16 ms·

Show HN: My new wiki for Silicon Graphics stuff

108 points by ThatGuyRaion 2y ago

I also run IRIXNet. I'm here to share my newest SGI-related project.

blankx32 2y ago
Images broken?
- ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
  Where?
- ProjectVader 2y ago
  the images are broken for me as well.
  - ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
    How am i gonna fix it if you don't tell me WHERE? I'm not trying to be a dick. I wanna fix it. I need to know how and where it's a problem!
    - blankx32 2y ago
      by the way the images still don’t load for me now, none of them.
      - ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
        Give. Me. Details. To. Replicate. Please. Browser. Screenshot. URL. OS. I'm on Brave/ GNU/Linux and it works.
        roetlich 2y ago
        lol. Maybe it's better to ignore bad bug reports. For what it's worth, I tried LibreWolf and Edge on Windows and Firefox on Android, to try some less used combinations. Images always load. :)
        ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
        Gracias for the testing. I appreciate it. I mostly run BSD and GNU/Linux at home.
- ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
  If you don't tell people where, how are we gonna fix it? I found ONE broken image. one. It took me hours to find it. Please don't just vaguely tell me one image somewhere is broken. Please be specific next time!
  - blankx32 2y ago
    That language isn’t necessary, for me the site has always loaded with no images so i thought it was obvious, apologies if that’s not what you or others have seen.
    - ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
      Well that's a "let's get details to replicate issue" Level problem. Clearly, images are supposed to load. Give me details to chew on. I mean, if you're on HN, you know better than to say "It's broken" level of detail.
foldor 2y ago
How about adding information about IDO, like the static recompilation project being used in N64 game decompilation projects? It enables compiling code in a linux environment and having it match 1:1 as if it were run by the original compiler. There's even significant progress in decompiling the entire codebase as well. https://github.com/decompals/ido-static-recomp https://github.com/decompals/ido-static-recomp https://github.com/decompals/ido-matching-decomp https://github.com/decompals/ido-matching-decomp
- ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
  As time permits! I'm the only current article writer at this time
tombert 2y ago
I guess I sort of get it, but I always kind of wondered why Silicon Graphics never made a "prosumer" computer. With the (kind of) exception of the Nintendo 64, it seems like most of the Silicon Graphics machines were tens of thousands of dollars in the 90's. I am curious what the world would be like now if Silicon Graphics had made a model that was less than $2,000, but still ran Irix and had some amount of the 3D processing stuff with it. For that matter, I sometimes wonder what it would be like if Nintendo had released kits for the N64 that let you use it more as a computer. I'm just thinking that it's all about timing; if they had released something in 1997 for "prosumers", before OS X came out, would Apple have its same market position now? Would we all be using SGiPhones? Would every tech startup get all their engineers little SGI laptops?
- browningstreet 2y ago
  I had an Indy on my desk when it came out, with a 21" CRT monitor. I think they thought that's what the Indy was. I'd still go downstairs to another lab to play with the NeXT cube that was there. It was the culture of the time -- they didn't want to move downmarket and seem like PCs, so they (and their competitors) kept the workstation class a bit more premium and hoped to get enough business/tech purchases from the likes of academia and entertainment. They weren't really trying to sell to devs so much.
  - tombert 2y ago
    I am sure there was a whole bunch of factors, but, at least from my lay perspective, it seems like a recurring theme was that these companies kind of underestimated how good even relatively cheap Intel CPUs were going to get in the 90's, making it so that even consumers could afford a pretty powerful computer, or at least powerful enough to be "useful", and then it becomes less obvious why you'd spend $5,000-15,000+ on a fancy workstation; if I can get 80% of the value of an SGI with just a decent Pentium and a bit of extra RAM, for 1/4 the cost, most people are going to go with that. Of course, I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm confident a lot of people on HN know more about this than I do, this is just a Wikipedia-level understanding of this seems to indicate to me. Still, I do like to think about it. A part of me thinks, and I have no way to confirm this, that there might have been bigger ambitions for the N64, to convert it into a "real" computer, so you could have a "real" SGI machine at home (though obviously less powerful than an Indy or something).
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
From https://www.tech-pubs.net/wiki/IRIX_101 https://www.tech-pubs.net/wiki/IRIX_101 - > Why are machines that run IRIX expensive? > There are no new machines being produced, and high-end machines are in short supply. Less expensive machines can be had. We do not recommend using eBay to search, as the prices are usually extremely inflated. Less expensive machines can be had on the non-eBay used market, or have we hit the point where the cheapest way to have such a machine is dedicated emulation like https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=33.%20LinuxCard https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=33.%20LinuxCard ?
- ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
