[Raion]

I am still in the process of installing IRIX over the network to the one good 9gb HDD I have in one of my two Octanes.  This lead me to a few questions about purchasing SCSI equipment and disks for my machines:

- If I want to run solid-state disks, say an SD card or SATA SSD, natively inside the front bay of the Octanes, what are my options?
- I want to install some software from CDs but lack an external SCSI CD / DVD reader.  Are there known compatible external players I can look for?
- I have been following a guide for net-installing IRIX, is there such a guide also for netbooting the machine? I'd prefer to go diskless.

Thanks!

1. SATA to SCSI adapters exist but are VERY expensive. Don't bother. SCSI2SD performance is poor across the board unless you have absolute ideal conditions. I recommend 15k, 80-pin SCSI drives. They're fast, cheap, and reliable. 
2. Don't install from CD - SGI supports network installs pretty reasonably. SGI software are all EFS images, which can't be even read by a lot of drives due to 512-blocksizes. I have some stuff at http://nonfree.irix.cc 
3. Diskless is a pain, I'm sure it's possible, but it's not reliable