[rescue] octane question

[nick at snowman.net]

To the best of my knowledge all octane trams are 4meg, can someonw who's
actually used them give an answer?
	Nick

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Big Endian wrote:

> >On a SGI newsgroup, someone mentioned that going to 3 heads is really simple
> >on the cheap octanes (4+ heads with much higher resolutions is possible if you
> >have lots of cash for the latest video boards).
> 
> Octanes are limited to 4 heads max (4 SI/SE/V6/V8 boards), one per XIO slot.
> 
> >Now, what I was wondering is does this work in the traditional 
> >xwindows manner,
> >ie mysgi:0.0, mysgi:0.1, mysgi:0.2, etc, or in the more modern 
> >xinerama manner,
> >ie a 4800x1200 display?
> 
> more likely the traditional way unfortunately.  I don't belive IRIX 
> supports xinerama as it seems to be an XF86 only extension.
> 
> >Also, how do people here feel about the SI+tram graphics?  SI is 
> >what is cheap,
> >and tram's should be to outrageous.  Well, I spoke too soon.  TRAM 
> >modules seem
> >to be going for about $500 on ebay.
> 
> SI is an XIO Solid Impact.  Nice card, but no texture.  SI+tex is 
> ~HighImpact which is nice, but the texture cache(you can't call 
> IMPACT trams "storage")  is a wee bit small (1mb).  If you need 
> texture on an octane the MXI(SSI+ 4 trams, ~MaxImpact) or greater is 
> really the only way to go but you will pay for it. (anybody know how 
> much V6/V10 boards are?  I know the V8/V12s are still being sold as 
> the current line up but even a V6 would kick the ASS of any MXE card).
> 
> >It seems to me that an Octane would make a much better desktop replacement
> >machine (over an O2), however, for my needs texturing is important. 
> >Of course,
> >at those prices for TRAMs, it will be sometime before I can afford an
> >acceptable one (unless I come into new information explaining why I don't
> >really need a TRAM).  Besides, I either need a good method for video IO on
> >linux (firewire works for capture, and laying stuff to tape, but I 
> >also want to
> >be able to drive a video monitor for previews), or an O2 first.
> 
> An octane would *RULE* as a desktop box... but for the heavily video 
> work you'd have to spend a fortune (octane compress, octane 
> personal/digital video, pci cardcage, firewire card) to get the 
> capabilities that come w/ an O2.  However the octane video 
> capabilities are the same relationship as the 
> Indy/Indigo2+Galileo+Cosmo.  If you had about 10k to do it I would go 
> w/ the octane... on a budget get the O2.  The other thing is that the 
> octane video and compress boards take up one XIO slot each so if you 
> have an MXI octane and those two cards you are out of XIO slots. 
> This still leaves you PCI for firewire/fddi/atm/more scsi/etc but pci 
> card cages are 4-500 on ebay, more if you buy from 
> reputable/sgisun/etc.
> 
> daniel
> -- 
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