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all of that is good to know, and i wouldn't have thought to ask about.
this is all things nobody talks about and have probably learned the hard way over time.

i did find all the technical papers and usermanuals for sgi on a website as pdf files so i have read thru the octane manual and some others.

how do you suggest to clone the disk? from the sgi itself or do you pull the hdd and mount it to your pc?
i need to get a scsi card and a ext drive caddy if its really better to pull the hdd for maint and things.

RPM package manager sucks that badly? you can't even pick the drive where it installs to?

you saying FTP is the best way to move files is pretty suprising to me. i thought sgi supports samba for sharing files.
i was planning to set up a shared folder on a windows machine that the sgi can access.

i put my new thread here, it's asking about the freeware and nekoware.
https://forums.irixnet.org/thread-4403.html

because i notice a lot of sgi sellers including ian are asking if you want to install gigs and gigs of that stuff to your hdd.
i don't tend to do that, i consider it bloat. much better to pick your own stuff of what you need.

i'm interested in 3d modelling/animation/compositing its all commercial stuff that i used to use on sgi.
i won't ask about it, but luckily i found a small amount of it already.

i'm also interested in programming, which is something i never did on sgi so i don't know what they use for this.
plain c, c++ with qt api, java with javaFX api, java with swing api, are what i know how to use.
wonder if any IDE for sgi exists or if they just use vim and emacs for that like a primitive caveman

i'm curious, what do you use your sgi for?
are you are a programmer, or do you just compile existing stuff?