[Manga]

Hello SGI community. I am new and proud owner of Octane 2. I always wanted to have SGI and finally I have this amazing machine. So far so good. This is my configuration:

2x R14000 600MHz and 1.2GB of RAM. 
Graphics is V10. 

 I was able to install IRIX 6.5.30 using this how-to: 

http://techpubs.spinlocksolutions.com/ir...linux.html
Btw very much recommended. 
Also I installed patches from here: http://us.irisware.net/sgi-irix/patches/
I only installed patches without the conflicts - warnings. Everything else I have left alone since I am not really Irix expert. 

Now my question is - I installed 6.5.30. Did I make the right choice for this machine? 
I see that some people install 6.5.22. Is there any particular reason for this? 
Also on the Internet there is a reference to IRIXIFY VM - recommended by some SGI enthusiasts. 
Do you know where to find this awesome tool and what is the benefit?

Since installation was success I wanted to try famous SGI 3D demos! 
However for some reason I discovered that I don't have any demos installed  :dodgy:
I assume I need separate "Demo disk" so I was able to download demos from some random site. 
Maybe not the best choice but well.... Beethoven is spinning   Do you guys know if there is a better resource to get all the SGI demos, or if not all - at least a good collection?

Then I discovered Nekoware and nekodeps.pl so after playing with the script I was able to use fr.irisware.net mirror and I installed many useful programs... like bash, nano, vim, mc etc... Majority of applications will install and work just fine.
However for some applications I get a lot of conflict(s) or missing warnings. For example MPlayer, Pidgin, Gimp... Am I missing something? My impression was that Nekoware is designed to resolve and prevent this? What am I doing wrong?  :-/

Finally my last question is regarding Quake 3 / Quake 1. 
My Q3 Nekoware-Nekodeps installation was success. 
After adding game files, game will start and work! However   :s
For some reason only resolution that works fine is 320x240. Everything else will produce some artefacts (in the menus). Higher the resolution - more the chance for artefacts. Also sky gets broken sometimes. I was trying many different resolutions, quality settings etc... problem persist - In fullscreen and window mode as well. In addition to all this I am not sure why fullscreen does not scale. 320x240 looks tiny on my SGI LCD screen.  
Maybe my V10 is not the best choice for Quake? I hope that is not the case. Also Quake 1 will not start. 
Term will just close when I start Quake 1 binary. Again... I am lost.  :huh:

Other than that I think I am making a good progress. 
Even after so many years machine is impressive! 
At this time I am keeping Octane in the office so my co-workers can take a look. Most of the staff are aging geeks like myself and there is no better toy in the world for us. Usually first reaction is cheese quote- "It is a UNIX system!!"   
Huh. Sorry for this long post. I hope you guys have some advice for me. 

Cheers

Manga

[Raion]

Hello Manga

Welcome to the forums, glad to have more enthusiastic users. I'm afraid I can't answer most of your questions, but others here certainly can. Let me note a few things:

> Spinlock Solutions
Ah yes, Davor remarks in the article that I have an attitude issue. I don't even think I've met the guy! (Maybe I have, I dunno, but still I wish he wouldn't write something so rude and unprofessional!)

> Patches
If you're getting conflicts on patches it's because the corresponding subsystems they go to aren't installed.

>.30 vs .22
It's really a matter of preference. There is better support for certain hardware in the later version, but .22 is the last IRIX version for any MIPS III systems.

> Irixify
Don't know it.

> Quake
These aren't gaming machines but it's my eventual endeavor to port later versions that don't have the problems. I can't make any guarantees but hopefully somebody here can eventually offer some insight.

>Nekoware
A lot of dependencies aren't easily satisfied. Most of the ports and it were built with the kitchen sink and that leads to a lot of problems with circular dependencies.

Things have been out of slow start because I'm a 25 year old sysadmin who only can really develop and offer stuff in his spare time. I'm not only the administrative person for this entire operation, I also am responsible for all of the web development, fund coordination, and leadership efforts. That being said stick around

[gijoe77]

Now my question is - I installed 6.5.30. Did I make the right choice for this machine? 
I see that some people install 6.5.22. Is there any particular reason for this? 

in all honesty 6.5.30 is fine, and probably ideal.  Many older systems are on 6.5.22 because it was the last supported release for older systems - like Indy/Indigo2/etc - Some people stay on 6.5.22 on newer systems (o2/Octane/etc) because - in my opinon - as time went on and SGI was having more financial issues in the early 2000's (when the quarterly IRIX releases where being released) they started going cheap with software/licensing and were replacing some aspects of the OS with not ideal substitutes - for example they replaced adobe acroread with xpdf and did something with the adobe fonts somewhere around 6.5.23 or something.  I'm not sure what other things were "substituted" between 6.5.22 and 6.5.30, but its mostly vanity stuff as far as I can tell.  I honestly like the old sgi "Insight" help system, but that was replaced with a basic browser somewhere between 6.5.6 and 6.5.22, and it always semi-bothered me, but it was not a big deal.  There is a way to carefully upgrade to 6.5.30 and keep all the desired subsystems but I don't think anyone has made a guide (plus its vanity stuff so what's "better" varies from person to person)

Also on the Internet there is a reference to IRIXIFY VM - recommended by some SGI enthusiasts.
Do you know where to find this awesome tool and what is the benefit?

