31 Mar
2015
31 Mar
'15
6:11 p.m.
On 03/31/2015 10:24 AM, Sean Caron wrote:
Anyway, more on-topic, congratulations, Jules,
that's a fine system you
have found!
Indeed it is! Although there were Indys and O2's available as well, the
Indigo2 just seemed like the more interesting of the three - and that was
before I discovered that it was fitted with such a high spec graphics option.
My strongest Indigo2 is a bit of a Frankenstein :O
Non-factory
config... R10K at 175 Extreme in green skins
Green? I don't think I've seen that before, only the purple and teal
variants. Was there some significance to the color in terms of hardware,
target market etc., or was it just a customer option?
one of the more rare R8K systems
I heard that those are uncommon (but also that performance is nothing to
write home about, unless you're crafting code specifically for them)
I was obsessed with these things when I was in high
school :O
:-) It's taken me fifteen years (since I used to use SGI hardware at an old
workplace) to find any systems of my own, although a few Indys, Challenges
and 4D's passed briefly through my hands during my museum days. I think SGI
had a habit of taking hardware back when the customer was done with it and
destroying it, so there are comparatively few (compared to Sun etc.) still
out in the wild.
IMO, Indigo2 systems are great machines; I have found
them to be very
robust in the long-term although from my experience the Impact PSUs seem a
bit more prone to failure than the non-Impact PSUs (the mode seems to be
harmless to the rest of the system; it just one day decides it won't power
on; reminiscent of how I've seen the Nidec supplies go on the Indys).
I'm certainly wary of loading this one up with more RAM just because the
PSU must be reasonably stressed already running the graphics hardware and
two drives. Eventually I think I'll put one of the drives into an external
enclosure (or tweak things so it's not needed).
Oh, this machine has the optional feet for standing it sideways, too - I'm
not sure if I mentioned that. I think I like that configuration more than a
'slab' form factor, but I'm not sure if it's better or worse for heat
dissipation.
If you want to know the specifics, you have probably
found this already,
but there are two SGI-specific commands you can run from IRIX, "hinv" and
"gfxinfo" which will tell you what's there.. You can also run
"hinv" from
the ROM monitor.
Yup. I *used* to know my way around them. I'm just very, very rusty right
now :-)
I got an Origin 2200 at the same time which I'm just working on cleaning up
at the moment. I've got four node boards for that one (2 CPUs per board)
and an enormous quantity of RAM, but as of right now I'm not sure if the
boards all have compatible CPU types (I think some mixing and matching was
possible, but not all combinations work), and I have a feeling I may need
an additional board (which I don't have) anyway to build an 8-CPU system.
Still, 4 should be possible (and as a plus I can run that from a regular
outlet).
cheers
Jules