New Indigo 2
============
Logout [1] donated the SGI Indigo2 to me yesterday. It's a later
(purple) model which was used for some solid modeling in automotive
industry.
The machine is great: judging from stickers on the back it was
initially the Solid Impact system with the older R4400SC processor (the
fastest available R4400 at 250 MHz and with 2 MB of secondary cache)
and then it was upgraded to the R10000 processor. Also, it was the best
option available as it tuns on 195 MHz (the low-end one was at 175
MHz). Also the memory must be upgraded as there are 640 MB of RAM. It
might look as a small size today but it was huge amount in the times
when the Indigo 2 was still current (the box is from around 1996 and
was probably upgraded later - but who had 510 MB in his/her desktop
even in 2004?). The graphics board is the Solid Impact, so the basic
one (with full OpenGL 1.1 support in hardware except textures - it was
excellent and fast options for solid modeling in its time). Yes,
HighImpact might be better (not speaking about the Max Impact one) but
they produce much more heat than the Solid one.
The machine had two problems: some plastics in the PS/2 connector
(obviously from broken mouse cable) and the failing HDD. The PS/2
problem turned to be the easy one and it is already fixed. The HDD
problem will be more complicated as there was the 4 GB 60-pin SCSI
drive and it is now obviously dead (the drive spins but it emits
clicking sounds and the computer reports a lot of SCSI errors.
I have found a good and (well, relatively) quiet 50-pin HDD but I'm not
able to set it with SCSI ID=1 (the Indigo 2 has automatic switch for
this but the connector is not mechanically compatible with layout of
drive's switching pins.
Anyway, it seems, that the drive can run with ID=2 and the computer is
willing to boot from. The only problem is that the IRIX must be
installed first. But it seems that I no longer have IRIX 6.2 media for
the Indigo2 and a 2 GB disk might not be enough [2] for the 6.5 with
Freeware/Nekoware applications. So I have to search for something
bigger first (and thus also for a 68->50pin cable adapter).
I'm also thinking about different approach: to install of the system at
the small drive first and use it for some time intensively (for finite
element modeling, for example) and if it will work reliably then decide
to replace the HDD with a better one. I think that the Indigo 2 can be
a great second SGI system for me: it is not slow and it's compatible
with the Nekoware because of the R10000 and its much quieter than my
Octane. As my Octane has only the SI (SolidImpact) graphics (internally
the same as the Indigo2 has) it can offer very little benefits except
the pair of somewhat faster CPUs (it seems that extra CPU power helps
me often only little).
And the machine is much quieter than the Octane and (surprisingly) even
than my O2 with R10000 CPU. I probably have to service the O2's fan...
References:
[1]
gopher://i-logout.cz
[2]
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/i2info.html
Psst! Now I have a complete Silicon Graphics desktop line from the
times of the original Indigo to the O2. I don't want the older
generations (4D workstations and older - by the way, the Indigo 1 is
the last of such things, just in a newer package) and I also don't have
plans to get the last generation of SGIs (the Onyx/Origin 300/3000 line
- there were the Fuel desktop and the Tezro desk-side workstation).
Thus now I have:
* IRIS Indigo (both older with R3000 CPU and newer with R4000)
* Indy (with R4400 CPU and with R5000 CPU)
* Indigo2 (described above, just one, I don't have the older green I2)
* Octane (some hybrid with old IS graphics and fairly new R12000 CPUs)
* O2 (both low-end model with R5000 CPU and "high-end" one with R10000)
* some empty cases and non-working/incomplete ones: Indigo, Octane,...