Seasonal greetings from nihil, Eileen and squeaky baby...............
:drink:::birthday
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Seasonal greetings from nihil, Eileen and squeaky baby...............
:drink:::birthday
Merry Christmas AO! I Hope everyone here has had a Wonder Christmas. Yesterday, my Wife and I spent like two hours at my Mom's House cooking and baking and making food to bring to our Familie's Christmas Party, and we had fun.
We made Quebecois Food, and everyone loved it.
I wore my new FreeBSD Black Pull Over Hoody. I got a BUNCH of FreeBSD stuff, because my Mom let me go to the FreeBSD Mall, pick out some stuff, and then ordered it for me as part of my Christmas Presents. I'm wearing my new FreeBSD tee, and just finished putting stuff in my FreeBSD CD Case. I also got two issues of BSD Magazine. They're wonderful.
I also got two Hank III CDs :) I got some pretty cool stuff. Last night at the party, and today, have made me glad the drunk Driver on the 16th didn't kill me. :)
Gore, is your wifes name FreeBSD ? :P
It starts with an F, but no ;)
Well,
I'm playing with my new Microsoft black ergonomic keyboard............ I felt that I could forfeit $6 worth of beer vouchers for that indulgence :D
I also got a Sapphire Radeon video card............... I had beeen buying Asus, but they were "engineering samples" ????? like they have the semi nekkid wimmin and monsters on the box ............. then Windows 8 tells me that they are engineering samples ??????? :lildevil::dunce: I think that's the video cards not the wimmin?????
//serious stuff @ gore:
Are ATI/AMD still crap at drivers for *nix? I do remember way back when that was the case?
:drink:
Nihil; ATI is something I'm VERY Biased about; I do NOT like ATI, and I'm a total Nvidia fan boi, so with that said, I'm going to take to Honest Road, and tell you the Truth:
My Wife, though a Vi user, also likes ATI Cards. It's sad, and yea we argue about it a lot. However, I WILL say this:
My Wife's Laptop, though currently not working, has an ATI card in it, and whenever I used Mandriva Linux, it seemed to pick it up right away. To my ABSOLUTE SHOCK Her ATI Video Card, after installing Mandriva Linux, not only worked, but had 3D, and could handle games....
Now, with that said, most other OSs, are NOT going to give you that same ease of use. In fact on most distros, you'll have one hell of a time making an ATI card work with 3D.
Now don't get me wrong here, if all you want, is for the card to display something on the monitor, it's just going to work like any card. The main difference, comes when it's time to play video games and have 3D Desktops FX and so on. In THAT area, Nvidia has it all.
In fact I'm surprised no one at Nvidia has capitalized on this yet and started doing ads about how much easier it is to make their cards work under Unix based OSs. I can't imagine why they don't.
If I were the CEO of Nvidia, I'd record real users of Linux and BSD using two identical machines, except one machine had an Nvidia card and the other, ATI, and just make a commercial showing what happens when BOTH want 3D. That alone would sell cards.
Anyway before I turn a simple opinionated answer into a book about Video card Hardware and Unix, the short answer is; They're starting to work sometimes, but still nothing compared to Nvidia.
To give you an idea of how I think; SGI Workstations ALL use Nvidia Video Cards. That should say something ;)
I was a fan of 3dLabs Wildcat cards. They were about the only card that could support the Viewsonic VP2290b (3840x2400) 22" LCD. Too bad they exited the business and the Viewsonic VP2290b is no longer made.
You ever use an SGI stuff? Those are my absolute dream machines. Like, if I were to win the Lotto, I'd be calling SGI the next day.
I never used SGI. I do use nVidia Quadro cards now days. Even my notebooks have Quadro chips in them.
Oh man.... OK, SGI Computers are.... In MY opinion, the BEST Computers a human being has ever made. I mean... They LOOK amazing, and they're awesome.Quote:
Originally Posted by ua549
Have you ever looked into SGI? I know you did a lot of consulting work, but did any clients ever have an SGI? You said something about Solaris, and about HP-UX, so HP and Sun were amongst your travels, but what about SGI?
Even if you just use google images and look up SGI, trust me, you'll be impressed.
I've never touched SGI, nor did any of my clients have them.
I primarily consulted with banking, law enforcement and other government agencies.
I also wrote and taught mainframe networking courses.
I never came across any of their stuff and generally associated them with the media rather than engineering graphics side of things. I guess that Sun was the most common brand over here in engineering.
