[pbeveridge]

I'm not sure if software is the right word, but I was wondering if anyone knew about Conga, a film recorder driver dating to the mid 90s, which was written into the hardware of SG Indigo computers. The beginning of computer generated special effects happened bout then and these workstations were linked to film recorders, mainly MGI solitaires.

Look forward to any info on this topic  !

[robespierre]

Ahem. The beginning of computer generated special effects is two decades earlier than that: the first SIGGRAPH conference was held in 1974.

The use of computer generated imagery in motion pictures begins with the Foonly F1 computer and PFR-80 film recorder at Triple-I, used on the movies "Westworld" (1973), "Futureworld" (1976), "Meteor" (1979), "Looker" (1981), "Tron" (1982), and "Flight of the Navigator" (1986); as well as many television spots for commercials and station IDs.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ou_UYwt0_d0
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fWxToM_KPeA

I'm sure some film recorders were used in conjunction with IRIS Indigos, but keep in mind the disk space requirements. In 1992, the largest 3.5" SCSI disks (that would fit in an Indigo) were about 1 GB (e.g. Seagate Hawk ST11200N), and the Indigo has 3 internal narrow SCSI bays. 4K imagery, uncompressed, takes up 35 MB per frame, so an Indigo, fully loaded with disks, could only store less than 4 seconds worth of imagery for film output. A larger machine like a 4D/420 or Crimson would have been more capable in that role.

[vishnu]

And of course there are the epic appearances of SGI workstations in the movie Jurassic Park.

[jan-jaap]

I have the Conga 3.9 software. It's from 2003 and requires IRIX 6.5.6 or newer.

It supports various film scanners and recorders, including the MGI Solitaire series

[pbeveridge]

My apologies for my silence, I posted after being recommended this site by a photography archivist who shared my passion for placing digital imagery back onto film. I thought it was a shot in the dark! I would receive no replies..

But, oh my goodness, that's amazing if you do have this long lost software. Would you be prepared to share it or offer it for sale. We both have these old CRT films recorders.

My SGI 2 has 6.5.22. I'm left wondering if I could upgrade..


Many thanks for your contributing to the knowledge ot this software.

[vishnu]

if your SGI runs your software on 6.5.22 successfully, there's no particular need to upgrade to 6.5.30 - 6.5.30 was a revenue release, not a feature release.

[robespierre]

If the OP's machine is an Indigo R4000 or Indigo2, there is simply no way to upgrade beyond 6.5.22.
6.5.30 can only be installed on newer platforms like O2 or Octane.

[pbeveridge]

Oh dear! guess I'll have to upgrade to an Octane, if the software can be installed on different machines

But many thanks for the info, and advice..

[robespierre]

Sometimes it's the apparently obvious things that pass without mention:
6.5.22 is newer than 6.5.6 (the "point release" is a higher number), therefore there should be no compatibility issue.

Normal practice is that versions do not represent real numbers (where .6 is greater than .22) although I think FlexLM does it that way inside license.dat files.