[GL1zdA]

This appeared on eBay today: https://www.ebay.com/itm/193331654800 . What is this? I've found another one here: https://www.artisantg.com/TestMeasuremen...Controller , but the description doesn't help at all.

[Raion]

The VGX was an IRIS deskside graphics option. Ignore the "HP" part of the listing.

VME means the type of board. Everything up to the Onyx/Challenge rack for the high-end used the VME form factor and standard to connect peripherals.

[GL1zdA]

That was my first thought, but a VGX board set looks much bigger than the boards listed: http://sgistuff.net/hardware/graphics/powervision.html

[Raion]

It's a VME board for that style of machine. I don't know more than that, but there's three giveaways:

VME was ONLY used on those systems
13w3 and other superficial details strongly suggest that it is indeed an SGI peripheral
It's a video adapter, and those sometimes were on separate parts of the machine.

Basically, there's no denying that I'm correct on its intended use-case, but the details aren't here in front of me because I don't own one.

[jan-jaap]

What's in the auction is *not* a VGX boardset from a PowerSeries machine, but a "VXV".

What we see here is a set of three 6U VME cards, by the look of it "Elan" graphics in VME form factor. It could have belonged to a VME Personal IRIS (VIP30) or it's Indigo equivalent. One of the photo's shows an XMAP5 ASIC, which was used in the Express graphics family (Elan / XZ / Extreme). There's some documentation here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/personal_iris/ but that's for the older PI graphics, not Elan.

I don't think it's a full Elan set though, it looks like there's an unused connector for a Z-buffer at the front.

FWIW: I actually own 4D PowerSeries VGX systems. A VGX took up 4 or 5 full size (9U) VME boards and used a ton of power. There's no way this was shrunk to three 6U VME cards using early nineties technology.

[GL1zdA]

Okay, that makes sense. Does anyone have a photo a VME Indigo or Personal IRIS?

[jan-jaap]

Okay, that makes sense. Does anyone have a photo a VME Indigo or Personal IRIS?

Check front page of:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/persona...e_1992.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/persona...e_1992.pdf

Those are the Personal IRIS version. You'd have to install them in a 6U VME cage with sufficient power, and hook up a SCSI disk. Both of the above were on eBay a while ago, I believe someone here picked up the CPU board.

These were probably meant to be integrated with VME based data acquisition boards, possibly in a flight ready configuration (to be taken aboard an aircraft) or other industrial control application. VME allows user-defined P2 connector, that's probably how CPU and gfx board connect over a VME bus even though logically they connect via GIO32. They would have 'tunneled' GIO32 over the VME P2 connector and bridged that between the slots on the VME cage backplane.

I do not know whether a VME Indigo even existed. What surely existed was Elan graphics for the Personal IRIS, so a VME PI with Elan isn't too far-fetched.

[GL1zdA]

Okay, I'm dumb, for some reason I visualized it as Personal IRIS with a 6U VME cage

[miod]

I do not know whether a VME Indigo even existed. What surely existed was Elan graphics for the Personal IRIS, so a VME PI with Elan isn't too far-fetched.

They are supposed to have existed under the V50 name. Basically an Indigo without the magnum sound part.