Hopefully the SP2 delays are giving the VPC team more time to test, tweak, and polish their emulator itself. After all, what else could they spend their time working on? I doubt they're the very set of programmers that work on the Mac version of MSN Messenger. Heck, they're probably all ex-Connectix engineers anyway.
My boss's boss wanted "a computer like THAT", as he pointed to a 42" plasma screen in conference room. We eventually just plugged a Sony SDM-232W 23" widescreen LCD into his PC and replaced the keyboard and mouse. He's now as happy as can be. (As he continues to use one app at a time: Outlook, MSIE, or sometimes Word or WordPad).
Debits, Credits, and management straegies give me a headache. For many of us techies, the management and money side of things is better left to those with a different type of brain.
Make sure you have jumbo frames enabled on all the machines. Note that you need OS X 10.2.4 or newer on your Mac to use the 9K frames.
Also, Samba might not be the best choice for Mac Linux transfers. You'll probably be better off using NFS version 3 between the Mac and Linux box. Both machines should speak NFS natively and not require any additional software.
4DWm, which is IRIX's window manager still uses old fashioned bitmap icons for minimized windows. The file manager (fm), which also draws the desktop uses vector icons since over 10 years, which were ported to OpenGL from IrisGL less than a year ago.
Get an old black NeXTstation or NeXT cube from eBay if you want a 4.2 BSD based machine. IIRC, the original OS, NeXTstep, was based on 4.2 BSD, while the later OS, OpenStep, was based on 4.3 BSD.
If yuo need a Silicon Graphics box to develop software on, check out http://forums.nekochan.net. Someone there can probably give you an account on a SGI IRIX 6.5.x system with gcc and/or MIPSpro. You could also buy an O2 from eBay for about $50. You'll still need to find a more recent version of IRIX, but SGI will give you all of the development tools for free if you join their "plus" developer program as a "hobbyist". SGI also gives away free accounts on their big iron Origin (IRIX) and Altix (Linux) systems, but you probably have to be a full-time serious developer for that.
Netscape support (4.x versions) was recently dropped by SGI. I have not perceived any indications SGI is gonna support the 7.x versions. Instead SGI supports Mozilla.
I would imagine this was a move by Netscape, not SGI. Did they ever actually "support" Netscape? I think it was just a bundled freebie until Netscape pulled the plug on several of its unix versions.
The machines we use have an older version of IRIX, which has SGI's compile of Mozilla 1.0.something that you speak of. Sadly, I haven't seen newer versions of Mozilla on SGI's website for download nor have I seen newer versions of IRIX Netscape on the netscape site for download either. I will try SGI's version of FireFox as you suggested. I can't find Mozilla on www.nekochan.net.
Who and where is this Netscape build being made? Is it someone at Sun?
I would like to see versions of Netscape 7.2 for both Tru64 and SGI IRIX, but I doubt it will happen. If I knew who to contact, I would at least try to argue my case.
Mozilla is generally fine, but there are still those who want "their netscape".
Perhaps I should just change Mozilla to the modern theme and use the Netcape throbber, they'd never know the difference!
Anyone here remember the Cloud Nine CORE remote? It was shaped like the letter "T" and had gobs of programmable buttons. Designed by Steve Wozniak (yes, Woz, the guy who designed the Apple I and Apple II) as part of his CL9 company shortly after leaving Apple.
The CL9 CORE was **insane**, it had two 6502 CPUs and the manual was a huge binder full of technical specs and sample code. Programming was done in assembly and/or a BASIC-like language. The CORE could communicate with damn near any IR device and do just about anything imaginable. It was the emacs of remote controls. Many of its owners loved it, many of its owners couldn't even figure out how to turn the thing on.
This new Sony remote reminds me of a modern CORE.
BTW: Woz later gave away his many IR patents and design idea to General Magic, the group of ex-Apple engineers that made the over-engineered and unstable Magic Cap PDA platform.
I bought a used HP LaserJet 4050N from a seller on eBay who specializes in reselling HP LaserJets and SGI workstations. For ~$250, I got a PCL + Postscript laser printer with a rockin' built-in print server (Win/Classic Mac/Unix-LPR/even ftp to the print queue!). I don't recall the published PPM rate, but it spits out a page every couple seconds. I think the page count was 74,000 when I bought it, yet it looks and works as though it was brand new. I think the duty cycle rating for this beast is 65,000 pages / month.
