[pixelbart]

Hi all,

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a public archive of every single IRIX version ever released?

I "need" them for a secret project I'm working on, so over the last week I've been trying to hoard as many IRIX 6.5 releases as possible (6.4 and earlier will be another project).

My main sources were:
- archive.org
- https://fsck.technology/software/Silicon...RIX%206.5/
- https://jrra.zone/sgi/
- My own collection (6.5.24, 6.5.30)

At this moment, this is what I've got:
http://pixelbart.net/SGI/irix65collection.html

That's a total of 66GB of efs and iso files.

So I'm still missing the overlay images of 6.5.20, 6.5.25 and 6.5.26. I can't find them anywhere.

Does anyone here happen to have these cd's and if so, are you willing to share disk images with me? Please?


If my collection is complete, of course I want to share it with the world. Should I upload them to archive.org? unixfiles.org? betaarchive.com? Or host them on the irixnet ftp? Or should I just self-host them? Are there legal risks besides the fact that it's all abandonware?

The purist in me wants to share them as efs images, but efs is more and more a pain in the @$$, so I guess tar archives are more practical. Are there any conventions about the naming and structure of these archives? .tar.gz or .tar.Z? with or without root folder?

Sorry, lots of questions :)

[jan-jaap]

The purist in me wants to share them as efs images, but efs is more and more a pain in the @$$, so I guess tar archives are more practical. Are there any conventions about the naming and structure of these archives? .tar.gz or .tar.Z? with or without root folder?

If you want to upload something to archive.org, keep it original. A .tar.gz is not an original but a derivative that can't be booted unless you have a netboot server. You can derive a .tar.gz from a disc image but vice versa is extremely unpractical. Distribute both for all I care but don't throw away the disc images. It's maybe 75GB, at the current cost per GB (1TB SSD for 100EUR) it's stupid not to.

Originally, customers with a valid contract would receive IRIX Overlay CD sets and everybody else could download .tar.gz files of the essentials (so not the feature stream and not the application discs).

I have the SGI downloads (.tar.gz files) from IRIX 6.5.17+ and disc images for all 6.5.x overlays minus 6.5.26. That one is around too, but it's a 'fake': someone recreated CDs from downloaded media.

[Raion]

I have a hoard of reasons I don't offer EFS images, but the main ones are I don't want to be responsible for technical support with them when people don't burn them correctly, and the main purpose of our ftp and other services is to offer things that are easy to use. Tarballs are the standard, ergo. They also seemingly compress and deduplicate better, so they don't waste as much disk space.

I can and am willing to host tarballs. Anything else, ask jrra (the host of jrra.zone).

You can use mega.nz and DM me links to download the tarballs and I'll upload them when I have time.

[pixelbart]

If you want to upload something to archive.org, keep it original. A .tar.gz is not an original but a derivative that can't be booted unless you have a netboot server. You can derive a .tar.gz from a disc image but vice versa is extremely unpractical. Distribute both for all I care but don't throw away the disc images. It's maybe 75GB, at the current cost per GB (1TB SSD for 100EUR) it's stupid not to.

I won't throw away the images. Cost isn't an issue. I just dusted of one of my old 2TB drives to play around with and my NAS has plenty of free space.

It's just that Linux distro's (like Raspberry Pi OS) are dropping support for EFS, cd-rom drives are dying and netbooting is, once configured correctly, so much easier. Cd images become more of a historic artifact.

Originally, customers with a valid contract would receive IRIX Overlay CD sets and everybody else could download .tar.gz files of the essentials (so not the feature stream and not the application discs).

So the tar.gz files have different content than the efs images? I didn't know that.

I have the SGI downloads (.tar.gz files) from IRIX 6.5.17+ and disc images for all 6.5.x overlays minus 6.5.26. That one is around too, but it's a 'fake': someone recreated CDs from downloaded media.

So you do have 6.5.20 and 6.5.25? If i open an ftp server, are you willing to upload them? That would help a lot.

I'll consider 6.5.26 as non-existent then. Too bad.

---

I have a hoard of reasons I don't offer EFS images, but the main ones are I don't want to be responsible for technical support with them when people don't burn them correctly, and the main purpose of our ftp and other services is to offer things that are easy to use. Tarballs are the standard, ergo. They also seemingly compress and deduplicate better, so they don't waste as much disk space.

I've read some of your posts on this topic and that's why I asked. I agree with you that they are the most practical, but they just don't feel like 'the real thing' to me. So I guess I'll upload the efs images to archive.org and create a script that makes tarballs.

I can and am willing to host tarballs. Anything else, ask jrra (the host of jrra.zone).

You can use mega.nz and DM me links to download the tarballs and I'll upload them when I have time.

It's no problem to first host them on my own server until you find time to upload them to irixnet, but I just don't want the archives to be too dependent on one person.

I'd rather host them as part of an existing centralized archive, with agreed-upon file formats, folder structures and filenames.

[pixelbart]

Update:

All 6.5.x images are online, in efs/iso and tar.gz format.

https://www.pixelbart.net/SGI/IRIX/index.html

[Raion]

I'll update our catalog this week then. Thank you.

[Raion]

Partially updated catalog thus far. I'll be downloading the documentation stuff next.

Thanks again.

[indigofan]

Update:

All 6.5.x images are online, in efs/iso and tar.gz format.

https://www.pixelbart.net/SGI/IRIX/index.html

Awesome, great work, nice to finally see a complete Freeware set out in the wild.

[pixelbart]

With many thanks to Jan-Jaap, the collection is updated:

https://pixelbart.net/SGI/IRIX/index.html (works also with http)

The collection contains overlays for every version (only Maintenance for 6.5.26), most Application cd's and lots of docs and freeware.

I think the collection is now as complete as it gets.

Ps the tar.gz files might still 404 because they're being gzipped which is sloowww on my Raspberry Pi. Please check again in an hour or so.

[Raion]

Thank you bart. I'll update more soon, we're working on other things.