Way back they all looked pretty much the same, and I have Compaq, IBM, Digital and HP machines. They are all pretty bland mushroom coloured boxes.
Also, people of my generation will remember Packard Bell (1986-1996) who were masters of the art of making crappy, crappy look pretty, pretty, so we are suspicious of pretty, pretty.;)
I have seen visually attractive offerings from the major OEMs that are presumably intended for high profile, customer facing locations, but I go for performance rather than looks..............like this one is held together with duct tape :D
Anyways, SGI went bust a couple of years back, and the trade name was taken over by another outfit who changed their name to SGI.
I seem to recall that some years back SGI bought Cray and went into supercomputers? so I don't think that you will find a current workstation unless it is badged. :(
Like in Europe you could always get Packard Bells, but they were made by NEC and now Acer with possibly someone inbetween.
Nihil; SGI is still alive and well. They DID have some issues a while back, but they are still here. In fact, they broke a world record a few months ago with their Altix Servers. They have a World record now.
I remember my Uncle having a Packard Bell, but when that was around, I was a young one who knew nothing about Computers. Hell, I joined AntiOnline basically two years after I got my first one.
As for the colors and so on, and the "It's pretty" thing; SGI Computers look amazing... The ones from wayyyyyyy back, are generally neon green with odd designed cases and so on. But they are NOT "pretty boxes for stupid people" or anything near that; They are serious powerhouses.
The looks over Performance thing you brought up is NOT SGI. they just happen to look good AND be great. Remember Jurassic Park? The little girl says "It's a Unix system.... I know this!" And everyone said "Oh bull Unix doesn't look like that!"....
Well, it does actually; The Interface you see her using is made by SGI. You KNOW you're good when actual Unix admins don't even Believe your product exists heh.
The old SGI machines that came out around the time of those Mushroom colored things, would look like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...x-SGI_Indy.jpg
^That is an SGI Indy Workstation. It's their entry level low end system from way back in the early 90s or late 80s.
Their Servers look like this today:
http://www.operating-system.org/betr...gi-3400_ph.jpg
Absolute Beauty...
This is a shot of multiple Workstation they make:
http://www.mashek.com/images/newcollage.jpg
They have no Beige boxes, or Mushroom colored things either.
Another Server they make:
http://www.trygve.com/onyx3200outside.jpg
^ I'd kick the **** out of that guy just for a chance to touch that thing.
This is another SGI Workstation, it's called a "Prism" and it's one of my Dream Machines... This is what I'd buy if I could:
http://bsdnetwork.blogsome.com/images/Prism.jpg
You can't tell me it doesn't look awesome. And remember; SGI invented IRIX, XFS, and in general, are one of the few companies around to take Special FX seriously.
On April 1, 2009, SGI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced that it would sell substantially all of its assets to Rackable Systems, a deal finalized on May 11, 2009, with Rackable assuming the name "Silicon Graphics International".
So there is no fake SGI, the name change wasn't because of anything weird. They just sold most of it off, and the company changed the "i" in it.
Either way, they are still alive and well, and still making the most Beautiful computers I've ever seen in my entire life.
Also, they seem to be legends in the Monitor area too; I was reading an article that said the 1600sw or something along those lines, which is a monitor made by SGI, is so good they are STILL sold, after more than 10 years.
The College I went to, had an old SGI from the 1980s, and included the Web Cam it came with. They had stuff in the 80s that PCs are still catching up to.
I'm assuming that no one actually googled any images or info as I didn't see anyone say anything they were sure of other than not seeing it around.
You can still buy old SGI Workstations on Ebay, and they STILL cost a lot. The Processors they use, are MIPS, which, I Believe to be superior.
IRIX, I also think is better than AIX, HP-UX, and so on.
I pasted the links to the images because then you can actually see what these things look like. It's NOT just a pretty case; SGI Machines are WAY more than pretty; They set world records, and, before The Matrix came out, almost every movie ever seen was made with them.
In fact, one web site said about the Matrix "It'll take a lot of work on an SGI to make this work" and then when it was found out that The Matrix was all done on a FreeBSD cluster, they were shocked.
Anyway, I'm a HUGE SGI fan, and so I'll jump to the defense of them any time. They're amazing machines, and they don't look like ANYTHING else I've ever seen.
My dream machine, would be an SGI Workstation, running IRIX, and... Yea.... That's what I'd buy if I won the Lotto.
