machine has to run with a regular keyboard and mouse.


/Jonas

Btw Big_mac, do you have an English granite SGI keyboard in good condition? If you do, we could swap?

/Jonas

Just shaking the tree and see if I get hit by something.

I need another one of these, and would like one that is actually the real deal. Some of my screens seems to have problems if I only use the Red, Green and Blue part of the 13w3 adapter with some of my SGIs. So I need a new adapter with all the pins intact.

Maybe Ian M. has some in stock, but wont hurt posting here either.




/Jonas

Just wanted to thank everyone posting in this thread, not only did you guy's prove that Nekochan is a great place to be at, but you also restored my fait in the human race Just kidding, but this place sure is something extraordinary


I got a brand new cable from a friend of mine. And it seems to be working just fine.

Once again, thanks all for posting in this thread.


Cheers!

/Jonas

I almost find the questions offensive, isn't it obvious? Nah, just kidding.

What's so special with silicon graphics? Well, in it's day, for graphics work, basically nothing came close, and that kinda stick with you even today. Even if it's just for the occasional retro computing, having fun and remembering the nice days. But got to say that the Octane2 and especially the Fuel still is nice to work with despite their age. Besides, Irix is really nice, and I mean really nice.

But if you know what Sun, IBM, HP, Compaq, and DEC was, I find it somewhat strange that you don't know what Silicon graphics is, or what makes them so special?

But I'm not gonna fool myself, or anyone else for that matter, and try to compare them with a modern computer and pretend they are more powerful or better for a particualar work. Time has moved on.

Heck, right now writing this, I'm working with a 3d scene with over 15 million polygons combined with sevral GBs of texture data together weighting in at 10.5 GB. And all in realtime.

But funny thing is, once I hit render and all cores starts to work, the computer feels sluggish making it hard to do other things at the same time. Never experience that on any of my SGI's.

Ops, gotta go, my render just completed.

Cheers!

Would love to, but don't think I'm allowed to do that yet.

In all fairness, it isn't that spectacular in itself. It's a company making packaging for food and beverage here in Sweden that's pretty famous in the world (I think) that wants an interactive way of explaining their procedures of manufacturing and handling of food and stuff.


So we have made an application where you can touch a screen and have stuff explained to you. Zooming down in a landscape all the way into a factory. Pretty cartoonish looking with bright and "fresh" colors. They already have one version that they used for a giant Expo in Anuga earlier this year where they used six 47 inch LCD touchscreens vertically mounted. Looked pretty cool in person I have to admit (had one of the setups in our office). I'm basically doing the same stuff over again, but now tailoring it for horizontal mode, which means new graphics and animations, plus fixing stuff that bugged me with the first one we made.

We also made a "paper toss" game for them to be used on the screens while at Anuga, but throwing fruits instead to make juice.

Tried to find images of it on the internet, but noone showing those screens. Ah well

Yeah, it could probably do it without even breaking sweat. Wouldn't mind one, if I could fit it in my house and pay the electric bills.

But I think what I meant is that such thing today isn't even something you get impressed by anymore, it's just as trivial as writing an email or playing a movie on the computer. It's all so mainstream, everyone and his mother is doing 3D graphics today it seems. I miss the days when serious 3D graphics was run on serious 3D hardware and you felt important

My main workstation is fast, and can handle more polygons per second than I can count, and I actually don't care how many it can handle nowdays, since last time I checked the performance of top of the line graphics for about 5 years ago it could handle more than I would ever need anyway, pretty sure my current is a couple gazillions time faster than that. But I don't enjoy using it, it's all just meh! I much rather fire up my Octane2 and fiddle around in Maya or for some real retro computing, Softimage on my Indigo2 Extreme. But I guess it's because when I'm using my PC it's serious business, and my Silicon graphics is for playing around. Oh, it's so ironic, the PC is for the serious work now?

Man, now I'm depressed.

Better start up my Octane so I feel good again.

Maybe I should revisit the Amiga world again, at least it's still evolving. Or would I just end up missing those day's too?

But on a more positive note, glad you joined us Chicaneuk.

Get your Indigo2 up and running, and get one of those Octanes. I love mine.

Haha. Man, that's so weird, makes your head spinn a little. I LOVE it! Moar please


Cheers!

