[rescue] Rescued O2

[Joshua Boyd]

On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 08:18:29AM -0700, Curious George wrote:

> An O2 fell into my lap, yesterday.  

That probably hurt, but at least it wasn't an Octane that fell on your
lap. 

> I am clueless about these.
> But, hoping the hardware would be good for multimedia work. (?)

Meh.  It's certainly OK for video input and output, once you figure out
some issues.  

The big problem was software.  I don't know that there was every
anything that made great use of the hardware.  As I understand it, there
were basically three choices for editing software: the included Movie
Editor; Premiere 4.2; and Jaleo O2.  The last program was extremely
expensive and I believe it only did uncompressed video.  Premiere 4.2
was absolutely terrible.  The included software is what it is, which is
to say very basic.

Fow awhile I had dreams of writing my own software to maximize the O2,
but of course writing good GUIs is always hard, which is what kept me
from getting anywhere.  Now I can see some better starting points (on
the surface, OpenME looks like it could be reasonably stripped down to
just a GUI then built back up again), but I lack the time and energy.
 
> What do I need to know to determine if it is worth the trouble
> to keep?  Appears to have 6.5 installed along with some sort of
> specialized application software (i.e., I believe it was part
> of a medical instrument).  Of course, no root password so I'll
> have to start over (probably worth doing anyways since it
> only has a 9G drive in it).

You could always clear the password by sticking the disk in another
machine.  Linux can do the job, although I think you might have to
custom compile a kernel to do so.

> Also, now that SGI "is no more" (?), where can I find a copy
> of 6.5 (My 6.2 CD set apparently does not support this model?)

ebay.  Beware though that most of the cheap options on ebay are for
overlay CDs only.  Think upgrade versions.  You still need to find the
foundation CDs somewhere, and when they show up on ebay they cost a good
bit more.