Hmmm..............World record eh?
http://www.sgi.com/company_info/news...h/windows.html
Will you be running Windows Server 2008 R2 on your dream machine??? :p:D
And please don't insult us with the energy efficient crap...............that is Rackable's technology, not SGI.
Ummm, Nihil, I don't think I said anything about Energy. In fact I know I didn't. What's with that?
And no, I said MY dream machine would run IRIX. I said that in the last reply.
After looking at that link I'm a little confused as to why it was posted... I didn't mention Energy or anything about "Energy Efficient" or anything close to that, where did that come from?
And after re-reading my post I was fairly clear on what I said.
Anyway, here:
http://www.sgi.com/company_info/news.../pleiades.html
http://www.sgi.com/company_info/news...er/hadoop.html
I really don’t want to get in the middle of this discussion, but something I noticed when looking at the SGI website:
IRIX is listed under Legacy ( with support ending December 2013 ) as is the Silicon Graphics 1600SW display.
BTW, that Pleiades Supercomputer you referenced is running on, you guessed it, SUSE !
And the other link about the Apache Hadoop systems: supported operating systems are all Linux (Red Hat, CentOS, Ubuntu, SUSE, and Debian. )
Hope everyone had a good Christmas and has a happy, healthy New Year.
.
Yea, they stopped doing IRIX some time ago now. They've ported multiple versions of Linux as you saw to their hardware, and even some versions of Windows. Windows NT actually ran on one of their old Workstations back in the day.
I don't know why they stopped doing IRIX though, I think it's amazing. Since my "Dream Machine" will run IRIX though, I'd use a service they have, where they take machines that were not working, replace all the needed parts, and re-sell them.
I saw a bunch of REALLY nice machines there. The price is actually really nice on a lot of the refurbished machines too. I'd LOVE a Prism.
I mentioned energy saving because that is a record they set in the last 12 months. It is what Rackable were doing before they bought the remains of SGI for 1/18 of what SGI paid for Cray.:)
SGI filed for Section 11 protection in 2006 and were sold in 2009. That is a substantial part of their assets were. No going concern, no business, no manufacturing, just "assets" which would be IP, maintenance contracts and so on. One of their premises is now a computer museum and the other is Google.
They died (which is usually what Section 11 means) and Rackable chose to use the business name, much the same as happened to Cray.
I think that most of their top technical types went to nVidia, ATI, AMD etc...........
This is NOT the company it used to be.
Errrr.................NASA rank #7 in the World and has the largest single x86 supercomputer. OMFG I am impressed!.....................:rolleyes: Anyways, the size of a supercomputer depends on what the customer can afford to pay :)
"Hadoop"............... I see no relevance in that statistic whatsoever, particularly in respect of workstations. Also, the device has "Rackable" in its name, which points to its origins as far as I am concerned.
If you want old SGI you will have to go second user, and if you want IRIX then you had better hurry as it is due to be phased out around the same time as windows XP :D
So basically, you've never used any SGI stuff, yet don't really think it's amazing what the founder did?
As for the name changing ownership, who cares? Novell bought SUSE, and it's a lot different now than it was way back but it's still SUSE, and a LOT of the founding people left after Novell bought it, but they manage.
By those lines of thinking, IBM isn't anything anymore. IBM was founded a LONG time ago, and they also made AK-47s during WW2.
I'll give you that it's NOT the company it was back in the day, it's not. I am fine with that. But the new machines they have now, are still amazing. An Octane III is one NICE Workstation. And I know I'll be buying IRIX off Ebay, where else would I get it? The contracts they have for support, are all they have now, they don't even sell it anymore. So I'd be buying it second hand.
I'm gonna ask a simple question here, as I probably should have just done this in the beginning, but now this has gone from me simple saying "My Dream Machine is something they don't make anymore" to defending the Company period, which is a little silly.
But, today, I've now slept, and I can think. So:
Nihil, if you could have ANY Computer, what would it be? Would it be something brand new and shiny from today? Or would you choose something that may no longer be made now?
I stand by saying SGI, not as a Company, but the Computers that have that logo on them, are the best. My SECOND dream machines, are a tie between Alphas, and OLD Suns. I wouldn't want a Sun from today because Oracle are screwing them up. Oracle has basically taken Sun, an amazing Workstation maker, founded by Bill Joy, an amazing Hacker, and just pissed on them.
However, we can still buy old Suns, because they're well made in general, so, between Ebay, and second hand markets for Computers, you can get machines from years ago, and not have to pay much for the most part.