/Jonas

I understand exactly what you mean, except that is what I feel for the Indigo. Maybe time to get one soon before they are all gone.

Using Unix makes perfect sense to me. Back then what other options did you have? Windows? Don't think so, compared to Irix, Windows was a joke and some (a lot?) still thinks that, even though I don't agree I sure can understand that sentiment.

I started out making computer generated graphics and 3Danimations back in the 80s on the Amiga, so I guess I'm quite old. So lusting after real-time 3D capable workstations is only natural for me, since it was basically the holy grail for me and many others. PCs back then was something you didn't even look at as a serious option for 3D work, same thing with Macs. I do admit I was quite the fanboy then, but for good reasons. Remembering the good laughs at people trying to convince you of the Macs so called graphical prowess at local graphic expos in the 80s and early 90s, but the PCs where even worse.

Of course I had heard about those almost mythical/legendary computers called Silicon Graphics back then, but never seen one in person. But then in 93/early 94 I think (maybe earlier, memory isn't that good any more, lol), I visited a friends friend (which is a dear friend of mine today, and the best 3D artist I know of) workplace and he used Softimage 3D on an Indigo, think it was using the Elan or XZ graphics, and when I saw that beautiful computer handling all those nurbs in realtime I was in heaven, and when he switched over to shaded mode I almost passed out. So, yeah, that did make one deep impression on me.

Eventually I end up working on PCs running windows, and I did some work infront of an Octane (which was awesome) in one of my jobs and had access to several Intergraph computers, but never owned one myself. So in the end, PC killed Amiga (well, maybe commodore and greed did that) and in the end SGI. Funny, isn't it? People in general doesn't care, and why should they, for most a computer is a computer no matter what drives it, as long as it does what it should, noone today gives a rats ass if it says Dell, HP, Mac (well, except Mac fanatics and fanboys) or SGI on the front.

So while todays computers are silly fast and basically can do anything faster than you can say compute, I can with a hindsight, using my old SGIs running Irix, say that some things where actually better in the past. Too bad I never actually had the funds to own one back then.

Sorry for the long rant, but maybe gives an insight to how I became a fan of Silicon graphics, and I'm sure there are many stories like that among the other members of this fine forum.

I hate to bring up an old thread, but I'm having the same problems with my Lightwave demo too on my R4400 Indigo2 machine. Is there a chance that this fsel file still exists Nekonoko? Or maybe anyone else has a mips3 version of the fsel laying around?

Thanks

/Jonas

Wow.... Thanks a lot.

EDIT:

And now it works.

END EDIT


/Jonas

try to hook up a standard non fancy, run of the mill keyboard and hit ESC a couple of times. Sorted my VW320 the other week after I also had changed the clock battery.

Good luck

/Jonas

Hehe, I always have a good laugh at your descriptions of the world Hamei, especially the western world. Not sure if I'm laughing because of the irony, or because I'm afraid.

For whatever it's worth, Sweden seems to be heading the same way. I see more and more incompetent idiots with free cards running business here. And when they are done raping the business, either because their completely incompetent as leaders or because they are greedy, they get a nice multi million dollar bonus when they have to go (when jail would be the only logical conclusion, throw away the key and let 'em rot for all I care), but the average Joe's who lost the job because of him/her, gets nothing.

For about 10 years ago this was relatively rare in my mind and would get a lot of attention in the press and such. But today it seems to be how it is. I wonder where the pride of doing a good job went, instead of trying to get as much cash you can before you get caught? What about doing a good job, even if someone isn't looking?

My political views are usually on the right, but I have a feeling even a Democrat would call my views as being too much on the left. Talk about contrasts. But in general I think I just vote on the lesser of evils. Next time I might vote for the green alternative. lol

Some times I just wanna move up in the mountains, or deep into the dark Swedish woods, and just minding my own business, completely cut of from the rest of the world. But sticking your head into the sand isn't very productive though, it certainly wont change anything at least.

Anyway, regarding HP, I do love their portable Elitebook Workstations, never leave my home without one. If not for work, they can also serve as weapons of mass-skull-destruction.

I'm not seeing the problem here. Maybe it's about design, maybe he wanted it aligned to the left and be exactly in that size? Ok, it maybe looks like shit, but that's in the eye of the beholder.


Anyway, just my thoughts.

