This Old SGI
Consisting of a collection of notes and memoirs on my experiences with the 4D series machines.
Compiled and maintained by A. J. Corda (Email) copyright (c) 1996
Version 2.0
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Introduction
I am posting this assortment of notes and observations as a kind of "thank you" to the numerous people who have replied to my posts in the past. The free flow of information is the life-blood of the internet community, and this is my feeble attempt to maintain that flow, while at the same time repaying the kindness shown me by other members of the community in my rather obsessive attempts to revive a defunct 4D professional series machine.
I have posted a number of messages concerning my project, and I can say that all the replies I have received have been quite helpful. One of the things you learn early on as a denizen of the net is the utility of Usenet posts. You also learn that the volume of answers can convey almost as much information as the content of those answers. If I post a question and receive a significant number of replies, then I can be relatively certain that others have run across (and possibly solved) the same class of problem. If, however, I receive no responses, it indicates that this is a new problem not previously encountered (quite unlikely, due to the age of the equipment in this case), the problem represents a true hardware-level failure (usually at the IC level) or the problem is due to some fundamental stupidity on my part (by far the most likely scenario!). This means that it's time to re-evaluate the procedure which caused the problem, which usually leads to an alternate approach which inevitably works. During this project, I have only had 2 genuine hardware failures, both of which had very little usenet response. The rest of the low-response questions were solved by re-reading the documentation available, or using my common sense when it was at last evident that this was not a common bug.
The point of this diatribe is that if you don't receive an immediate response to a usenet post, don't immediately repost it! Think the problem out. If none of the other half-million or so people who have seen your post have run across your particular problem, then the odds are that it's due to some fundamental mistake or misunderstanding on your part. Step back and look at the whole procedure again. Then, if you still can't think of a way around it, repost the problem with more info, or describe the event from an earlier point in the timeline.
Now, back to my main topic. This whole adventure started when when I developed a craving to have my "own" SGI at home. I use one quite frequently at my job, and it did not take very long for me to fall in love with the critter :-}. Unfortunately, prices being what they are, I decided to piece one together from parts obtained via the net (being a hardware hacker at heart!) This proved to be quite a challenging project. Cost-wise it was a toss-up between a Professional IRIS or Personal IRIS, depending on what I could lay my hands on (At this point in my project, I wasn't about to get picky :-). The first machine to come my way turned out to be a Professional series 4D/70GT. Machines in the Professional IRIS series are relatively obsolete right now, and their bulk, slow speed and power requirements have made them unattractive to their original owners. As a result of this, a number of them are most likely heading for the dumpster as we speak!. Fortunately, I was able to locate one of these scrapyard refugees via the net. Needless to say, it was nonfunctional and incomplete. This resulted in a rather unique learning experience.
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