We need that GPU power to drive the year's greatest advancement in Mac games... the new version of Chess.app in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther!!
Yessir, the 10.3 version of Chess now has a true OpenGL-baed 3D board. You can view from any angle and can even adjust the textures! Hooray!
For those not familar with Chess.app, it is the (opensource) bundled game for Mac OS X. Until the most recent version, it had been largely unchanged from its original form in the NeXTSTEP OS.
(BTW, the Apple Puzzle game, which has been around since System 1.0, isn't yet available native for OS X, but it might reappear as one of the Javascript+CSS3 applets in the Dashboard of 10.4 Tiger next spring)
I'm crossing my fingers that the Mac system requirements will say "G4 1.25 GHz." And I'm sure Id is too...Mac users are much less likely to dump their systems for a game, and 1.25 was the top end model from a year ago. I think the top line G4 when the G5s were announced was a 1.42 GHz G4.
Assuming you are using 10.3 "Panther", did you choose to install X11 when you installed the OS? If not, you can still install it now via drag-and-drop.
Apple's X11 is based on Xfree 4.3 and has pretty much replaced Xdarwin and the others. It works great and is *fast*. Even the GLX acceleration is just as fast as native Quartz/Cocoa OpenGL.
If you play around with some of the config files (or just boot to a console login and "startx"), you can even get your mac to login to an X11 desktop rather than the native Aqua desktop!
Hi, I'm Joe Q Developer. I only write small freeware apps, so Microsoft won't even talk to me. So please tell me where I can legally download the source to Windows XP?
Oh, I can't?
Apple may not release the source to its higher level frameworks, but everything you need for low-level hooks is right there in Darwin. Hell, that's most of the OS.
...how easy it is to install printer and sound drivers?
I don't know about the Altix, but on SGI's Origins you can install a $50 M-Audio Revolution 7.1 PCI card and it'll work right out of the box. Works on any SGI using the IRIX64 kernel. I have one in an old Origin 200 as part of my streaming audio setup. SGI also sells an assortment of consumerish to pro audio cards and video i/o capture cards.
As far as printer drivers, I'm assuming their Altix setup is similar to their Origin setup, which now uses a commercial CUPS printing subsystem. ESP PrintPro I think. Plenty of drivers to choose from if you don't already have a nice laser/colorlaser with built-in postscript and ethernet.
If you want a good laugh, attend SC2004 this year.
OK, I'm being cruel. But c'mon, if you have a 160 IQ and a Cray X1 is your bitch, why can't you at least trim that beard?! Is there something about shmem that requires vast amounts of facial hair?
I have a buddy who did the Windows to Mac switch about a year ago. He bought a G4 tower for something like $850 when the G5s came out. At any rate, he's one of the lucky few who isn't much of a gamer so the Mac platform works quite well for him. Warcraft III and SimCity 4000 are his favorite games and he's now on the Worlds of Warcraft beta (lucky dude) and is as happy as can be.
Then how come when I put a two-button mouse on my grandma's Mac, and she tried to use it, her head exploded?
This reminds me of the shock I got a few months ago when a Mac user buddy of mine was showing off the G4 he had bought on clearance when the G5s came out. I didn't think of him as a power user, especially since he never shelled out $20 for a better mouse. But I almost fell out of my chair when I asked him how many iTunes songs he had purchased... he did a command-tab to cycle thru his apps, stopping on a terminal window, and did a "find . -name "*.m4p" -print | wc -l"
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully the SP2 delays are giving the VPC team more time to test, tweak, and polish their emulator itself. After all, what else could they spend their time working on? I doubt they're the very set of programmers that work on the Mac version of MSN Messenger. Heck, they're probably all ex-Connectix engineers anyway.
My boss's boss wanted "a computer like THAT", as he pointed to a 42" plasma screen in conference room. We eventually just plugged a Sony SDM-232W 23" widescreen LCD into his PC and replaced the keyboard and mouse. He's now as happy as can be. (As he continues to use one app at a time: Outlook, MSIE, or sometimes Word or WordPad).
How do you pronounce that? [AtheOS]
It's pronounced: "Syllable"
>>Tempted by Mac OS but not thrilled with the hardware cost?
> [Reference to eMac]
I can build a full Athlon XP + Radeon 9600 system, with DVD+/-RW, for $480. For an extra $20 I can upgrade to a really snazzy case.
