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Offline Iggy

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #14 on: May 26, 2014, 07:41:29 PM »
Quote from: TeamBlackFox;765091
Iggy,

I live outside of DC in the Northern Virginia area.

I've a Personal Iris 4D/35+ in storage with a friend,that's the one I was looking to sell. It has 64mb RAM, a 676mb SCSI drive and I have a nice keyboard and optical mouse for it. Its about on par with a 486 at 66mhz from what I have seen.

The 35 MHz  model.
Interesting.
PM me a price.

BTW - What would that run? IRIX 5.2?
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

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Offline TeamBlackFoxTopic starter

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #15 on: May 26, 2014, 09:57:13 PM »
I dunno where you'd find Octane caddies... you could try Nekochan.net

Also I PM'd you Iggy
After many years in the Amiga community I have decided to leave the Amiga community permanently. If you have a question about SGI or Sun computers please PM me and I will return your contact as soon as I can.
 

Offline agami

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #16 on: May 27, 2014, 03:29:58 AM »
When sgi a.k.a. Silicon Graphics went under it was a sad day indeed. Almost as sad as when Amiga went under. I know the Amiga + Toaster ate some of sgi's lunch but I always saw sgi as Amiga's big brother, wearing the grown-up pants and all. Plus, for the longest of time they featured in movies because they made their products look swanky.

IRIX was a very polished Unix OS. In the mid '90s I worked at a research facility for a mining company and part of my role was to look after the smallish modelling farm of an Origin server and four Indy II workstations. In 1999 I reluctantly turned down a job with sgi here in Camberwell, VIC (suburb of Melbourne) because I was at a start-up and I had stock options.

Another reason I miss sgi is because they were the purveyor of the MIPS architecture. And like at least one other member here stated, an impressive RISC architecture it was/is. MIPS is continually developed by the Chinese company Loongson. Which is why a few years back I posted on this forum or over at AW.net that Hyperion Entertainment should port Amiga OS to MIPS. All those Chinese academics using it would make for a decent business just by itself. Imagine, we could have been using Lemote notebooks by now. And the Loongson MIPS CPU is waaaaay cheaper than a comparable PPC CPU.

In another universe perhaps.
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Offline TeamBlackFoxTopic starter

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #17 on: May 27, 2014, 03:34:56 AM »
I fully agree we should definitely consider porting MorphOS to it as the hardware is pretty cheap and nice it seems.
After many years in the Amiga community I have decided to leave the Amiga community permanently. If you have a question about SGI or Sun computers please PM me and I will return your contact as soon as I can.
 

Offline Duce

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #18 on: May 27, 2014, 08:27:29 AM »
I had a SGI O2 years ago that I bought off some estate auction but I couldn't ever get it running as stable as I'd liked.  Intended to use the case for a casemod project, but in the end I sold it off for what I got it for to someone that had more interest in getting it running in daily driver fashion than I had.

Just didn't have the heart to gut the case and throw a PC mobo in it, but I always loved those cases and still dream of stuffing a real nice smaller PC mobo into one of the SGI shells.
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #19 on: May 27, 2014, 11:45:07 AM »
Makes me wonder how MIPS processors (like the Loongson) compare to modern PPCs in DMIPS.
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

"You, got to stem the evil tide, and keep it on the the inside" - Rogers Waters

"God was never on your side" - Lemmy

Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"
 

Offline TeamBlackFoxTopic starter

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #20 on: May 27, 2014, 12:26:19 PM »
Iggy,

While I can't compare it to PowerPCs, Phoronix did some tests against ARM a bit ago I can't find the article though
After many years in the Amiga community I have decided to leave the Amiga community permanently. If you have a question about SGI or Sun computers please PM me and I will return your contact as soon as I can.
 

Offline TeamBlackFoxTopic starter

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #21 on: May 27, 2014, 04:49:52 PM »
Here is the one I was looking for. Too bad its on Linux and not a real UNIX: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEyOTE
After many years in the Amiga community I have decided to leave the Amiga community permanently. If you have a question about SGI or Sun computers please PM me and I will return your contact as soon as I can.
 

Offline Ilwrath

Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #22 on: May 27, 2014, 09:51:25 PM »
I have a few SGIs in my storage, still.  SGI made some awesome systems, and I remember seriously drooling over them back when I was in college, and they were cutting edge.  I picked mine up off a Craigslist sale of an engineering firm that folded about 10 years ago.  I have an Indigo 2 (Teal) an Indigo 2 Impact R10K (Purple), and an Octane R10k dual.  Couldn't tell ya the RAM on them, anymore.  For a long while getting an IRIX install media set was a rare and expensive thing.  But I remember for a while, at least, they then became common, and I know I snagged one and reinstalled my Octane R10k dual from scratch on a 7200 RPM SCSI drive.  Interesting experiment that was.  lol...  I got most everything working as I wanted, and then I had to quickly move to a new house, and it hasn't seen power since.

