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Iris Indigo Case Mod
James Palmer writes: "I have always been enamored with SGI's
Iris Indigo. Recently I resurrected an old Iris Indigo by
retrofitting it with an ATX motherboard
and powersupply." Lots of gruntwork here for a very impressive result.
More like butchered.
It begs the question...
WHY?
I must be getting old...
Jason
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
Maybe you should make Case Mods a seperate category of news. I mean, lately there have been about 1 a day. that should be enough, considering some categories come up RARELY (Amiga, MacOS, etc).
Just a suggestion.
-teldak
Talk about following "tough acts"... that Frozen case earlier today makes this one look like my ass.
Thats what I want to see. All these case mods going around, why hasn't anybody made a lego pc case yet? Seems a natural fit. That would be really cool, if somebody else did it
I really feel that these case mod stories should be restricted to the extremely new or innovative. There are web sites for this type of thing.
I mean, if someone turned an old Volkswagon Beetle into a modded case, I'd be impressed. Beyond that, it's all just pretty bells and whistles to me.
This is a very poor hack job compared to other recent case mods.
who set fire to their cars? ;-)
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
okay, I'm not trying to be a jerk, but WHY IS EVERYONE SHOWING OFF THEIR MODS?? The mod where the guy built his own case with the laser cut logos, etc. was at least semi-innovative/creative. All this guy did was core out an old computer and stick new crap in it. C'mon, I want NEWS people, not Show-n-Tell.
please feel the need to give me a Troll rating.
Applefritter has some great lego-cased systems...even a powerbook!
You can get similarly shaped server cases from most hi end PC parts manufacturers, in a variety of colors.
What I'd really like to see is a case mod with an O2 case. There's lot of low end, sub 200Mhz ones that are salvageable from dotcom auctions.
This is more in the realm of "too much time on my hands" -- it reminds me of that time in college when we slapped together a machine using an empty case from Leinenkugals (we got to drink the beer, too, which was a hefty side benefit).
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I lusted after one of these and even snuck into a SGI's sales center near Detroit years ago, along with a bunch of vendors, commercial bigwigs, graphic designers, and such to see the latest Indi , software and stuff. Also, got a peek at one of the higher end systems being used for a flight simulator which would still kick some serious graphical butt. Too bad I could never scrub together the $6K just to get the basic system. I've probably still got piles of stuff on these in a box back in my parents house. Yeah, i can sympathize with James, but there's still something ...ewww... about putting anything other than an R3000 or R4000 in there...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well, cause the original Indios are pretty damn slow these days. They've mostly got R3k processors and weird proprietray memory. They also can't run IRIX6.5 (I believe), which is "good" version of IRIX.
:-)
there was a stack SGIs in one of the labs here. I already took the only good thing, the Indy, it can still make a decent webbrowser/workstation. I suppose one could turn the Indigos into little webserver/printserver/nameserver boxes, but any old 386/486/pentium or 68k-mac will do just as good with OpenBSD on 'em.
Indigo 2s, on the other hand, are i think better than the Indys.
Still it _IS_ dman sexy to have an SGI on your desktop!
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Where can I get a wife that will go dumpster-diving for computer hardware with me?
Do tell.
"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
Remember the guy who burnt the case? What I want is an computer with a burning case ;-)...
;-)
Would just putting an Athlon in without a heat-sink work?
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
I couldn't help but notice that he has only USB devices, which includes his CD-ROM. My second CD drive is a USB, and I find that it is way too slow to use frequently. I'm amazed that he can stand it, if he indeed can.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Are there site statistics for this fellas page too? In the last case-mod post, it was almost as fun to check out the case as watch his server get nailed.
forma3
I'm the proud (?) owner of an SQL Iris 4M. I can't get it to boot. It also needs a 20 Amp shop-style plugin. I've been debating turning it into a bar fridge or maybe a really oversized PC case. If anyone objects to this senseless butchering of a historical artifact, let me know and I might be willing to sell (shipping NOT included! And you can come pick it up, I put my back out last time I moved it).
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
SGI has a log history of cool mods.
While I was working there, folks pointed out the Espressigo.
'Dem was the dayz.
i hope he grounded the thing!
maybe i'm wrong... but wouldn't it be very bad to mount a motherboard on a piece of plexiglass?
On his page, he mentions that he took out the inner metal chassis and replaced it with plexiglas.
He no longer has any RF shielding...
