[rescue] Any reasonable source for IRIX?

[Sheldon T. Hall]

 Monty Walls wrote ...

> Looking at purchasing a base O2, need a reasonable source for IRIX, so
> any suggestions?

While having a "factory" set of latest-version disks is very convenient, you
can start from any version and, once you get it going, install updates from
the SGI website.  You can buy older versions off eBay pretty cheaply.  Be
sure you get a bootable base set of disks, not just an overlay set.

If you do an original installation of a version previous to 6.5.6 (IIRC),
you need to patch it with the "overlays" patch in order to apply the updaye,
but you can do all that with a web browser direct from the SGI site.

You can burn your own if you can find ISOs, of course.  _Making_ an SGI ISO
is pretty arcane, though.

And, speaking of arcane, you get to fool with `inst`, which is the worst
imaginable introduction to a new computer.  I just spent a couple of days
getting IRIX on a recalcitrant Indy, and familiarity with `inst` definitely
breeds contempt.  `swmgr`, on the other hand, is quite OK.  Too bad you have
to install IRIX with `inst` before you can use it.

-Shel