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Re: When SGIs come to play
Posted: 15 Sep 2021 17:33
by trixster
Cool, another Octane owner!
As Steve says, the sgug forum is good, and their discord is very active too, lots of development going on there. It’s mainly friendly Americans saying stuff that’s way over my head but it sounds impressive!
Re: When SGIs come to play
Posted: 15 Sep 2021 17:45
by rubber_jonnie
trixster wrote: 15 Sep 2021 17:33
Cool, another Octane owner!
As Steve says, the sgug forum is good, and their discord is very active too, lots of development going on there. It’s mainly friendly Americans saying stuff that’s way over my head but it sounds impressive!
Just taking a peek :)
Here's my CPU board, dual R12000s IIRC:
IMG_20210915_173603.jpg
The graphics card. I think it may have a spot for texture RAM but not 100% sure. Maybe just more RAM or something else:
IMG_20210915_173828.jpg
And the rear view:
IMG_20210915_174001.jpg
Re: When SGIs come to play
Posted: 15 Sep 2021 18:51
by rubber_jonnie
My god, I jus saw Octane prices on eBay, they are VERY expensive. I got mine for £25 each and they are up there in the £1000s now!
Re: When SGIs come to play
Posted: 15 Sep 2021 20:13
by trixster
Looking at this link, I think you have an SI or SE board without texture memory
https://bukosek.si/hardware/collection/sgi-octane.html
Re: When SGIs come to play
Posted: 15 Sep 2021 20:36
by Steve
SGI's are just mega-cool for so many reasons. I always wanted one because I'm a Unix enthusiast who grew up playing iD software OpenGL games, which of course was invented by SGI (OpenGL) I also like how they're built like military tanks, use 'unique' technologies and originally cost more than your average car to buy.
Re: When SGIs come to play
Posted: 15 Sep 2021 21:12
by rubber_jonnie
Here's the HINV, looks like ESI graphics.
IMG_20210915_192947.jpg
Re: When SGIs come to play
Posted: 15 Sep 2021 21:29
by trixster
can you run hinv -m
This should give all the revisions.
ESI is the enhanced version of SI, sometimes also known as SE
Re: When SGIs come to play
Posted: 15 Sep 2021 21:39
by trixster
Loving that you've got dual cpus! I'd love a dual cpu module for my octane!
Re: When SGIs come to play
Posted: 15 Sep 2021 21:52
by srosefx
Hey, im also an Octane owner! I have version 1 and 2, I picked up the second one from a Digital house, came with full ram and a v12 odyssey board.
i'm having issues with getting Irix installed as they don't have a cd rom drive. and i'm lacking some scsi adapters to get the Sun external DVD rom drive hooked up and communicating with the octane.
IRIX on all the other machines is a breeze compared to the Octane.
I was very close to buying an Onyx 2..but the price turned me off, and it was a rackmounted beast with an origin 2000 on top, the thing weighed 60kg.
my fave though is the purple Indigo 2 I have. just such a lovely looking machine, the Iris gets too much praise as the better looking machine but I don't think so.
Simon
Re: When SGIs come to play
Posted: 15 Sep 2021 22:14
by trixster
Welcome aboard, Simon!
Steve and I used Booterizer to network install Irix onto the Octane from a Raspberry Pi3.
http://booterizer.com/
It has step-by-step instructions and results in a pretty much bang to to date 6.5.30 install.
https://github.com/unxmaal/booterizer/tree/pi_support
I was a complete beginner to SGI when I had a go at using this to install to a brand new SCSI drive, and it moreorless worked first time. All you need to do is connect the Pi and the Octane to each other via an ethernet cable and have wifi available for the Pi to connect to.