My roommate and I have had one for months. Exact same case. Pretty easy mod, the hardest part was drilling the holes for motherboard standoffs. I put an ecs motherboard in it with a builtin cyrix 667, and 192 megs of ram. I wanted the cyrix's low power consumption since I am a starving college student who has to pay the bills. The ecs motherboard also had lan, audio and video on board. I put 120 gigs of storage in it, and have it running windows terminal services, so I can use the rdesktop program on my linux computers. It also serves some DNS and acts as an NT domain controller. Mainly it stores MP3's. The other thing about it that is neat is I added a crystalfontz lcd panel. Old SGI cases are hard to find though, so good luck repeating. How all I need to do is find someway to mod my sparc 5 *grin*
Doug
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
...
in a dumpster.
Fit all of that into an Indy, then I'll be impressed.
Mods are cool and all, but I can get more than I care for here, among other places.
link is here...
http://home.nexvs.net/~ggeros/captainchest.htm
To me this is better than gutting "just another case" and plopping an x86 in it.
Making the computer not look like THE COMPUTER is a much more worth use of time.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You would never know it's not a real Iris Indigo.
With all the metal removed and a plexiglass frame replacing it the FCC could probably tell its not a real Indigo from the EMF radiation.
I think though that I might be inspired to do a case mod now using a Sun 411 enclosure. Given the past two days bigger cases seem to be better, perhaps I can mount my Handspring inside it.
'Same speed C but faster'
But it wasn't great. I much prefer the case mod that the guy made out of an old IBM 5150. Now that was a mod. This case mod, while it did require a cut or two, is basically just taking out the SGI motherboard and putting an Intel one in instead. The Indigo case doesn't even look that cool.
but it begs the question: What is the most ludicrous case mod out there, in terms of effort and aesthetic of the result? Anyone?
D
stuff |
I wish the case-mod insdustry and the sex-toy industry would join forces in an onholy alliance that would present to the world the ultimate geek product. A hot, lifelike girl that dual booted and had room for 5 drives, a couple gigs of ram and had usb, firewire and biological "ports". Until that happens I just don't see the point. :)
yes i run a goth/punk/emo porn site.
if you had read the article you would discover that they still had motherboards...only ram, hard disks, etc were thrown out
In an attempt to get hits on his website and a story on /., Joe Bloggs ripped the guts out of his new iMac and managed to hammer in an x86 system. He claimed this has been the most adventurous case mod yet. Others are not convinced.
"This isn't a case mod, sure he had to cut some holes and stuff, but basically he just ruined a perfectly good iMac. Shouldn't he be shot?" said one reader.
Another reader pointed out that throwing a 350 Chev into a Ford is not really modifying the look of the Ford. He did say however, "It would shock the pants of people when it actually displays some grunt, that is until the suspension goes."
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
It may be slow if you plan on using it as a workstation running the latest CAD apps and compilers, but it is perfectly usable and quite snappy as a desktop system. Depending on the graphics/video board(s) in it, you may be able to capture video, or do other fun things too.
;)
It's not true that they've "mostly" got R3k cpus. R3k models do take weird memory though. And all Indigos have proprietary keyboard and mouse ports. While R4k Indigos with enough memory (at least 64MB) can run Irix 6.5 just fine, R3k models can only run up to Irix 5.3. Despite what you're implying, 5.3 is also a "good" version of Irix, if older than 6.5. But come on, with the free development files from SGI, you can compile anything you want with gcc. It IS unix after all.
I actually hate to see people doing things like this to such a remarkable system. I would rather they sell them to resellers so that afficionados can get their hands on them. They DID play a role in the making of Jurassic Park after all.
As to Indigo2s being better than Indys.... well, it depends. The indy does have a built-in port for an IndyCam and it is a LOT quieter and smaller and sucks up less power. The Indigo2 is newer though, and can support r10k cpus and hardware texturing.
I have a complete AS/400 sitting in my basement (510 series, no joke, inherited from a friends business) that could hold several computers and all their components...
;)
Can anyone say "wow, imagine a beowulf cluster of these things!"... (ba-da-bing)
But seriously, I guess it would be pretty neat to make a self-contained cluster computer inside a 400lb (that's where the AS/400 comes from) slick black case... I'll have to get out the torch and give it a try someday.
Unless someone wants the thing... U-haul/pay shipping of course
Wow! This must be a PERSONAL letter, just for me!
