Power Series

From: Tothwolf <tothwolf_at_concentric.net>
Date: Fri Dec 21 21:50:24 2001

On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Christopher Smith wrote:
> > From: Tothwolf [mailto:tothwolf_at_concentric.net]
>
> > Nice...I have a number 4D series machines myself. I haven't
> > yet found a
> > source for IRIX 4.0.5 and 5.3 for them tho :/
>
> I have Irix 5.3 on CD-ROM, and have been assuming that will work for now. I
> also have the original disks (two of them) in the machine.

All of my machines except one have their original drives. The only machine
I have that seems to be missing a drive is a 210S in a rackmount
enclosure. It has a hole in the front where a full height scsi drive
should go. Maybe it was designed for a tape drive instead? It has 4 1gb
drives in the lower portion of the rack, below a large tape drive system.

One of my machines has a cdrom on a pull-out sled. If I could find more
sleds, I would probably put cdrom drives in the rest too.

> > You can boot these machines with a dumb terminal on the first serial port.
> > The serial ports have a different pinout then just about any other
> > computer. I have a url with the info somewhere, and will look for it.
>
> Yeah, but it's an SGI ;)

The video really was nice for its day, but a lack of texture memory
somewhat limits it for today's graphics intensive software.

> > I would recommend you have an electrician install a dedicated 20 amp
> > circuit. These machines are meant to be breakered at 20 amps.
> > I would not
> > recommend sharing an existing major appliance circuit, since you might
> > forget the computer is on and turn on the appliance.
>
> I am kind of leaning towards that option. The only question is price. My
> guess is it should certainly be less than $200 or so to have done, and
> likely less than $100, depending on the work involved. That is a guess,
> though.

You could always gather up all the materials beforehand. If you already
have everything, it should cost less, since they won't be charging a huge
markup for parts.

> I've taken a look at the card-cage, actually. From your description of VGX
> graphics, it seems to me (not having the thing in front of me right now)
> that I may have had too many boards. What are the chances the graphics have
> been upgraded without changing the tags?

You may have some extra stuff that was added in an upgrade. It's also
possible that only a few of the boards currently in the computer are
original. The card cage is somewhat universal for the 4D line, so someone
could have done some serious upgrades at some point.

What color is the wrap-around part on the front/top of the machine? The
standard colors that I'm familiar with are; blue for a VGX, red for a GTX,
and green for GT.

-Toth
Received on Fri Dec 21 2001 - 21:50:24 GMT