SGI 4D/380

From: Captain Napalm <spc_at_armigeron.com>
Date: Wed Aug 19 09:13:48 1998

It was thus said that the Great John Foust once stated:
>
> At 12:17 AM 8/19/98 -0400, William Donzelli wrote:
> >
> >I am also now the proud owner of an SGI 4D/380 (and most of another
> >4D/380). Physically it is in very good shape, but apparently it is quite
> >sick. 8 processors, buckets of SIMMs, neeto graphics, but the best thing
> >is the "CPU Power Meter" on the front of the cabinet...
> >Does anyone have IRIX on 1/4" tape?
>
> With SGI, you're dealing with a (barely? :-) still existent company.
> You're supposed to buy IRIX, not copy it. On the other hand, is
> there any evidence that an IRIX license was transferred to you
> as part of the deal on this machine? Buying a second SGI box that
> comes with a license will be cheaper than buying it from SGI. :-)
> Ask the experts on news at comp.sys.sgi.*.

  Another problem is that nearly each machine used a unique MIPS processor
which were more source compatible than binary compatible. Well, that isn't
exactly true---the opcodes were the same, but each MIPS processor has a
slightly different pipeline and code compiled for one MIPS chip (say, the
R3000) might not work correctly (or work at all) for another (say, the
R10000).

  Another thing---early SGI boxes were more stable than later ones. The one
I used for four years (SGI Personal Iris 4D/35) had the mother board
replaced once, the graphics card replaced once and the monitor was going
(everything had a slight green tinge to it).

  I enjoyed working on the box, but the hardware flakiness got to me after
a while. I was also upset when I had to upgrade the OS from 3.3.2 (last
version to run NeWS (much better than X)) to 4.0.1 (first version based on
X). Also, avoid IRIX 5.x at all costs (it was their worst version, and
quite possibly the worst version of UNIX this side of SCO).

  I'm not fond of the machines now and 6.x is okay at best.

  -spc (The 4D/35 I used is now seven years old. New (with the TV video
        I/O card we had) it cost $35,000. After four years it was maybe
        worth $1,000. Talk about depreciation!)
Received on Wed Aug 19 1998 - 09:13:48 BST

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