Jeez. I wish I could say things like that. (/me pats his p166 fondly)
I just received my black YeongYang Cube case (No, not Cube as in Apple, just Cube), and it looks a lot like this case. The case is twice as wide as a normal case, with the motherboard on one side and the drives on the other. They are made for servers: 2 external 3 1/2, 6 external 5 1/4, 8 internal 3 1/2. More space than a full tower, and half as high.
By the way, YeongYang is not the only manufacturer of this type of cases: I know Chenbro has a similar line.
I dunno.... Looking at the pictures it looks like there's an awful lot of unshielded plastic. The reason PCs go into metal boxes is so that you don't wreck your next door neighbor's TV reception (or worse).
You think you've got riceing bad there, almost every other car here is riced (northish eastish UK). I'll stick to my sleeper any day. It may look like a lowly Peugeot - but man can it leave all these dumb looking Hondas and Subarus for dead.
So he takes the Indigo case and puts that Zip drive on top? Oh dear, the clashing, it hurts my eyes so, it is so utterly *minging*, darling.
I have to admit, it is a cool use of and old case - and why not, everyone obviously likes cool looking cases (see all those mods they sell at ThinkGeek?).
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
If you'd read the story behind it you'd know that he found the case after it had been completely gutted and tossed on a dumpster. So what else was he going to do with it?
It would be nice if you read the article first:
That night, I came back with my future wife and one of my good friends to see what could be salvaged. The boxes themselves, had been stripped of anything of value - hard drives, memory, etc. But as I stood in the dumpster, I knew what I must do. I have to use one of these boxes for a PC case. We pulled out several cases that were still in good condition as well as some other hardware that had been discarded.
All the internals have been stripped off. There's nothing left to "ruin".
It's even more sexier with multiple SGIs on the desktop. :)
Seriously, I use my Indigo2 as primary workstation at home, ircing and writing software. It also runs the webserver. When I get myself a larger harddrive for the Challenge S I'll move the webserver to that one and maybe use the O2 as main workstation instead.
The SGIs are rock solid (and noisy) machines. But I like really them.
To post those gutted Indigo cases on Ebay ;)
I found a before picture for those of you that are curious. more before pics here The next case I buy will probably be a Lian Li PC-60 and I do like the case mod articles on /. but it may be a good idea to make a seperate topic for hardware mods.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I took a Sun SparcIPX case and stuck my old K62/400 system inside. It was a fun little project with the eventual goal of turning it into a Linux broadband router+firewall. If anyone is interested one of these days I'll post the pics for all to enjoy. Next project is to put a PC into a Sparc 5 case.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
Here's a great link for doing a similar case mod.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
But come on, with the free development files from SGI, you can compile anything you want with gcc. It IS unix after all.
The problem is, the headers and libraries weren't included in IRIX until 6.5. You basically had to get the CPro compilers and ARB from SGI to do anything. With 6.5 you can go download the GCC package from freeware, or get it off of the freeware CD. Then, almost everything works beautifully, except GCC for MIPS dosen't do 64bit yet, and only O32 binaries at that (AFAIK GCC 3.x may solve this problem).
So, if you can get a box up to 6.5 (they auction CD sets off all the time on ebay) you probably are set (in thoery, anyway).
It is a shame to see someone hack apart a classic like an indigo, then defile it with x86 voodoo. It's blasphemy, I say.
Give an indigo the honorable death.
Burn it, and salute it.
Or turn it into a mini fridge.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
I think that we were slobbering over a 40-60MZ processor back then. Even with decent hardware graphics support (and some of the lower end indigos had rather cheap (8 bit!) graphics), many people would find the former speed-demon Indigos pig slow compared to what we can do today.
While I agree that it is a bit of a step back to put an Intel CPU Inside of an Indigo case, at least he's running a Unix on it. If nothing else, it gives one the nostalga trip of feeling like you've finally managed to get an SGI box onto your home desktop.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I hate to see this kind of butchery too, but in this case he pulled the cases out of a DUMPSTER - Frankenstein's SGI has got to be better than landfill... saw someone turn a Vax rack into a fridge once - looked damn sharp in the cold machine room!
That was classic intercourse!
And they were designed for ripping the guts out
and replacing with a PC?
Maybe if the case was bigger, then you could squeeze a CDROM in.
-don
Heh. Found it.. According to a 1993 periodic table, the basic 1993 Indigo had an R3000/33 CPU in it (and 64Meg of ram put you back a cool $7,000 [list]).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
My name is Indigo Montoya. You stole my RF shielding. Prepare to die!
