[rutger]

Thanks! I found the thread and it looks absolutely fantastic. I let the drive heat up a bit and it got to do something but then decided it really had enough. I’m very happy I was able to make a copy of the drive when I got it. Probably the last time it ran. 

Anyway, machine passes diagnostics, keyboard works. I’m happy! This Personal Iris will run again. 

Thank you all who contributed to this solution and thread, appreciated 🙏🏻

[vishnu]

Does it have an installed compiler? MIPSPro? Fortran?

We used such SGI workstations to develop our wheeled and tracked vehicle combat simulations. It included the government written "Groundwars" and "Artquick" (or "Artqwik" depending on who you ask (artillery)) simulations.

[rutger]

Ive been able to boot it using the drive image on a BlueSCSI but am having some major issues. Will need to do some troubleshooting on the settings to see if I can get it stable. System locks up with SCSI errors. Could be the BlueSCSI or the image really.

I did buy the machine with a big box of external video gear, the Iris also has some sort of VME video capture board. I expected there to be a user with an extensive video editing desktop. Have not found it and I might need to do some more digging. Probably no compilers :-(

Forgot how insanely loud this machine is!

[jan-jaap]

I did buy the machine with a big box of external video gear, the Iris also has some sort of VME video capture board. I expected there to be a user with an extensive video editing desktop.

Sounds like VideoFramer?

The Personal IRIS is nowhere near fast enough to capture or produce video like it's done these days. It's frame by frame video. You need a recorder capable of recording a single frame, and be controlled by the IRIS using a protocol called VLAN (unrelated to what a VLAN is in networks)

Basically, you render an image, load it in the VideoFramer, send the command to the deck and it records the frame. Then you render the next frame  etc etc and after a night you have 30 seconds of animation.

The VideoFramer can capture video as well, but again, one frame at a time.

You can see a VideoFramer board in my own 4D/35 in the first post of this thread. I have the breakout and the cables as well

[rutger]

After playing around with the BlueSCSI config file (BlueSCSI.ini) I got the Personal Iris running without issues! I’ll add the file later as I’m away from the machine right now. 

Machine booted, ran a full filesystem check and life is good. It is truly an amazing machine, loud, big, and utterly beautiful. Will need to get my hands on the drive recreation, I can swap my BlueSCSI to a SCSC2SD.  

Long story short. I do not know much of this machine. I bought it from a German seller that got it as part of a big buy of what appears to have been a video production place. Special decks, screens and loads of stuff that I really do not have any knowledge of. As I could not really find any reputable info online about him I was a bit worried. But, there are still honest people left on the planet and I received a well packed pallet shipment. 

The case looks very nice with just some scratches on the top. It looks to be almost identical to jan-jaap’s version. Mine also has the VME video board. 

Unfortunately it does look like the disk was wiped. It has a nearly empty 4.0.5C install. As 5.3 is the oldest I ever worked with I need to up my IRIX admin skills a bit :-)

Looking forward to moving it from the tabletop to a proper place and putting some cool software on it. 

edit: +photos +docs

For anyone trying this, I followed jan-jaaps info very closely. Also, I used the following information to doublecheck everything I did.

Personal Iris PSU info : http://www.sgistuff.net/hardware/tipstri...ispsu.html
PowerOne series technical specs PDF : https://www.artisantg.com/info/Power_One...416215.pdf



                       

[rutger]

For all who are searching on how to get their BlueSCSI to work, I used the following for my 'bluescsi.ini' file. Weird thing is that these should be default values for some, but it did not work (for me) without.

Code:

System=Generic
Quirks=0
EnableSCSI2=0
EnableParity=1
DisableROMDrive=1
BlockSize=512