Arfon Gryffydd <arfonrg_at_texas.net> wanted to know:
> I have a chance to grab some Silicon graphics Irix 31xx machines... They
> SEEM to need a boot tape. Anyone know anything about these boxes? What's
> the OS?
There were a number of mostly-accurate replies to this yesterday. Seeing
as how I wrote the FAQ, I'd like to present the mostly-definitive reply.
First, this is a 68020-based, Multibus machine. Nothing at all in common
with the later MIPS systems.
According to William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>:
> You are going to want and OLD version of IRIX (around version 3), as these
> boxes were fairly quickly kicked off the support wagon (SGI seems to be
> kind of bad about that). These old things are not incredibly usefull Unix
> boxes, as X was never (to my knowledge) ported to them. The graphics are
> quite good even today, as it probably has a board stuffed with Geometry
> Engines.
IRIX 3.6 was the last OS distributed. There's some incomplete 3.7 stuff
kicking around, but probably not of interest to most. To my knowledge,
no open-source unix has ever been ported to one. X is not supported,
though TCP/IP is, so you can get it on the network, but it's going to take
you a bit of work to make it useful, like compiling bind, as they predated
DNS. Your server will offer you a delightful choice of drives: ST506,
ESDI, or SMD. No SCSI.
Note that when SGI put out the first 4D (MIPS R2K/R3K) machines, they called
the OS IRIX 3.something as well, just to create confusion.
> Well, there are 3 of them for about $30.00 each... Huge cabinets and huge
> monitors...
IMnot-so-HO, that's too much money. Stuff of that vintage should be GIVEN
to you for nothing. Pay 'em $90 only if they'll deliver.
> Are they worth grabbing? Can I use the monitors for anything? Can I
> connect them to my ARCnet/Ethernet/Parallel/Serial port network and be
> useful?
Yes, they all have ethernet. Want a unix box? If so, they're worth grabbing.
Monitors are fixed-sync RGB, and probably not useful on anything else you
have or might get.
As it happens, there's another (non-list) chap for whom I've been getting
my 3130 running again (a bad video board, then a blown /etc/passwd...) in
order to generate a boot/install tape. I'd be much more enthusiastic about
doing it if there were a few other people on the list who need them as well,
so I can do a bunch at one time.
Jonathan
Received on Sat Jan 09 1999 - 14:19:27 GMT