9 Jan
1999
9 Jan
'99
9:19 a.m.
Arfon Gryffydd <arfonrg(a)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(a)ans.net>et>:
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