So what's your point again?
Debits, Credits, and management straegies give me a headache. For many of us techies, the management and money side of things is better left to those with a different type of brain.
Make sure you have jumbo frames enabled on all the machines. Note that you need OS X 10.2.4 or newer on your Mac to use the 9K frames.
Also, Samba might not be the best choice for Mac Linux transfers. You'll probably be better off using NFS version 3 between the Mac and Linux box. Both machines should speak NFS natively and not require any additional software.
Jobs should have had these folks work on his pancreas, he would have saved a bundle!
http://www.ipodbattery.com/
4DWm, which is IRIX's window manager still uses old fashioned bitmap icons for minimized windows. The file manager (fm), which also draws the desktop uses vector icons since over 10 years, which were ported to OpenGL from IrisGL less than a year ago.
Why'd they even bother to do that port?
Get an old black NeXTstation or NeXT cube from eBay if you want a 4.2 BSD based machine. IIRC, the original OS, NeXTstep, was based on 4.2 BSD, while the later OS, OpenStep, was based on 4.3 BSD.
If yuo need a Silicon Graphics box to develop software on, check out http://forums.nekochan.net. Someone there can probably give you an account on a SGI IRIX 6.5.x system with gcc and/or MIPSpro. You could also buy an O2 from eBay for about $50. You'll still need to find a more recent version of IRIX, but SGI will give you all of the development tools for free if you join their "plus" developer program as a "hobbyist". SGI also gives away free accounts on their big iron Origin (IRIX) and Altix (Linux) systems, but you probably have to be a full-time serious developer for that.
Netscape support (4.x versions) was recently dropped by SGI. I have not perceived any indications SGI is gonna support the 7.x versions. Instead SGI supports Mozilla.
I would imagine this was a move by Netscape, not SGI. Did they ever actually "support" Netscape? I think it was just a bundled freebie until Netscape pulled the plug on several of its unix versions.
The machines we use have an older version of IRIX, which has SGI's compile of Mozilla 1.0.something that you speak of. Sadly, I haven't seen newer versions of Mozilla on SGI's website for download nor have I seen newer versions of IRIX Netscape on the netscape site for download either. I will try SGI's version of FireFox as you suggested. I can't find Mozilla on www.nekochan.net.
Who and where is this Netscape build being made? Is it someone at Sun?
I would like to see versions of Netscape 7.2 for both Tru64 and SGI IRIX, but I doubt it will happen. If I knew who to contact, I would at least try to argue my case.
Mozilla is generally fine, but there are still those who want "their netscape".
Perhaps I should just change Mozilla to the modern theme and use the Netcape throbber, they'd never know the difference!
Anyone here remember the Cloud Nine CORE remote? It was shaped like the letter "T" and had gobs of programmable buttons. Designed by Steve Wozniak (yes, Woz, the guy who designed the Apple I and Apple II) as part of his CL9 company shortly after leaving Apple.
The CL9 CORE was **insane**, it had two 6502 CPUs and the manual was a huge binder full of technical specs and sample code. Programming was done in assembly and/or a BASIC-like language. The CORE could communicate with damn near any IR device and do just about anything imaginable. It was the emacs of remote controls. Many of its owners loved it, many of its owners couldn't even figure out how to turn the thing on.
This new Sony remote reminds me of a modern CORE.
BTW: Woz later gave away his many IR patents and design idea to General Magic, the group of ex-Apple engineers that made the over-engineered and unstable Magic Cap PDA platform.
I bought a used HP LaserJet 4050N from a seller on eBay who specializes in reselling HP LaserJets and SGI workstations. For ~$250, I got a PCL + Postscript laser printer with a rockin' built-in print server (Win/Classic Mac/Unix-LPR/even ftp to the print queue!). I don't recall the published PPM rate, but it spits out a page every couple seconds. I think the page count was 74,000 when I bought it, yet it looks and works as though it was brand new. I think the duty cycle rating for this beast is 65,000 pages / month.
We need that GPU power to drive the year's greatest advancement in Mac games... the new version of Chess.app in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther!!
Yessir, the 10.3 version of Chess now has a true OpenGL-baed 3D board. You can view from any angle and can even adjust the textures! Hooray!
For those not familar with Chess.app, it is the (opensource) bundled game for Mac OS X. Until the most recent version, it had been largely unchanged from its original form in the NeXTSTEP OS.
