[flygoat]

Hi there,

Just found this forum yesterday when I was searching for IRIX 6.5 image for MAME. I browsed tons of threads here and found this forum to be really informative.

I've been messing MAME's SGI support for a while, mostly fixing REX3 and MIPS3 CPU stuff, do tag me up for any emulation questions!

A little bit background of myself, I'm a Chinese student doing undergrad in Scotland. I've been playing MIPS processors for some years. I'm familiar with MIPS low-level stuff. I'm also contributor/maintainer/reviewer of some open-source projects, namely Linux Kernel and QEMU.

I'm currently doing part-time job on MIPS processors' design verification and software support, and I do have access to detail information about cores designed by MIPS Technologies (sadly the earliest one I have access is 4Kc, so not include any core used in SGI products but there are many aspects in common with R3000/4000/5000).

I'm considering get my first IRIX system. I should be able to purchase one from Ian since it seems like he is really close to me, but I'm not sure if those stuff can live with house moving since as undergad I have to move my accommodation year by year.

Nice to meet you all!
Thanks.

[johnnym]

Welcome here!

A little bit background of myself, I'm a Chinese student doing undergrad in Scotland. I've been playing MIPS processors for some years. I'm familiar with MIPS low-level stuff. I'm also contributor/maintainer/reviewer of some open-source projects, namely Linux Kernel and QEMU.

Interesting! Ever looked at OpenBSD/sgi?

I'm considering get my first IRIX system. I should be able to purchase one from Ian since it seems like he is really close to me, but I'm not sure if those stuff can live with house moving since as undergad I have to move my accommodation year by year.

An Indy or an O2 w/o plastics could be small enough, light enough and sturdy enough for your needs. If you netboot them you can even leave out the disk and save some weight there but need some additional infrastructure (e.g. RasPi 2B and/or Odroid HC1 or what's current; an Odroid M1 could do everything needed).

[Raion]

你好！

> I browsed tons of threads here and found this forum to be really informative.

I do try to run a tight ship as much as possible. I'm sorry that some things aren't working correctly right now but it's been a pretty tough couple years for me, even more so for our sponsor so I am very much having to keep things tightly wound by myself.

> do tag me up for any emulation questions!

If you decide to stick around here long-term let me know I might be willing to make you a staff member on the emulation forum so that you have a little bit more control over organizing posts and cleaning the place up if you're willing to volunteer yourself that is.

It's nice to have somebody who's knowledgeable about these issues here because we only have a couple of people who actually play with MAME. I've been pretty pessimistic the last couple years about it simply because the devs at MAME aren't exactly really helping things along.

> I'm also contributor/maintainer/reviewer of some open-source projects, namely Linux Kernel and QEMU.

Would you be interested in helping me fix up gcc? Now that dodoid is back from VCF I should be able to get to work back on that myself but I'm having issues getting multi-lib working and also fixing test cases and such. If you would be interested in helping fix some of the issues that would be awesome. Yes you would get SSH access to the machine in question.

It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance and I'm happy that you're here. I do speak Chinese myself (I'm not fluent in your language but I can maintain a basic conversation decently) and eventually I would like to translate our documentation to other languages.

If you're interested in contributing in other ways I also have a wiki that I'm working on. I will message you with some of the things that you could help out with but of course I understand being a student your time is valuable and limited so you're not obligated to help me with anything.

[flygoat]

Interesting! Ever looked at OpenBSD/sgi?

Tried OpenBSD/MIPS on Loongson before, but never tried OpenBSD/sgi.
I think NetBSD perhaps fit SGI machines better? It's more lightweight and they won't remove hardware support easily.

[johnnym]

I think NetBSD perhaps fit SGI machines better? It's more lightweight and they won't remove hardware support easily.

Well, the list of supported machines for NetBSD/sgimips doesn't actually speak for that and not everything works as stated (for example Indigo R3000 doesn't work with the shipped kernel last time I tested but only with out-of-tree modifications by a Japanese developer) - and now compare that to what OpenBSD/sgi has to offer - but as OpenBSD retired/abandoned the sgi platform there is some point in that. Though they didn't do it easily, it took them multiple versions (6.6 to 6.9) to finally do it.

And that is also a main advantage I think, because you can basically do what you like with it now, because there's no gatekeeper between your changes and the source code. I for example try to maintain OpenBSD/sgi and follow the main code base and fixing stuff as best as I can, but you could maybe do real development there. For starters I believe there's still stuff not yet ported from NetBSD/sgimips to OpenBSD/sgi, e.g. the sound hardware in Indigo, Indy and Indigo².