IRIS Indigo
===========
I got a new toy: the Silicon Graphics IRIX Indigo. Actually, it's
a machine re-badged as the Siemens Nixdorf RW 320.
The specs are:
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1 33 MHZ IP12 Processor
FPU: MIPS R2010A/R3010 VLSI Floating Point Chip Revision: 4.0
CPU: MIPS R2000A/R3000 Processor Chip Revision: 3.0
On-board serial ports: 2
On-board bi-directional parallel port
Data cache size: 32 Kbytes
Instruction cache size: 32 Kbytes
Main memory size: 48 Mbytes
Integral Ethernet: ec0, version 0
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version WD33C93B, revision C
Tape drive: unit 3 on SCSI controller 0: DAT
Disk drive: unit 2 on SCSI controller 0
Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI controller 0
Iris Audio Processor: revision 10
Graphics board: GR2-XS24
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So it is a first-generation Indigo with a 32-bit R3000 processor with a 48 MB
of RAM. That's not bad. At the moment, I have here just a bare IRIX system
(almost no 3rd party applications at the moment) and the system is very snappy
and responsible. It feels faster than my SGI Indy which is more modern (it has
175 MHz 64-bit processor). It looks like the Indy is really an "Indigo without
the go" ;-)
The machine has IRIX 5.3 pre-installed. It's OK and it's actually the most
modern system that it can run. I normally use the 6.5 on a modern architecture
(MIPS4 or MIPS3 vs MIPS2 on the Indigo) so most of the software has no use
here.
Anyway, there are nice sources of software for this machine, like the Indigo
pages at Megarat.com (
http://ww.megarat.com/indigo).By the way, I found here a
pre-compiled version of GNU Octave for IRIX 5.3. So I can use it not only on
the Indigo but also on my SGI Indy! It's an ancient 2.0.5 version but if works!
Finally, the most surprising fact is that the box ix extremely quiet. It was
two SCSI disks but it is still more quiet than any other desktop here (well,
devices without fans are even quieter...).
Some funny (and not so funny, too) stuff
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Many apps (even open-source ones) for this ancient thing are no longer
available. The open-sourceness don't help sometimes as porting to IRIX never
was an easy task. So at the moment I have no Midnight Commander and ever no
Vim better than 3.0.
Anyway, it is possible to install and use many things:
- telnet, ftp (pre-installed)
- NEdit 5.x
- Lynx
- cc (ANSI89)
- Octave 2.0.x (!)
- Gnuplot 3.5
- XFig 2.x
- SC 6.12
- Acrobat Reader 3.0 (4.x fails here)
