[rescue] SGI O2 Rescue

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 01:16:21AM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, Brian Dunbar wrote:
> 
> > SGI O2
> > Irix 6.3
> > MIPS R1000 Rev 2.7/2.6
> > 195Mhz Proc
> > 192 / 256 MB RAM
> 
> Nice!
> 
> > I know what I'm going to do with 'em .. and I won't ask what good they are
> > for (grin) but I _will_ ask if there are any gotchas with these critters.
> 
> Supposedly the R10k CPUs are -really- flaky when doing OpenGL texturing
> on the O2.  There is a workaround in some later IRIX 6.3 patch and in
> IRIX 6.5, but it supposedly only works most of the time.

Are you sure about that?  I hadn't heard of the R10ks being flaky doing
texturing.  I had heard of them being flaky doing anything with the AV
module, if he has that.
 
> As for what it's good for, those boxes can do a -lot-.  Not a lot of CPU
> work, but a -lot- in terms of on-the-fly textured OpenGL using the video
> ports as sources.  They're also just damned cute and tiny and make good
> general-purpose workstations.

The R10ks should be able to handle a fair amount of CPU work.  Not as
much as an Octane, but still a nice amount.  It just has an unreasonably
high memory latency, suposedly because of how they attached it to the
bus.

It can do fancy tricks, but with R10ks it will stutter more than R5ks.
However, if you happen to need volumetric graphics, a R10k 02 is
probably the base machine short of an Onyx for the task (keep in mind I
don't have exposure to Vpro graphics, but for those tasks it should
spank an Octane).
 
> I'm trying to get one to do entry-level NTSC stuff for my town's public-
> access cable channel.  Everyone I've talked to at SGI says that the
> lowly 180MHz R5k can do it, if I beef up the RAM.  Now I just need the
> time to play with it and learn about direct access to the video and
> frame buffers on it.

You shouldn't have to go all that low level.  I would personally expect
that dmedia would be able to pull it off on that machine.  However, I
haven't had an oportunity to really play with it since the O2 I had
extended access to was bogged down with only 64 megs of ram and was
running enlightenment and I couldn't change that.