Wired running SGI Article

From: Pete Turnbull <pete_at_dunnington.u-net.com>
Date: Sat Nov 27 06:50:04 2004

On Nov 26 2004, 22:25, Zane H. Healy wrote:
> >One of these days I will have to check out an old SGI to see what
the fuss
> >was about.
>
> I have two o2's, one of them is a lowly R5000 180Mhz system (the more
> pathetic of the two 180Mhz models) with 160MB RAM. This system can
> handle *HEAVY* loads more gracefully than any other system I've use,
> and X-Windows is unbelievably smooth, even under these heavy loads.
> The other is an R12000 270Mhz system, and even better :^)

I have three Indigos (left out of six), of which one is an R4K with the
full Elan graphics, and one has the "Song and Dance Machine" graphics
board; six Indys ranging from an early 100MHz R4000PC to a 150MHz
R5KSC; two O2s, one of which is a 180MHz R5K, the other being an R10K
with the audio/video unit; and a 16-processor x 180MHz R10K Origin2000.

The O2K is currently split into two units, one at home (with all the
extra bits'n'bobs) and one on loan to a research unit at the
University. It has no graphics of its own, but even running X over the
network, it's nice :-)

I've been using SGIs since 1994, and my R5K Indy is the one I
originally bought secondhand in 1995 for UKP2200. Then, it was a
133MHz R4600SC with 64MB RAM, a 1GB disk and 8-bit graphics. It's been
upgraded a few times and now has 24-bit graphics (see my friend's page
at http://www.jfc.org.uk/documents/indy_gfx.html and you'll understand
why two of my Indys have crippled graphics cards), 256MB RAM, a lot
more disk space, and a few extras. It still runs 24/7, acts as my main
desktop machine, and provides NFS and Samba file services, print
services, SMTP, IMAP and SpamAssassin, and a few minor things, for the
rest of the machines on my home net. It could do with being a bit
faster, but it's doing very well for a ten-year-old machine.

> What I really want one of these days is a nice Dual Processor Octane
> with R12000 CPU's.

Have you heard one? Have you got a pair of comfortable ear defenders?
 Have you seen the articles on futuretech about modifying an R5K2 O2
for a (much) faster processor?

> What I'd really like is a nice new Quad Processor
> R16000A-based Tezro, but there is no way I can afford a brand new SGI
> Workstation.

Me neither, unfortunately :-( And work have stopped buying/suuporting
SGI :-(

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York
Received on Sat Nov 27 2004 - 06:50:04 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:37:19 BST