SGI 4D/380

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Wed Aug 19 11:26:24 1998

> 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).

This really is no different from the early SPARC boxes - Sun-4 really did
not like Sun-4c, etc..

> 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).

Luckily I think I have enough spares. I even yanked the backplane out of
the donor machine. The two machines had different graphics boards - more
research I need to do (first I need to get the box out of the van!).

> 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 think the IRIX support for the Power Series (or probably most of the 4D/
machines) died around v5.0.x.

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Wed Aug 19 1998 - 11:26:24 BST