I believe IRIXIFY is a linux VM that does a net-boot/net-install to do an initial IRIX install and to avoid the CD hassle (handy since systems like Octane don't have a default CDROM).  There are other tools like this  - Booterizer, DINA, irixboot - probably more I'm forgetting about.  You already have a IRIX install, so your good for now... I honestly haven't had a chance to use any of these tools yet...

I was able to find IrixifyNG, but I'm not sure how I got it - I think someone linked it in the discord.  I would recommend going on discord - many helpful people on there

Since installation was success I wanted to try famous SGI 3D demos!
However for some reason I discovered that I don't have any demos installed  Dodgy
I assume I need separate "Demo disk" so I was able to download demos from some random site.
Maybe not the best choice but well.... Beethoven is spinning  Big Grin Do you guys know if there is a better resource to get all the SGI demos, or if not all - at least a good collection?

There are separate Demo's CD's floating around, you can start by going here http://fr.irisware.net/irix-software/demos/ and maybe here http://retrogeeks.org/sgi/files (there is a demos.tar.gz there, and fsn.tar.Z - which is what was used in the Jurrasic Park movie

Then I discovered Nekoware and nekodeps.pl so after playing with the script I was able to use fr.irisware.net mirror and I installed many useful programs... like bash, nano, vim, mc etc... Majority of applications will install and work just fine.
However for some applications I get a lot of conflict(s) or missing warnings. For example MPlayer, Pidgin, Gimp... Am I missing something? My impression was that Nekoware is designed to resolve and prevent this? What am I doing wrong?

Nekoware is fantastic but resolving conflicts can still be an issue - that's still going to take manual intervention.  I used to just install all of Nekoware on my system (untar all the tardist files into a single dir) to not bother with any of the headaces, but probably the best step would be to untar all the tardists into a single dir and invoke swmgr to install all the nekoware software i.e.

Code:

swmgr -f /pathToAllThatNekowareGoodness

then go to Selected->Unmark All - now just select whatever software you want to install and the dependencies will be resolved automatically for you.  Just note that if you are trying to install newer software or stuff that was in the beta dir, it might have dependencies to other beta software

I use this little script to untar all tardists in a dir:

Code:

$ cat tardist_script.sh
#!/bin/ksh
for i in *;do
echo "$i"
/usr/nekoware/bin/gtar xf "$i"
done

Finally my last question is regarding Quake 3 / Quake 1.
My Q3 Nekoware-Nekodeps installation was success.
After adding game files, game will start and work! However   Confused
For some reason only resolution that works fine is 320x240. Everything else will produce some artefacts (in the menus). Higher the resolution - more the chance for artefacts. Also sky gets broken sometimes. I was trying many different resolutions, quality settings etc... problem persist - In fullscreen and window mode as well. In addition to all this I am not sure why fullscreen does not scale. 320x240 looks tiny on my SGI LCD screen.  Rolleyes
Maybe my V10 is not the best choice for Quake? I hope that is not the case. Also Quake 1 will not start.
Term will just close when I start Quake 1 binary. Again... I am lost.  Huh

your doing something wrong - Quake1/2/3 should run fine on the Octane - this might warrant a separate thread with screenshots of what exactly your doing.  Are you launching the quake.gl.r10k binary or using the quake.sw.* binary?

[eudatux23]

Hi,

I'm the author of IrixifyNG and can help you if you have any questions regarding that. Right now you don't need it, as IRIX 6.5.30 is already installed.

Quake III runs fine on the Octane. The glitches in the main menu are normal. Workaround: Start a new Singleplayer Game, exit out of the match and get a proper menu. On my Dual R12K-400 Octane mit v12 I get around 30 FPS, so it is more than playable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RjCMPyM7nA

To sort out that dependency mess of nekoware, I would recommend that you use the script nekodeps.pl. This automatically downloads all the needed dependencies for a package. You can then just do:
./nekodeps.pl --install firefox
(For example, replace firefox with the actual package name)
Here you can get that: http://techpubs.spinlocksolutions.com/ir...installer/

The demos can be found here: http://fr.irisware.net/irix-software/demos/
However, these are not complete and some are missing. I think I have a demos.tar somewhere containing ALL demos. I will search for that when I'm home.


Greetings from Germany