[SunRescue] Re: Speaking of SGI equipment...

[David Champion]

On 1999.12.16, in <99121614032308.00295 at vault.neurotica.com>,
	"Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, Eric Ozrelic wrote:
> >Does anyone like to run Irix? Is it a good OS and
> >does it run fast on...let's say an Indigo 2 250mhz system with
> >64 mb ram? I'm trying to decided if I want to buy one to play
> >with or not. Does anyone know any good SGI hardware references
> >or breakdowns?

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/~sgi-faq/
http://www.reputable.com/indytech.html

>   I've had a Sun of one sort or another on my desk for the past eight years. 
> Until just recently, that is.  Now my desktop platform, at home and at work, is
> an Indigo2 (R4400/250, 128-192mb RAM) running Irix 6.5.
> 
>   It consistently runs rings around my SS20/81s.  I'm a diehard Sun fanatic but

SS20 @85 v. I2 @250?  Well... yeah.  Of course it's faster.  You
probakly don't have 192 MB in your SS20 either. :)

> these machines are simply TOO MUCH better to ignore them.  AMAZING graphics

But they're not much better, if any, than a more modern Sun piece.

> capabilities, great sound support, great SCSI performance, wonderfully fast CPU.

The gfx are good, though nothing exceptional by modern PC standards.
The SCSI is ok, but IRIX is historically a little flaky on that (as
well as on some other points).

>   Irix takes a bit of getting used to if you're a BSD person...but it's quite
> nice when you get used to it, and it's very, very fast.

No more getting-used-to than Solaris.  IRIX is weird, no doubt about
it, but it's not any weirder than any other non-BSD OS if you're a BSD
person.

I've spent several years with IRIX -- 1.5 or so around the 5.2-6.0 time
frame, and, more recently, 8 months or so with anywhere from 6.2 to
6.5.3.  I loved IRIX for a while, and that was with no graphics head.
<flamebait>But all I had to compare with was SunOS, HP-UX 7/8/9, OSF/1,
Linux, etc., so of course I would.</flamebait>  After using Solaris a
few years, I found I couldn't stand dealing with all the wacko,
cokeheaded eccentricities of IRIX and the SGI hardware.  They made me
very angry, with regularity.  Software that worked everywhere else with
no special mods took weird --not hard, just bizarre -- patches for
IRIX; strange things would happen on SCSI busses for no obvious reason,
driveers would fail, patch, work, fail, patch, work, then be obsoleted
on one piece of hardware by one OS release and by another OS release
for another pience of hardware.  XFS didn't work right for years.  I'm
trying not to write a full list of IRIX's flaws.

I haven't been using IRIX for about 6 months now.  I miss it.  I really
miss it.  It was a lot of fun.  I will be greatly saddened when SGI go
under, but I can say they're getting what they deserve.

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