27 Jan
1999
27 Jan
'99
12:06 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Lawrence LeMay <lemay(a)cs.umn.edu>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Thursday, 28 January 1999 8:44
Subject: free stuff
We have enough Indy Cameras to sink a ship, but
we'll probably keep those
for who knows what reason...
Ok, I'll bite, WTH is an Indy Camera??
Cheers
Geoff Roberts
Computer Room Internet Cafe
Port Pirie
South Australia.
netcafe(a)pirie.mtx.net.au
27 Jan
27 Jan
12:13 p.m.
On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Computer Room Internet Cafe wrote:
Ok, I'll bite, WTH is an Indy Camera??
A digital video camera for an SGI Indy. The market seems to be flooded
with them right now for some reason. A guy had a couple of boxes of them
at TRW last month.
-- Doug
12:27 p.m.
On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Computer Room Internet Cafe
wrote:
Because they give you one with every computer you buy. And when you're buying
a room full of computers for a computer lab, you dont want all those cameras installed.
Thus you're stuck with a bunch of hardware you dont want to use,
yet you dont want to throw it away..
-Lawrence LeMay
Ok, I'll bite, WTH is an Indy Camera??
A digital video camera for an SGI Indy. The market seems to be flooded
with them right now for some reason. A guy had a couple of boxes of them
at TRW last month.
-- Doug
29 Jan
29 Jan
11:01 a.m.
Lawrence LeMay wrote:
Are these any good for common clones and such? Maybe rather than a freebie you'd sell
or trade one or so off? I know I need to find out what they are first
but I have a feeling it might work for some odd projects I have in my head since they
undoubtedly had a CCD in them, whether BW or color.
On Thu, 28 Jan
1999, Computer Room Internet Cafe wrote:
Because they give you one with every computer you buy. And when you're buying
a room full of computers for a computer lab, you dont want all those cameras installed.
Thus you're stuck with a bunch of hardware you dont want to use,
yet you dont want to throw it away..
-Lawrence LeMay Ok, I'll bite, WTH is an Indy Camera??
A digital video camera for an SGI Indy. The market seems to be flooded
with them right now for some reason. A guy had a couple of boxes of them
at TRW last month.
-- Doug
27 Jan
27 Jan
12:49 p.m.
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12:52 p.m.
On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
Can they be interfaced to other things?
Nope.
A bright guy in the Commie world has figured out how
to connect a
QuickCam to a 64. I should think it should be fairly easy with his
help to do the same here, and in colour. What kind of data protocol
does it use to talk to the host computer?
I can tell you what maybe half the pins in the 60 pin connector are for.
The rest are "SGI proprietary". Plus the quality of the image the camera
will produce is abysmal at best.
--
ok
r. r e d @ b e a r s . o r g
===========================
[ urs longa | vita brevis ]
1:50 p.m.
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2:49 p.m.
On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Tony Duell wrote:
The cable is quite slender. It would surprise me if all 60 conductors were
used.
I'm heading home just now so when I get there I'll send along the
incomplete pinout that SGI let out.
--
ok
r. r e d @ b e a r s . o r g
===========================
[ urs longa | vita brevis ]
I can tell you
what maybe half the pins in the 60 pin connector are for.
How many of those are grounds (or power). Having every other pin grounded
is quite common, of course...
4:36 p.m.
On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, R. Stricklin (kjaeros) wrote:
I'm heading home just now so when I get there
I'll send along the
incomplete pinout that SGI let out.
The connector is a super-high density 60 pin one, identical to those
used as serial interfaces on Cisco 2500 series routers. 4 rows of 15 pins
each.
Here's the info as found in the Indy Workstation Owner's Guide:
Pin Description
----------------------------
7 serial control data
9 serial control clock
12 clock ground
13 clock
22 +12
23 +5
24 -12
27 data (7) ground
28 data (7)
29 data (6) ground
30 data (6)
31 data (3)
32 data (3) ground
33 data (4)
34 data (4) ground
35 data (5)
36 data (5) ground
46 data (0)
47 data (0) ground
48 data (1)
49 data (1) ground
50 data (2)
51 data (2) ground
all other pins are marked "reserved".
Could somebody use this information to interface this camera to another
machine? Maybe. I certainly wouldn't care to. SGI never even used this
interface on any of their other machines. I suspect the idea was to use
the Indycam with the Indy's built-in ISDN interface so you could get
desktop video conferencing straight out of the box.
Not even close to ten years old: the Indy was brand new in July 1994.
Nifty machine, though. They had a promo when it was first introduced:
write us a note on why you want an Indy in 25 words or less, and we'll
give away niftily configured Indy systems to our five favourites. I won
seventh place and got a letter thanking me for my entry instead. I don't
think I kept it although I wish now I had.
--
ok
r. r e d @ b e a r s . o r g
===========================
[ urs longa | vita brevis ]
28 Jan
28 Jan
4:03 a.m.
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4:55 a.m.
The connector is a super-high density 60 pin one,
identical to those
used as serial interfaces on Cisco 2500 series routers. 4 rows of 15 pins
each.
If anyone is really interested in trying to get Indy cams to work with
older systems, I can supply some of the funky Cisco 60-pin cables. These
are from some V.35 clone cables we had made up some time ago, but are now
obsolete.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
27 Jan
27 Jan
2:59 p.m.
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29 Jan
29 Jan
11:03 a.m.
Cameron Kaiser wrote:
::I can tell you what maybe half the pins in the 60
pin connector are for.
::The rest are "SGI proprietary". Plus the quality of the image the camera
::will produce is abysmal at best.
Half is a start. I don't mind the image quality because -- let's face it --
Commodore image quality is no picnic. :-) I've dealt with Indycams before,
look at
http://calvin.ptloma.edu/~spectre/pix/me.gif
which was taken with one when I got to use an Indy over the summer at the
Salk Institute. I loved that thing, I wanted one. I think I destroyed more
experiments from getting absorbed in xdoom than my impressive incompetency.
Image quality isn't bad, just the subject needs to be better (kidding).
11:46 a.m.
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28 Jan
28 Jan
4:27 a.m.
At 03:49 PM 1/27/99 -0800, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
::> Ok, I'll bite, WTH is an Indy Camera??
::
::A digital video camera for an SGI Indy. The market seems to be flooded
::with them right now for some reason.
It looks like the Linux video capture driver does handle some sort
of interface to I2C chips, but I couldn't find any references to
a home page for that project, or of Usenet messages from people
trying to interface IndyCams to other gizmos. With reconditioned
QuickCam B/W's going for $50 these days, and NTSC-out chip cams
for $75 or less... although I'd love to find a way to adapt
"free" IndyCams. Can't have too many cams.
- John
9279
days inactive
9281
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14 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
ckaiser＠oa.ptloma.edu -
doug＠blinkenlights.com -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
lemay＠cs.umn.edu -
netcafe＠pirie.mtx.net.au -
red＠bears.org -
rhblake＠bigfoot.com -
william＠ans.net