*ducks*
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Anybody seen any nice cases that aren't just boxes? ie, spheres, disks, pyramids, that sort of thing. Non-parallel sides. Art school stuff. Stuff inspired by cool architecture like Le Corbusier (sp) and Frank Gehry, etc?
Just curious as the boxen with radioactive green on black or aluminum with blue LEDs is a little old. They all look like electrified trash compactors.
Also I agree with others: if /. is going to start showing hardware hacks all the time it needs its own category!
SGI has been offering those headers and libraries you speak of for free for several years now.
IRIX 5.3 IDO
IRIX 6.2 IDF/IDL
Alex
That case doesn't match the iomega casing.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Some computer magazine wrote a review of the Indigo2 dated 1993. It's a fascinating look back at the days when SGI workstations just totally pissed all over PCs.
Alex
Well.. putting a regular machine into a fancy machine's box is kind of like cheating. Of course, your guests are going to be impressed for a second but the disappointment will be bigger. :-)
I've seen a Sun Ultra being put in an old XT case. Now pointing to this XT case and saying 'well, this is our server' was much cooler IMHO
When men used to be men
The aluminum cube mentioned a day ago, however, was a case that was breathtaking. It's one thing to take a case and strip it down to what you need (or add things like lights/fans), and a completely different thing to build the case from scratch, using your own designs.
Which brings me to the question: when the hell are we going to see mainstream cases that don't resemble current towers? Are there cases that are, by default, modded in the fashion common nowadays (status lcds, excess fans, useless-yet-pretty lights)? I'd really like to see less case mods and more completely custom cases, but I don't think that would happen until the souped-up cases people do now are no longer seen as modded cases, and are instead seen as mainstream. I'm assuming the main reason people mod cases is for the "hey look at my nifty case" factor; if everyone had nifty cases, then hopefully more people would consider building a custom case from scratch in order to distinguish themselves.
Maybe then we'll finally see those dodecahedron cases that the G5 is rumored to reside in :D
This is a cool idea, I've been wondering for a while how feasible it is......especially since I have 9 indigos + keyboards/mice + 19" monitors filling up a closet.....hmmmmm.....I could use some more ideas though...
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Why on earth would I tear my Indigo^2 apart to make a boring, normal PC out of it? It's still perfectly useful; an Iris Indigo would've been, too.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
He should have restored it back to working order. At least then he could play tranquility on it.
Even simpler, he could have lined the inside using aluminum foil glued in place with an aerosol adhesive. Ground that, and it's a lot better RF shield than plastic.
That's what really ticks me off about these case modders. Most of them don't even expend the tiniest effort to shield their systems. Eventually, one of them will move into a condo right beside a Congressman and f*ck up the television reception. Then we will see the American RF Protection Act signed into law, forbidding the sale of computer components to anyone other than Dell/Gateway/Compaq/HP/etc. Microsoft and the big computer manufacturers will spend millions of dollars in lobbying efforts to get the bill passed (since Microsoft makes a sale almost every time someone buys an assembled system).
Doh!
:(
Hey, thanks for pointing that out. I was looking for that on SGIs site (a long time ago), but I guess I must have not looked hard enough. That's what a short attention span will do for you. Methinks its time to dust off the 'ol crimson.
Still, if one's system can handle it, IRIX 6.5.x is the way to go. Too bad my poor crimson can't
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Or you can just get one of these!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
And they were designed for ripping the guts out and replacing with a PC?
Actually, sadly, the outside part was designed as a skin for the computer inside. I can't believe he destroyed a nice and probably working piece of equipment just to have the skin.
(Of course, I can't understand why people hunt endangered animals to hang on their walls, either.)
He could have removed the skin without damaging the computer. You can find Indigo skins for sale by checking Google... it's an item that new owners sometimes replace because it's scratched...
Get off my launchpad!
"Dust off the ol crimson"??
;) I respect older unices for their efficiency -- of which 6.2 pales in comparison with 5.3.
*faint*
Look, if you really feel that bad about only being able to run 6.2 on it, I'll gladly take it off your hands. Not that's it's legal to run it at home though. And it would probably interfere with the equipment at work.
