7 Aug
2012
7 Aug
'12
1:20 p.m.
On Tue, 7 Aug 2012, Richard wrote:
The 1x00, 2x00 and 3x00 used the same deskside chassis, so the average
person just looking at the exterior of the computer wouldn't see much
difference between them. You 3100 being complete and fairly well populated
with boards might actually make a better working demonstration than an
earlier machine such as the 1400.
The real challenge with my 1400 I think will be the hard drive. I pretty
much put my 1400 project aside when I discovered that the V170 hard
drive's head lock solenoid was stuck because I just don't have the means to
service the drive (oddly enough, the drive shows signs of previous service
work).
A number of other things still still need to be done to my 1400 too,
including replacing the rubber roller in the QIC tape drive, replacing the
240V muffin fans with 120V fans so it can be converted back to 120V, and
replacing the electrolytics in the monitor (the monitor was barely
readable ~10 years ago, so I know it is going to be much worse now).
Another issue I noticed was the mouse cable. For whatever reason the outer
insulation began to break down and crumble after the 1400 was removed from
the controlled environment computer room it had been living in. I suspect
I'll have to repair it with heatshrink tubing. This is of course all in
addition to the other repairs I've already made.
Most museums would never even consider making the repairs that this IRIS
1400 requires to get it fully functional.
Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> writes:
I never sought out to collect a 1400, it just found me at the right time
and I had the means to haul it away. The manuals and boot tape (QIC
format) turned up later and I went back to pick those up as well.
I personally own a number of examples of
"rare" and historically
significant computing technology. Two such examples are a SGI IRIS 1400
[Computer Chronicles, Computer Graphics, 4/5/1984
http://archive.org/details/Computer1984_6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmO0y51_y9o] and a complete Motorola Altair
wireless network system.
I'd love to have an IRIS 1400 for the Computer Graphics Museum. For
one-off items like that, my plan is that there would be periodic
public demonstrations of it in operation, sort of like what the CHM
does with it's PDP-1. For more common items like SGI Octanes, the plan is to
create an
exhibit where people use the actual hardware themselves. All my
currently planned exhibits revolve around some sort of digital content
creation (image, animation, 3D model, etc.) which are shared back to
the Youtube/Facebook/Flickr/etc. social media accounts of visitors
should they wish to share. Otherwise, everything created goes into a
library of content created by visitors using that exhibit.
To me at least, the Octane seems more "uncommon" than the 4D series... I
own 5 different models of 4D series machines, including one which is
housed in a large brown rack (all 5 machines came from the same place),
yet I've never seen an Octane in person.
While there
are quite a number of IRIS 2000 and IRIS 3000 series systems
out there, and as much as I detest using the word "rare" due to widespread
overuse, the IRIS 1400 is about as rare as hen's teeth and there are very
few examples of these machines left today. My own 1400, serial # 95
(originally serial # 47), was located in the UK from about 1983 to 1998
and was originally used as part of a DC-10 flight simulator.
I have an IRIS 3100 and in about 10 years of collecting, that's the
only 1st generation IRIS model I've been able to find.