When SGIs come to play

Blogs & guides and tales of woo by forum members.
trixster
Posts: 109
Joined: Fri Mar 22, 2019 3:25 pm

Re: When SGIs come to play

Post by trixster »

Cool, another Octane owner!

As Steve says, the sgug forum is good, and their discord is very active too, lots of development going on there. It’s mainly friendly Americans saying stuff that’s way over my head but it sounds impressive!
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rubber_jonnie
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Re: When SGIs come to play

Post by rubber_jonnie »

trixster wrote: Wed Sep 15, 2021 5:33 pm Cool, another Octane owner!

As Steve says, the sgug forum is good, and their discord is very active too, lots of development going on there. It’s mainly friendly Americans saying stuff that’s way over my head but it sounds impressive!
Just taking a peek :)

Here's my CPU board, dual R12000s IIRC:

IMG_20210915_173603.jpg
IMG_20210915_173603.jpg (401.79 KiB) Viewed 2215 times

The graphics card. I think it may have a spot for texture RAM but not 100% sure. Maybe just more RAM or something else:

IMG_20210915_173828.jpg
IMG_20210915_173828.jpg (388.83 KiB) Viewed 2215 times

And the rear view:

IMG_20210915_174001.jpg
IMG_20210915_174001.jpg (299.86 KiB) Viewed 2215 times
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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rubber_jonnie
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Re: When SGIs come to play

Post by rubber_jonnie »

My god, I jus saw Octane prices on eBay, they are VERY expensive. I got mine for £25 each and they are up there in the £1000s now!
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
trixster
Posts: 109
Joined: Fri Mar 22, 2019 3:25 pm

Re: When SGIs come to play

Post by trixster »

Looking at this link, I think you have an SI or SE board without texture memory

https://bukosek.si/hardware/collection/sgi-octane.html
Steve
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Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2017 11:49 am

Re: When SGIs come to play

Post by Steve »

SGI's are just mega-cool for so many reasons. I always wanted one because I'm a Unix enthusiast who grew up playing iD software OpenGL games, which of course was invented by SGI (OpenGL) I also like how they're built like military tanks, use 'unique' technologies and originally cost more than your average car to buy.
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rubber_jonnie
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Re: When SGIs come to play

Post by rubber_jonnie »

Here's the HINV, looks like ESI graphics.

IMG_20210915_192947.jpg
IMG_20210915_192947.jpg (235.94 KiB) Viewed 2198 times
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
trixster
Posts: 109
Joined: Fri Mar 22, 2019 3:25 pm

Re: When SGIs come to play

Post by trixster »

can you run hinv -m
This should give all the revisions.

ESI is the enhanced version of SI, sometimes also known as SE
trixster
Posts: 109
Joined: Fri Mar 22, 2019 3:25 pm

Re: When SGIs come to play

Post by trixster »

Loving that you've got dual cpus! I'd love a dual cpu module for my octane!
srosefx
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2020 10:09 am

Re: When SGIs come to play

Post by srosefx »

Hey, im also an Octane owner! I have version 1 and 2, I picked up the second one from a Digital house, came with full ram and a v12 odyssey board.
i'm having issues with getting Irix installed as they don't have a cd rom drive. and i'm lacking some scsi adapters to get the Sun external DVD rom drive hooked up and communicating with the octane.
IRIX on all the other machines is a breeze compared to the Octane.

I was very close to buying an Onyx 2..but the price turned me off, and it was a rackmounted beast with an origin 2000 on top, the thing weighed 60kg.

my fave though is the purple Indigo 2 I have. just such a lovely looking machine, the Iris gets too much praise as the better looking machine but I don't think so.

Simon
trixster
Posts: 109
Joined: Fri Mar 22, 2019 3:25 pm

Re: When SGIs come to play

Post by trixster »

Welcome aboard, Simon!

Steve and I used Booterizer to network install Irix onto the Octane from a Raspberry Pi3.

http://booterizer.com/

It has step-by-step instructions and results in a pretty much bang to to date 6.5.30 install.
https://github.com/unxmaal/booterizer/tree/pi_support

I was a complete beginner to SGI when I had a go at using this to install to a brand new SCSI drive, and it moreorless worked first time. All you need to do is connect the Pi and the Octane to each other via an ethernet cable and have wifi available for the Pi to connect to.
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