Quote
I just found the special monitor cable to hook it up. Does anyone know if it will connect to an LCD without smoke? It's been stored for years now. Fire it up again? What do you think...


Yup, as TeamBlackFox said, signal wise, SGI 13w3 video is a different connection of VGA with Sync on Green.  Provided you have a shielded adaptor, it shouldn't be a problem.  The 13w3 -> VGA adaptor should take care of it.  Or if you have an even older SGI, the split BNC -> VGA adaptor would be all you need.
 
Quote
Just in case, i'm looking for Octane drive caddies.

Heh... Good luck.  They were rare as anything back 10 years ago...  I can't imagine, now.
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #23 on: May 28, 2014, 12:52:58 AM »
Couldn't get to the Loongson benchmarks.
And the seller that was offering an Octane 2 system just canceled all bids.
Frankly, I'd like a MIPS  machine, but I'm going to have to consider this carefully.

SGI hardware runs IRIX, which looks nice.
While the Loongson hardware runs YALD.
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

"You, got to stem the evil tide, and keep it on the the inside" - Rogers Waters

"God was never on your side" - Lemmy

Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"
 

Offline TeamBlackFoxTopic starter

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #24 on: May 28, 2014, 01:10:55 AM »
Iggy,

For regular desktop use a Fuel can't be beat in brawn to price ratio. That's why I got my sexy redhead.
After many years in the Amiga community I have decided to leave the Amiga community permanently. If you have a question about SGI or Sun computers please PM me and I will return your contact as soon as I can.
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #25 on: May 28, 2014, 01:18:06 AM »
Quote from: TeamBlackFox;765165
Iggy,

For regular desktop use a Fuel can't be beat in brawn to price ratio. That's why I got my sexy redhead.

Believe me, I looked for one.
Most appear to still be in use.
Until recently, SGI was still offering refurbished units (which says something about the MIPS/IRIX combination).
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

"You, got to stem the evil tide, and keep it on the the inside" - Rogers Waters

"God was never on your side" - Lemmy

Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"
 

Offline TeamBlackFoxTopic starter

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #26 on: May 28, 2014, 01:19:16 AM »
What's your budget on an SGI I'll ask around.
After many years in the Amiga community I have decided to leave the Amiga community permanently. If you have a question about SGI or Sun computers please PM me and I will return your contact as soon as I can.
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #27 on: May 28, 2014, 02:55:50 AM »
Quote from: TeamBlackFox;765167
What's your budget on an SGI I'll ask around.

Good question.
When I was looking at 250-400MHz machines the $250 to $400 price range seemed reasonable.
But higher end machines are faster and can handle more processors.
The Fuel can handle up to four, can't it?
I am seriously thinking about a larger investment.

How much would you suggest (before it gets silly and I might as well go multi-core X86)?
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

"You, got to stem the evil tide, and keep it on the the inside" - Rogers Waters

"God was never on your side" - Lemmy

Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #28 on: May 28, 2014, 03:04:28 AM »
Ordered a PIC32MZ based mcu controller board in order to play with a low end 200MHz MIPS based mcu.
These things look SO much more capable than most other MCUs.
Probably much more powerful than comparably clocked Coldfire or ARM based mcus.

I wonder how well they would work in a cluster.
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

"You, got to stem the evil tide, and keep it on the the inside" - Rogers Waters

"God was never on your side" - Lemmy

Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"
 

Offline TeamBlackFoxTopic starter

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Re: Any SGI fans?
« Reply #29 from previous page: May 28, 2014, 03:06:19 AM »
The Fuel can only take one CPU.

For that budget the Octane is probably your best bet. If you want a real beast of a machine, look for an Onyx 350, an Onyx 2 or a Tezro. Those usually go for up to 800 with quad CPUs. Check nekochan.net for the best deals.

But keep in mind no modern browsing will happen on these machines due to Firefox having weird dependencies. They're good for the arts, heavy lifting for coding and scientific applications  and of course the wow factor.

Of course I'd love to see IRIX get opened up but the community seems not willing to even try. I'd like to write a letter to the CEO though if I could get some people to support it.
After many years in the Amiga community I have decided to leave the Amiga community permanently. If you have a question about SGI or Sun computers please PM me and I will return your contact as soon as I can.