It's funny that older operating systems don't have as much appeal as the hardware they ran on. Irix 6.2 is solid and provides the hardware support and interface (and it requires less memory than 6.5... a bonus when you consider the cost of adding memory to most of these things). And GCC provides everything GNU. You're not really missing anything. Unix is unix is unix... if it supports posix and BSD extensions, you're all set -- SGI's website even has a slew of tips for compiling with gcc (I bet you already knew this since you knew about the caveats of using gcc). At least that's how I see it.
Of course, if you actually DID want to run commercial 6.5 software on it.... you would probably also have the money to buy a new workstation or a second-hand Onyx.
well, when you consider that if you know what you are doing, getting an indigo's skin off is a piece of cake, you have to figure that he was deliberately trying to build muscle. press a couple tabs and that's it. this was less a nifty case mod than a waste of an indigo mobo.
I have one of these beasts. Picked it up for very little, but it clocks 100Mhz, has 128MB of RAM, and the best graphics (Elan). It is truly a remarkable machine (for it's time). It's definitely still a terrific X terminal, even if it's too slow for web browsing or real 3D work.
It's kind of sad- I don't have time to play with the Indigo, and an Indigo2 is my main desktop but is slow enough that I don't use it for much either. My boss has a pair of r3k Indigos that are just sitting on a bookshelf full of old computers. They weren't spectacular to begin with, but they're so much better designed than any PC that I'm depressed to see them gathering dust.
Unfortunately, the biggest problem with these is that it's impossible to get SGI compilers at a worthwhile price, or to get commercial software that will run on them. I'd love it if someone would come up with a "secure" hobbyist license- nodelocked software at a hugely reduced price with if you send them your sysid for an obsolete system.
Ah, those were the days. Contrast with the latest PC case I just bought. The metal was so thin that when I put my fingers into the expension slots to pull it into place under my desk, I ended up with multiple deep incisions in my fingers, like the world's worst paper cuts. Ick.
The only case I've ever seen that's more solid that an Indigo was an IBM PC from about 1985, made in Greenock, Scotland, a famous shipbuilding town. I reckon that the fab had just swapped over from making plates for ships, and decided to re-use the last few, complete with water-tight bulkheads. ;-)
But SGI's are amazingly robust (and heavy) as well. A workmate just bought an Indigo (the desktop orientation) on eBay. The seller noted that he'd package it up to his usual high standard, although there wasn't really any need. When it arrived, we saw what he meant. If the Indigo was a car, it would be a Mercedes. But not an ordinary Mercedes. It would be one of the "Diplomatic Specials", the ones that sneer at small arms, and give you a fair change against an RPG. It's that sort of construction. It's not just the thickness of the box, it's the redundant internal bracing, and that the components have multiple fixings, or are in snug caddys. You could probably go over Niagra Falls in one of these babies. ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
... especially because the Indigo (like many SGI systems) was built like a mini rack... there was a backplane at the rear of the case, and all the boards slid in on rails and latched in. Drives were also sled-mounted (which is a royal PITA for SGI retroheads like myself, always scrounging for sleds!).
Well, what's "too slow for web browsing" for one is "perfectly acceptable" for another. ;) But I admit I wouldn't bother trying to get Flash and the Java plug-in going on 6.5.
I don't accept the notion that they're "not much use"... Granted, they're not much for general use, considering what "general use" entails nowadays for most people, and they're not much for professional use, considering what "professional use" means to an SGI nowadays (although they did just fine when released). So that leaves specialized use..... admittedly, it would have to be pretty specialized. Maybe it's just me.... but I don't see any good reason, other than code bloat, for a machine that animated dinosaurs (among other things) to be obsolete. It seems like such a waste. (Sure, its lack of hardware texturing would make it a poor choice for animating now, but the system as a whole is rock solid).
As for SGI releasing their dev tools or even IRIX 5.3, 6.2, 6.5.x to hobbyists... well, that's occasionally brought up on comp.sys.sgi.x. From winter 2000/2001 straight through summer 2001, there was endless ranting about SGI, including on this particular topic. I personally wish they would make it easier for hobbyists or even professionals who might depend on the second-hand market (which SGI has recently gotten into with reasonable prices for hardware). They stand to lose nothing by releasing older versions of IRIX for free, nor by making MipsPro available for these older systems. The whole licensing scheme is bogus. GCC works on Mips, but the quality of code produced by MipsPro is unbelievable. In fact, there's a thread on comp.os.plan9 now in which Rob Pike states he wouldn't be surprised if it was officially revealed that there's over 25,000 lines of code in MipsPro just for instruction reordering.
Please, PLEASE take the time to insert the html for your links. It makes reading user posts much, much nicer...
