[SuperIRIX]

Today, I was able to add a new drive. The purpose is to fill the system with the contents of the 4 SGI Freeware CDROMs on the new drive. This will ease using the IRIX Software Manager. However, the addition was done using the MAME graphical interface. I tried to add the command line option (-hard2) , but MAME did not run.  so what is the correct command line option in this case? thanks.

Update: I am answering this question myself. I searched for it.

the options will be like :
mame indy_4610 -gio64_gfx xl24 -hard1 irix65.chd -scsibus:2 harddisk -harddisk2 irix-sgi-freeware-cdroms.chd -rompath indy_4610/ -window -nodrc

If you want to add more drives, CDROM or Hard disk, just please repeat the part in RED in the command while changing the numbers in this red part. each repetition is a different drive. You are allowed to use range of numbers  [2..7] . To know why the range like that, press the Insert key then TAB key to open the  MAME menu, and then the Slots menu item. You will see how many SCSI busses are available. if you want a cdrom, just replace the word harddisk with cdrom.

[SuperIRIX]

I was able today to run GNOME desktop environment though is totally unstable, and WindowMaker which is very stable.

To run either of them using the editor nEdit open the file .xsession  located in your home directory and do one and only one of the following bullets:
1- To run GNOME add this command to  .xsession :
exec gnome-session

2-  To run WindowMaker add this command to .xsession :
  exec wmaker

If you want to return to the default desktop which is called 4WD   simply delete .xsession .

[Raion]

There's no need to change the DE on IRIX. To do so is pretty much defeating the purpose.

[SuperIRIX]

There's no need to change the DE on IRIX. To do so is pretty much defeating the purpose.

Yes you are completely correct about not changing the desktop environment. but still I trying to prove the major software companies like AutoDesk and Adobe that there is no point not porting their apps to Linux .. The excuse of "no business gain" is silly and weak and ugly. With Adobe Photoshop, for example, GIMP is there in IRIX. Then why did Adobe port Photoshop back then to IRIX?! now there is Linux.

[weblacky]

There's no need to change the DE on IRIX. To do so is pretty much defeating the purpose.

Yes you are completely correct about not changing the desktop environment. but still I trying to prove the major software companies like AutoDesk and Adobe that there is no point not porting their apps to Linux .. The excuse of "no business gain" is silly and weak and ugly. With Adobe Photoshop, for example, GIMP is there in IRIX. Then why did Adobe port Photoshop back then to IRIX?! now there is Linux.

A long-term goal I could see would be single-purpose computer stations.  Like a chromebook but for AutoDesk?  Perhaps even a secure VM of sorts? When applications are ported to Linux they actually seem to become more monolithic and less OS integrated. So because they can stand on their own you can start using them as appliances.  Maybe we'll even get to the point where AutoDesk will put out their own CNC machines or 3D printers with integrated CAD/CAM software right in the appliance terminal running on Linux as a secure platform that's been minimized so it runs the application very well without needing massive specs and not much need for antivirus or any other services to clog it up as it is single purpose.  Closed hardware to mate with closed software.  Which would also bring down pirating (closed OS to get through first) and allow direct control of licensing as a connected system to company servers.

I don't see it happening anytime soon but I could envision coming full circle to the dumb terminal days where instead of giving workers a general purpose computing device, you give a worker a locked down single-purpose computer that only runs one thing...the program they do their job on...no distractions, nothing else...single application all day long.  Kind of like animators or CAD users where under UNIX stations.  Not much else as a distraction other than Email...what else is there on it?

[o2o2o2]

So I can now boot Irix 6.5 (emulated Indy) in ~45 seconds on a relatively modern computer (Intel 12400F + NVME) with Mame.

While Mame proudly cares more about emulation accuracy than performance, there are a few things that can be done in the code to make this run a bit better. It took some profiling and hacking, and here are some initial findings:

1. DRC (dynamic recompiler) on windows is useless. Although it now works (v277 and later), it doesn't yield much in terms of performance.
2. There are three main reasons for low speed
2.a. Emulation - the only possible improvement can come from better DRC (or better DRC configuration). 
2.b. Memory access - mips emulation uses emumem.h and some very slow generic routines, specifically RWORD macro expands to a lot of code. This (RWORD) eats up as much as 70% of the host CPU. To make things worse, this is so wrapped up in some C++ wizardry with templates it is really not trivial to overcome. I've started by adding dedicated memory macros for R4600 (see patch in the zip below), so watch this space.
2.c. Disk access. Now while this doesn't come up much in the profiler, it has a huge impact on boot time and general responsiveness of the OS. Simple bump in the wd33c clock resulted in the boot time going from 1 minute to 45 seconds. This can't be done in the UI unfortunately so I've included the patch + pre-built binary for windows in the zip below.

I've also bumped CPU to 133MHz. Emulation speed does dip occasionally to below 50%, mostly when graphics and disk get busy but this emulation still feels more responsive than a real low-end indy.

So I wrapped up my "optimised" build here. The linked zip contains everything you need to get this going:

1. indy_indigo2.exe - it's basically mame.exe built just for indy emulation (and also so we don't overwrite your original mame.exe)
2. roms and nvram directories needed for SGI emulation. This is safe to unzip even if you already have them.
3. run-net-no-throttle.bat - a batch file to run the emulator with recommended options. Make sure you look at this and that the CHD name matches your image filename (-hard1 option).
4. Patch file in case you want to build this yourself. The patch is for revision https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commit/3...6f5483f213

Anyway, here is how to use it:
1. Get latest mame, install it and place the CHD image in the mame installation root (where your mame.exe lands).
2. Unzip the linked zip over the Mame installation. This will just add files so won't break anything.
3. Verify that indy_indigo2.exe ended up in the mame root directory (same directory where you have mame.exe)
4. Edit run-net-no-throttle.bat and set CHD file name to your CHD (-hard1 option)
5. Run run-net-no-throttle.bat

And the link to the zip: https://spektar.io/download/mame-irix/indy-patched.zip

Side notes on how far I got with this.

I got networking going (not easy - needs tap/tun + bridged eth adapter + IP forwarding).

A big issue for mame is mouse handling. It wont pass mouse coordinates to Irix, and instead it creates a virtual mouse that translates your mouse movements to presumably ps2 signals. It's a very poor solution. So once you get networking going, you can use Xming or any Linux machine to connect remotely. It's a comfortable and very usable Irix experience. Most apps + OpenGL (ideas demo, bzflag, cycles) work a treat with Xming 7 on Windows (get Xming here, definitely worth £10 if nothing else for the support you get from Colin). Native IrisGL stuff (buttonfly, atlantis) of course will only work locally or if you connect from an SGI box, or perhaps you can try with igl.

For a modern browser on Irix, I use ssh -X <modern-linux-box> firefox which runs modern firefox on a linux machine and renders on my windows box via XMing. This works super fast - Irix only does window management, all the rendering / memory and disk access is away from the emulator. I also have a directory mounted via NFS so I can get to downloads and other files.

Frankly I would have preferred to see Irix on qemu or some serious virtualisation environment, but with all it's flaws and idiosyncrasies, you can make Mame work.

To close, here is an obligatory screenshot:

[Raion]

Neat information. It's a shame that gxemul didn't go anywhere, seemed like a promising project.