  If we can get an FPGA core of the Indy's XL/24 board and helper chips, you can buy a cheap pack of R5ks on alibaba last I checked and probably make a smol sgi board
- eschaton 2y ago
  There's a parts vendor who charges pretty high prices and a small, insular community that thinks his prices are just fine and bid everything up to that level as they try to acquire (many) duplicates of systems they already have, which results in a high barrier to entry for people interested in doing things with SGI systems.
  - ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
    Half right. Are you talking about Ian? that happened on one transaction. Considering how tight knit our community is... I prefer to err on the side of respect, even if I disagree with some people's practices. There's an SGUG admin I disagree with on this, but we get along anyways because we're both adults. I won't pretend I've been perfect, but quitting the booze in the quantity I was doing helped a bunch
curtisszmania 2y ago
[dead]
ur-whale 2y ago
I can't believe your site does not include the notorious SGI screwdriver, the mighty SGI #9980915 http://industrialarithmetic.blogspot.com/2011/04/sgis-finest-product.html http://industrialarithmetic.blogspot.com/2011/04/sgis-finest... https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/fele3v/behold_the_sgi_screwdriver/ https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/fele3v...
- zvr 2y ago
  My trusted SGI #9980915 sits behind me right now -- it has served me remarkably well all these decades...
siev 2y ago
Nice job! Very Important: Are you gonna be adding an entry for the Japan-exclusive set-top box that had its own official port of DOOM done by Jonathan Blow? :p
- ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
  Link?
  - ofrzeta 2y ago
    Probably non-existent: 'a contract gig with Silicon Graphics to port Doom and Doom II to a "set-top box device" that "never really went anywhere."' https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/09/the-man-and-the-island-wandering-through-jonathan-blows-the-witness/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/09/the-man-and-the-islan...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
neilv 2y ago
Nice. Couple comments: * If you can find ways to collect and preserve copies of the software, that can be big value. Every version and variation of a title has sometimes been important after the fact. Maybe use archive.org for historical archiving of software with unclear licensing status, and link to it from your wiki, with your wiki providing the background text and organizing that isn't archive.org's strong suit. (I'm not talking about piracy, but just trying to ensure that any copy at all survives, which had been a real problem on some other platforms of this era. Also, it's easier to get a company to say that such-and-such software from a company three acquisitions ago is OK for people to run on vintage boxes and in emulators and museums, than to ask them to find and provide a working copy, which they usually cannot.) * You might want to capture provenance/copyright info for uploaded photos, like Wikipedia kinda does. Easier to capture it at upload/linking time, than to try to reconstruct it later.
- ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
  I obtain copyright permission of all original images before uploading and give people clear contacts to do it. I refuse to install extensions that could clobber the setup (many aren't compatible with postgres). I also make an attempt to contact rightsholders. the only stuff I don't have permission for is a few system image placeholders and the logos of companies. The SGI trademarks are basically gone though, HPE ain't using them. > If you can find ways to collect and preserve copies of the software, that can be big value. Every version and variation of a title has sometimes been important after the fact. Maybe use archive.org for historical archiving of software with unclear licensing status, and link to it from your wiki, with your wiki providing the background text and organizing that isn't archive.org's strong suit. (I'm not talking about piracy, but just trying to ensure that any copy at all survives, which had been a real problem on some other platforms of this era. Also, it's easier to get a company to say that such-and-such software from a company three acquisitions ago is OK for people to run on vintage boxes and in emulators and museums, than to ask them to find and provide a working copy, which they usually cannot.) Over at IRIXNet we do have some files and such preserving what's not likely to get us in trouble, but I choose to not deal with copyrighted works on tech-pubs (which unlike IRIXNet is my pet project, not a part of IRIXNet)
bainganbharta 2y ago
[dead]
iancmceachern 2y ago
Cyberknife ran on these I heard
zvr 2y ago
Thank you very much for this. The main box says "Tech-Pubs.net, or TechPubs, is a public wiki cataloging the hardware of the former Silicon Graphics Corporation." but you have so much more content than a catalog of hardware. Do you plan to expand to other things that SGI produced? Publications? Swag?
- ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
  > Do you plan to expand to other things that SGI produced? Publications? Swag? I mean I wanna be able to document everything that I can that is within scope. As I told another user, I gotta have a solid "bread" around the "sandwich" so to speak. SGI's trademarks are gone, but there's so many Chinese companies now selling that swag it's hard. I do got some mouse pads I made if you're in the US: https://irixnet-sales.square.site https://irixnet-sales.square.site

108 points by ThatGuyRaion 2y ago

I also run IRIXNet. I'm here to share my newest SGI-related project.

blankx32 2y ago

Images broken?

ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
Where?
ProjectVader 2y ago
the images are broken for me as well.
- ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
  How am i gonna fix it if you don't tell me WHERE? I'm not trying to be a dick. I wanna fix it. I need to know how and where it's a problem!
  - blankx32 2y ago
    by the way the images still don’t load for me now, none of them.
    - ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
      Give. Me. Details. To. Replicate. Please. Browser. Screenshot. URL. OS. I'm on Brave/ GNU/Linux and it works.
      - roetlich 2y ago
        lol. Maybe it's better to ignore bad bug reports. For what it's worth, I tried LibreWolf and Edge on Windows and Firefox on Android, to try some less used combinations. Images always load. :)
        ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
        Gracias for the testing. I appreciate it. I mostly run BSD and GNU/Linux at home.
ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
If you don't tell people where, how are we gonna fix it? I found ONE broken image. one. It took me hours to find it. Please don't just vaguely tell me one image somewhere is broken. Please be specific next time!
- blankx32 2y ago
  That language isn’t necessary, for me the site has always loaded with no images so i thought it was obvious, apologies if that’s not what you or others have seen.
  - ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
    Well that's a "let's get details to replicate issue" Level problem. Clearly, images are supposed to load. Give me details to chew on. I mean, if you're on HN, you know better than to say "It's broken" level of detail.

foldor 2y ago

How about adding information about IDO, like the static recompilation project being used in N64 game decompilation projects? It enables compiling code in a linux environment and having it match 1:1 as if it were run by the original compiler. There's even significant progress in decompiling the entire codebase as well. https://github.com/decompals/ido-static-recomp https://github.com/decompals/ido-static-recomp https://github.com/decompals/ido-matching-decomp https://github.com/decompals/ido-matching-decomp

ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
As time permits! I'm the only current article writer at this time

tombert 2y ago

I guess I sort of get it, but I always kind of wondered why Silicon Graphics never made a "prosumer" computer. With the (kind of) exception of the Nintendo 64, it seems like most of the Silicon Graphics machines were tens of thousands of dollars in the 90's. I am curious what the world would be like now if Silicon Graphics had made a model that was less than $2,000, but still ran Irix and had some amount of the 3D processing stuff with it. For that matter, I sometimes wonder what it would be like if Nintendo had released kits for the N64 that let you use it more as a computer. I'm just thinking that it's all about timing; if they had released something in 1997 for "prosumers", before OS X came out, would Apple have its same market position now? Would we all be using SGiPhones? Would every tech startup get all their engineers little SGI laptops?

browningstreet 2y ago
I had an Indy on my desk when it came out, with a 21" CRT monitor. I think they thought that's what the Indy was. I'd still go downstairs to another lab to play with the NeXT cube that was there. It was the culture of the time -- they didn't want to move downmarket and seem like PCs, so they (and their competitors) kept the workstation class a bit more premium and hoped to get enough business/tech purchases from the likes of academia and entertainment. They weren't really trying to sell to devs so much.
- tombert 2y ago
  I am sure there was a whole bunch of factors, but, at least from my lay perspective, it seems like a recurring theme was that these companies kind of underestimated how good even relatively cheap Intel CPUs were going to get in the 90's, making it so that even consumers could afford a pretty powerful computer, or at least powerful enough to be "useful", and then it becomes less obvious why you'd spend $5,000-15,000+ on a fancy workstation; if I can get 80% of the value of an SGI with just a decent Pentium and a bit of extra RAM, for 1/4 the cost, most people are going to go with that. Of course, I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm confident a lot of people on HN know more about this than I do, this is just a Wikipedia-level understanding of this seems to indicate to me. Still, I do like to think about it. A part of me thinks, and I have no way to confirm this, that there might have been bigger ambitions for the N64, to convert it into a "real" computer, so you could have a "real" SGI machine at home (though obviously less powerful than an Indy or something).

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

From https://www.tech-pubs.net/wiki/IRIX_101 https://www.tech-pubs.net/wiki/IRIX_101 - > Why are machines that run IRIX expensive? > There are no new machines being produced, and high-end machines are in short supply. Less expensive machines can be had. We do not recommend using eBay to search, as the prices are usually extremely inflated. Less expensive machines can be had on the non-eBay used market, or have we hit the point where the cheapest way to have such a machine is dedicated emulation like https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=33.%20LinuxCard https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=33.%20LinuxCard ?

ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
If we can get an FPGA core of the Indy's XL/24 board and helper chips, you can buy a cheap pack of R5ks on alibaba last I checked and probably make a smol sgi board
eschaton 2y ago
There's a parts vendor who charges pretty high prices and a small, insular community that thinks his prices are just fine and bid everything up to that level as they try to acquire (many) duplicates of systems they already have, which results in a high barrier to entry for people interested in doing things with SGI systems.
- ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
  Half right. Are you talking about Ian? that happened on one transaction. Considering how tight knit our community is... I prefer to err on the side of respect, even if I disagree with some people's practices. There's an SGUG admin I disagree with on this, but we get along anyways because we're both adults. I won't pretend I've been perfect, but quitting the booze in the quantity I was doing helped a bunch

curtisszmania 2y ago

[dead]

ur-whale 2y ago

I can't believe your site does not include the notorious SGI screwdriver, the mighty SGI #9980915 http://industrialarithmetic.blogspot.com/2011/04/sgis-finest-product.html http://industrialarithmetic.blogspot.com/2011/04/sgis-finest... https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/fele3v/behold_the_sgi_screwdriver/ https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/fele3v...

zvr 2y ago
My trusted SGI #9980915 sits behind me right now -- it has served me remarkably well all these decades...

siev 2y ago

Nice job! Very Important: Are you gonna be adding an entry for the Japan-exclusive set-top box that had its own official port of DOOM done by Jonathan Blow? :p

ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
Link?
- ofrzeta 2y ago
  Probably non-existent: 'a contract gig with Silicon Graphics to port Doom and Doom II to a "set-top box device" that "never really went anywhere."' https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/09/the-man-and-the-island-wandering-through-jonathan-blows-the-witness/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/09/the-man-and-the-islan...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

neilv 2y ago

Nice. Couple comments: * If you can find ways to collect and preserve copies of the software, that can be big value. Every version and variation of a title has sometimes been important after the fact. Maybe use archive.org for historical archiving of software with unclear licensing status, and link to it from your wiki, with your wiki providing the background text and organizing that isn't archive.org's strong suit. (I'm not talking about piracy, but just trying to ensure that any copy at all survives, which had been a real problem on some other platforms of this era. Also, it's easier to get a company to say that such-and-such software from a company three acquisitions ago is OK for people to run on vintage boxes and in emulators and museums, than to ask them to find and provide a working copy, which they usually cannot.) * You might want to capture provenance/copyright info for uploaded photos, like Wikipedia kinda does. Easier to capture it at upload/linking time, than to try to reconstruct it later.

ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
I obtain copyright permission of all original images before uploading and give people clear contacts to do it. I refuse to install extensions that could clobber the setup (many aren't compatible with postgres). I also make an attempt to contact rightsholders. the only stuff I don't have permission for is a few system image placeholders and the logos of companies. The SGI trademarks are basically gone though, HPE ain't using them. > If you can find ways to collect and preserve copies of the software, that can be big value. Every version and variation of a title has sometimes been important after the fact. Maybe use archive.org for historical archiving of software with unclear licensing status, and link to it from your wiki, with your wiki providing the background text and organizing that isn't archive.org's strong suit. (I'm not talking about piracy, but just trying to ensure that any copy at all survives, which had been a real problem on some other platforms of this era. Also, it's easier to get a company to say that such-and-such software from a company three acquisitions ago is OK for people to run on vintage boxes and in emulators and museums, than to ask them to find and provide a working copy, which they usually cannot.) Over at IRIXNet we do have some files and such preserving what's not likely to get us in trouble, but I choose to not deal with copyrighted works on tech-pubs (which unlike IRIXNet is my pet project, not a part of IRIXNet)

bainganbharta 2y ago

[dead]

iancmceachern 2y ago

Cyberknife ran on these I heard

zvr 2y ago

Thank you very much for this. The main box says "Tech-Pubs.net, or TechPubs, is a public wiki cataloging the hardware of the former Silicon Graphics Corporation." but you have so much more content than a catalog of hardware. Do you plan to expand to other things that SGI produced? Publications? Swag?

ThatGuyRaion 2y ago
> Do you plan to expand to other things that SGI produced? Publications? Swag? I mean I wanna be able to document everything that I can that is within scope. As I told another user, I gotta have a solid "bread" around the "sandwich" so to speak. SGI's trademarks are gone, but there's so many Chinese companies now selling that swag it's hard. I do got some mouse pads I made if you're in the US: https://irixnet-sales.square.site https://irixnet-sales.square.site