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
The admin of the First Class BBS, Gamma Quadrant has taken a couple of rev a iMacs with dead CRT's and shoved the guts into this piece of hardware which lets you rackmount your iMac innards. Has extensions for all the necessities, VGA port, usb, etc.
To be fair to the moderators, you were doing a little trolling. /. and moderators are trying to minimize it as much as they can. I would suggest waiting until you can read the article, someone mirrors it or you find the google cache of the page that you refrain from posting judgements about the article.
1. You post offtopic without reading article
2. Complain that you can't read article
3. Speculate and then complain about what the guy in the article might have done.
These kinds of things are used to start arguements all the time here on
(Back Ontopic)
I don't own an SGI box but I was on ebay looking for one right before the article was posted. I would love to have one up and running but would settle for a gutted Indigo with an athlon in it over an athlon in a beige box.
I have a couple Powermac 8600s that have been stripped of memory and hd. I'm thinking about putting a ATA100 controller and a hd and running LinuxPPC on them to replace my boring P3 450 box.
Unfair.
1. My original post was completely on topic.
2. I didn't complain that I couldn't read the article, I defended myself when someone accussed me of it.
3. I didn't speculate what he had done, so much as speculate where the rest of the SGI went.
If people want to argue, they'll argue about anything. Using that as a justifcation to shut me up is weak.
(Back Ontopic)
You're much better off reading comp.sys.sgi.marketplace. Sure, there are too many dealers there wanting retail prices for stuff that doesn't deserve wholesale... but every once in awhile there is a gem. My luck is that every time one of these comes along, I'm flat broke. I'm serious too, we're talking full Indigo 2 systems in the $150 range, not some beat up, half the parts are missing Personal Iris. Honest to god, with vintage hardware, if it doesn't have the mouse and keyboard, and every other proprietary piece, you're better off waiting. My DECstation is still wanting the puck mouse and a copy of Ultrix 4.3 (this is also valid for SGI... if the drives are pulled, forget it, IRIX media costs up to $150, or even higher).
And please. Don't ever butcher vintage hardware. Ever. So what if it was only the case... someone out there might have had just the motherboard. And he's just ruined it. As a guy that has waited along time to find some parts to complete systems, this really does make me sad.
even if you can't get ahold of (semi-) proprietary peripherals, these are "real machines" after all, and can be run from a serial port. I've got a stack of SGI challenge Ss in my basement that run this way.
if you don't dig ultrix, (or can't get it,) NetBSD has been running on DECStations now for years. my main machine (DNS, HTTP, SMTP, SSH plus a handful of users) at home is a 5000/240 running NetBSD 1.4.3A and I have nothing but praise for its reliability. the hardware is easily capable of five-nines uptime and is very well engineered. even the smaller 2100s and 3100s can make reliable light servers.
The horror! :~( to think that perfectly functional machines still capable of useful work are getting destroyed and scrapped around the world everyday is bad enough, but if people start scrapping machines to cool cases? no respect.
visit thepoofygoof orphanarium for obsolete unix boxes
NetBSD: the cathedral vs the bizzare.
Is the big news that someone put a computer inside a computer case???? Ok its not the computer that it was designed for but not really that impressive. Slashdot needs to have seperate sections for real news and hey look at this! types of stories.
Actually, the machine in question was saved from the crusher of all things.
:)
:)
Some old guys I know haul all sorts of interestering things from a few research labs, and Lockheed Martin, then basically scrap it.
It's a very sad thing, indeed. It's amazing what government contractors will throw away. Iv'e seen many a microVAX go to the scrap yard (everything stripped out of them, so It's very hard to justify keeping any of it).
Iv'e saved an 4U rackmount Indigo2 MAX Impact the same way, with DAT even. I'm currently using this machine as a combo workstation/footwarmer
I haven't acutally had the ability to even see if the Crimson will boot. It's stripped of hard drives, sleds and all. I presume it's to keep stuff secret. Luckily enough, they left the system boards, IR system, framebuffers and RAM alone.
I'll have to find a copy of 6.2 (I only have 6.3, 6.5), and take it to the shop to get at some 220. I doubt very much that it will interfere with some welders and machine tools, though I suspect the converse would probably be true
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
If anything, I'd say, "Anything Goes"
http://www.bit-tech.com/ and http://www.virtual-hideout.net/ have some AMAZING tricks.
Esp. the windowed HD - OMG...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?