[GL1zdA]

Another piece of SGI hardware I can't identify:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/SGI-Iris-Indigo-...3461926061
There's a board with video I/O which looks neither like Galileo Video or Starter Video. Anyone recognizes it?

[jan-jaap]

Could be a Chyron Centaur.

I can verify later, I have one of these things. I think it was only single-frame capable. So not what we call "video" these days, but more "render a frame, put the frame on the video jacks, send recorder command to record frame, repeat". This requires a single frame capable video deck and VLAN communication between system and deck. VLAN as in "video lan", not network packet encapsulation.

The Video Framer (mostly used in the Personal IRIS) was a similar device. It takes a night to render and record a short animation.

Basically, this is from the days when systems didn't have enough internal bandwidth and disk space to render a clip and then play it back realtime.

[GL1zdA]

The Centaur seems to be different, there's a picture of one on Gerhard's website: http://www.sgistuff.net/hardware/systems/indigo.html

But thanks for the info, I never realized there were "non real time" computer video devices. I've always assumed, that before the advent of NLE, computers were just used to control the video devices, doing linear editing, but never thought about outputting animations, what indeed would be hard given bandwidth/disc space limits.

For those looking for information about Video LAN, here's the archived videomedia website: https://web.archive.org/web/199612271907...media.com/ , which led me to a sweet SGI website with old animations: https://web.archive.org/web/199701050115...llery.html

[jan-jaap]

The Centaur seems to be different, there's a picture of one on Gerhard's website: http://www.sgistuff.net/hardware/systems/indigo.html

Correct, I had a look last night and the Centaur has a bunch of DB9's as shown on Gerhard's site. The card in the eBay auction is also on the 'wrong' side, mounted to the graphics card rather than the CPU board.

Normally, video I/O is attached to the CPU board, because you send video frames to/from main memory. If it's attached to the graphics board it's usually some sort of GVO option (graphics-to-video) which effectively renders (part of) the display output to composite or component video. The eBay system appears to have S-VHS and composite ports. Some GVO options also allow video input, where live video is used as a texture on 3D objects. The O2 is most famous for this party trick, but systems as far back as the PowerSeries VGX with VideoLab could pull this off.

[GL1zdA]

Normally, video I/O is attached to the CPU board, because you send video frames to/from main memory. If it's attached to the graphics board it's usually some sort of GVO option (graphics-to-video) which effectively renders (part of) the display output to composite or component video. The eBay system appears to have S-VHS and composite ports. Some GVO options also allow video input, where live video is used as a texture on 3D objects. The O2 is most famous for this party trick, but systems as far back as the PowerSeries VGX with VideoLab could pull this off.

Are you sure this is true for the "smaller" SGIs? All "ev1" and "impact" video options attach to the graphics boards, so they are also placed near them. The Centaur is an exception, but as you said, it's not "real time".

[opcode]

Is that a Control Data machine? It is probably proprietary. I have never seen video like that on an indigo.