I somewhat disagree. But I do understand what you are saying, just that I don't fully agree with you. In general it should be treated as you say, but sometimes you do want something to be displayed exactly as you have designed it. Just because it is on the web doesn't mean that it can't or shouldn't be designed as a sheet of paper. It's all about design in that case, failed or not. Personally I would make the window sit in center, and have the possibility to automaticaly adjust the text and images depending on the size of your browser window, but would look at it's best if your window is larger than the "design". Some times I rather nail the text/images so it sit just where I want it to sit. If your not going to adapt to my design, well, then move on then if that's so disturbing.

Sure, it sux if your gonna view a design made for 1024*768 pixels on a device only capable of displaying 800*600 pixels. But in all honesty, isn't it time to enter the year 2012? Or maybe we all should think of all the mobile devices and have one design that fit's all? In that case, I have to agree, since it's a much more elegant solution than to have a specific version just for mobile devices. But then again, did I or the client really care about that when the prototype sketches where drawn in photoshop?

But I think it all depends on how you are, I really don't think on the techincal side as much as I look at the visual design, I find stuff that changes disturbing at times, since it wasn't how I wanted it to look in first place, where somebody as you might find it extremely disturbing if it isn't using autoformating windows and such. But of course, everything also has it's place. A forum like this with hardcoded dimensions would be really stupid.

I mean, who's to say what's right or wrong? From a personal viewpoint only? If that's the case, I would simply say, deal with it Everyone has an opinion, and as long as it works it seems it's only down to taste and personal preferences.

Anyway, just my humble opinion as of right now.

Hmm, I think we derailed this thread a little Hamei Sorry for that. Back to that lovely Indigo, I really hope that you get it up and running.

Wow

That's just pure awesomeness. Like being in a tube looking out on the world that's somehow connected to the tube. Almost disturbing.

Love how the bike fit's in the image too.

I'm having this idea of maybe buying one of those older nice looking Aluminum Power Mac G5 with PPCs in and run some MorphOs on it. Anyone tried that here, is it even possible? If I'm not mistaken, there have been a Mac mini with PPCs? And I have read that some use those for running the MorphOs.

Or maybe I should just get me a "new" A4000 with a 060 running at 100 MHz and do it properly. Wish I never sold mine back in the day when it still was worth a lot of money.

Ah well, just me dreaming about the old days when computers where fun.

I have to admit, I do feel kinda bad posting stuff that has nothing to do with the new member and his Indy. Sorry mate

I second that indeed. Nekochan have been really helpful for me. This place rox!

Yeah, maybe a Cyberstorm 060 card with a PPC CPU on would be a solution. I think what I really want is to run on a real Amiga system. But AmigaOs 4.1 does kinda looks like a real successor to the original AmigaOS. It's just in that case I have to run it on a system that doesn't "feels" like an Amiga, but still costs a lot of money. So the Power Mac route with MorphOs might be a better alternative costwise. But If I'm gonna put in a lot of money, why not go the route of getting me a real A4000 with the expansions I need instead. Aaaah, too many options..

Thanks for the links. I think I have been visiting amigakit before.

Talked with my girlfriend about maybe getting me an A4000, she didn't looked too happy about me bringing in even more old computers into our home. But incredibly she did understand why I feel the way I do about why I want one. So I think it is okay, but she has one condition, it can't be yellowed, and I kinda agree. Just makes it harder to get one in nice condition.

Yeah, I have had a good read up on the subject, and for a power mac, its the G4 versions 3.4 to 3.6 that seems to work best for MorphOs. Too bad, I would really like to have a G5 instead, since they are sexy. The G4 where ugly when it was released, and is ugly today. Oh well.

But as you said, damn, they are cheap, and there is a bunch of them out for sale. So might pick one up anyway. They might grow on me eventually.

Thanks for you nice tips. I might get one G5 anyway, to run OS X on, Would actually be nice to have one machine running OS X in my home. So the dual 2.3 or the quad 2.5 G5 is the best ones then. Will keep my eyes open for those. Thanks

Looks like MorpOs will be developed for the Dual 2GHz G5 powermac also. Will be here with us in January next year if everything goes all right.

Good news for me then, so G5 it is for MorpOS.

Thats great, I'm glad it worked.

Cheers!


/Jonas