On the SGI again (for a moment)
===============================
I'm writing this post on my SGI O2. Why? Because it's more
distraction-free environment (no https so almost no "Internet" at all).
It makes some things harder, however. Wikipedia searches are limited to
the gopher interface and so on.
I'm of course cheating by using the FrogFind [1].
In other hand, I used the SGI machine with the IRIX 6.5 for may years
as my main (home) workstation and I'm muscle memory still works.
So I'm writing some work notes in the Vim Outliner, listening music
with use of the XMMS and sao on. I'm going to browse the Gopherspace
here (both the Lunx and the old Netscape are great for that so I'm not
sure which of them I like better).
Maybe I will try to run the Battalion 3D game [2] or the old BzFlag
[3], too.
Well, I use one of the fastest SGI's I do have. It's my SGI O2 with the
250HHz MIPS R10000 CPU with teh 768MB of the RAM. (Does in sound too
slow and too little? It was more than enough in lated 1990s!)
I do have a faster and much more capable SGI - the dual-CPU Octane with
400 CPUs and 2GB (I think) of RAM but it's way too noisy for my liking.
The small O2 is fast enough and much quieter. This is of course
relative as the O2 has a traditional spinning HDD and small and always
running fan.
The O2 mas a couple of serial ports so it can interface many of my old
machines (I have had to sacrifice my USB-serial adapter on my modern
PowerPC in order to be able to connect the keyboard and mouse).
I think I should use the SGI more frequently. It seems to make many
things much easier and more pleasant.
References:
[1]
http://frogfind.com
[2]
https://www.evl.uic.edu/aej/AndyBattalion.html
[3]
https://bzfag.org