(BTW, the Apple Puzzle game, which has been around since System 1.0, isn't yet available native for OS X, but it might reappear as one of the Javascript+CSS3 applets in the Dashboard of 10.4 Tiger next spring)
It's gonna run like crap. Dual CPUs don't make any difference in games
Most modern games have at least two threads, one for the game itself and another for the (increasingly complex) audio engine.
Another advantage to a dual CPU machine is that the game itself can run on one CPU, while the OS/gfx driver tasks can use the other.
That said, dual CPUs (or a cluster for that matter) is not a magic fairy wand that makes two old CPUs into one new fast CPU.
I'm crossing my fingers that the Mac system requirements will say "G4 1.25 GHz." And I'm sure Id is too...Mac users are much less likely to dump their systems for a game, and 1.25 was the top end model from a year ago.
I think the top line G4 when the G5s were announced was a 1.42 GHz G4.
Assuming you are using 10.3 "Panther", did you choose to install X11 when you installed the OS? If not, you can still install it now via drag-and-drop.
Apple's X11 is based on Xfree 4.3 and has pretty much replaced Xdarwin and the others. It works great and is *fast*. Even the GLX acceleration is just as fast as native Quartz/Cocoa OpenGL.
If you play around with some of the config files (or just boot to a console login and "startx"), you can even get your mac to login to an X11 desktop rather than the native Aqua desktop!
Hi, I'm Joe Q Developer. I only write small freeware apps, so Microsoft won't even talk to me. So please tell me where I can legally download the source to Windows XP?
Oh, I can't?
Apple may not release the source to its higher level frameworks, but everything you need for low-level hooks is right there in Darwin. Hell, that's most of the OS.
...how easy it is to install printer and sound drivers?
I don't know about the Altix, but on SGI's Origins you can install a $50 M-Audio Revolution 7.1 PCI card and it'll work right out of the box. Works on any SGI using the IRIX64 kernel. I have one in an old Origin 200 as part of my streaming audio setup. SGI also sells an assortment of consumerish to pro audio cards and video i/o capture cards.
As far as printer drivers, I'm assuming their Altix setup is similar to their Origin setup, which now uses a commercial CUPS printing subsystem. ESP PrintPro I think. Plenty of drivers to choose from if you don't already have a nice laser/colorlaser with built-in postscript and ethernet.
Remember, IRIX was the first OS to scale a single Unix OS image across 512 CPUs. And now they've eclipsed that, with Linux.
u gust/nasa.html
Just to clear things up:
SGI's first 1024p single-image supercomputer was an Origin 3800 running a customized "XXL" IRIX 6.5 kernel. This was in August 2002, almost 2 years ago.
http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2002/a
If you want a good laugh, attend SC2004 this year.
OK, I'm being cruel. But c'mon, if you have a 160 IQ and a Cray X1 is your bitch, why can't you at least trim that beard?! Is there something about shmem that requires vast amounts of facial hair?
I have a buddy who did the Windows to Mac switch about a year ago. He bought a G4 tower for something like $850 when the G5s came out. At any rate, he's one of the lucky few who isn't much of a gamer so the Mac platform works quite well for him. Warcraft III and SimCity 4000 are his favorite games and he's now on the Worlds of Warcraft beta (lucky dude) and is as happy as can be.
If won't run all of your games, and it may be a bit slow, but we are trying to make it Mac-like.
Regarding the slow part, apparently you haven't used 10.3.0 or newer. Or you haven't used a 500 MHz G3 or faster.
Regarding games, there's always a need for a Windows PC for that. Chess.app and Warcraft III get old pretty quick!
I mean, those Macs are 50% more expensive than a functionally-equivilant PC...
Funny, the same can be said for someone who buys a pre-built PC with a Windows license included.
Then how come when I put a two-button mouse on my grandma's Mac, and she tried to use it, her head exploded?
This reminds me of the shock I got a few months ago when a Mac user buddy of mine was showing off the G4 he had bought on clearance when the G5s came out. I didn't think of him as a power user, especially since he never shelled out $20 for a better mouse. But I almost fell out of my chair when I asked him how many iTunes songs he had purchased... he did a command-tab to cycle thru his apps, stopping on a terminal window, and did a "find . -name "*.m4p" -print | wc -l"
Someone was doing their homework!