By the way; If I could get an Alpha, I'd want an Alpha Workstation running Tru64. THAT is a nice Workstation too.
Apart from just having 1 for nostaligia, there really isn't any point. ::hide-beh
Well at least the machines I'm talking about are usable for something today; I saw a Documentary on Apple where there's a guy who makes these boards that are basically replicas of the very first Apple Computer.
The guy apparently emailed Steve Wozniak, and told him about everything he was doing, because he couldn't get anyone from Apple to get back to him, and Steve Wozniak actually got a hold of the guy and said he could use the Source Code, and that really all Apple could do is say that basically "Steve Wozniak Wrote this before there was an Apple Computers" so he got it.
I thought it was cool and all, but outside of people who used these things way back in the day, I can't imagine what they would use them for, because they're totally obsolete, and the original Apple Computer, wasn't anything you could use today for anything real other than writing BASIC programs maybe or something.
I mean it's not like those things had Network connections, or even cases; Most people from what I understand just built them out of wood. The guy sells them to people though, and people buy them.
The stuff I'm talking about is actually still in use so it's not like just nostalgia or something; One of the Workstations I looked at, came with IRIX, and had a couple gigs of RAM, and would be still usable for any number of things today. I mean a brand new Computer I saw at Best Buy the other day, had 6 gigs of RAM and a 1 TB drive, and that still isn't even close to what old SGIs had, so they can still be used today as Workstations because of how ahead of their time they were.
Squeaky baby? Dude, I didn't think an old fossil like you could still get it up!Quote:
Originally Posted by nihil
Lots of extra Milk in the fridge me thinks...
Merry Christmas and a Happy new year to you and yours.
Dino, Kim and family
Oh yea, in the best Donny Baker voice... "SHUT UP GORE"
Happy New Year Dino ;)
And hey now, you know how I am, I LOVE SGI Computers. I do admit I'm not sure how this went from me saying what my personal dream machine is, into the financial issues of the company that makes them, and I do admit, I'm not sure why no one just looked at the pictures and commented what they thought about the designs of the machines, which was what I was aiming for Honestly, but this is AO after all lol.
For the record:
I was simply saying that my dream machine, the Computer I'd love to own, is a Workstation from SGI, back before they were bought up, and that is all. I was NOT trying to start a huge discussion about their financial issues, or really anything about them as a company, I just happen to REALLY love the cases they made for their machines, and, the software they wrote for it. That's all. I don't Honestly care about their financial issues, I don't. I just wanted to show two people who had never seen them before, what an SGI looked like. And, instead of "Oh, hey, that is one pretty tower!" I got a big bunch of stuff about finances, company names, and other stuff. Now, is there a chance we could just MAYBE admit that what I said got taken wrong and just look at the things and say what you thought about the design? It was all I was going for.
And for my other statements about Alphas and so on, all I said there was that I thought Alpha Workstations running Tru64, were awesome. I Honestly don't know if they're still being made (I think they are, but since I don't have like 30,000 dollars to buy one, I don't bother) and I'd be pretty shocked if anyone here said they weren't good.
My Statements about Sun, are my opinion. Oracle has ruined what was a great company. And ua, you said you personally worked on Suns, which I think are great Workstations too. You ever get to play with those HUGE Fridge sized ones? A Computer Security Company that wanted to hire me let me look through their Server farm during the second interview a few years ago, and I was amazed to see they had a full "cage" of Sun Servers they used.
I'm a huge fan of HP as well, since the first HP I ever bough, is still working. That's saying something for a Computer I bought over 10 years ago. It was the first time I'd ever bought one, and the fact that it's still working after all these years is pretty nice.
It's the one I have my FTP Server set up on. Right now, it's been up and running and storing my back ups, and doing my shell stuff and my email, for 214 days. I'm about to have 215 days uptime, and I have ALL patches installed.
Slackware 12.0 is what I'm using. I have a monitor hooked up but I don't really turn it on since it's basically sitting at the end of my desk and I log in over SSH.
Anyway, I wanted to clear up a few things; When I made those posts yesterday, I had been awake for a REALLY long time. UA knows a bit about my back problems, as we've talked about that before, so he can tell you, it's not easy to sleep when you're in excruciating pain. I literally couldn't sleep, so after being awake for 36 hours, I was trying to reply to this thread and probably shouldn't have.
hank III rules \m/ lolQuote:
Originally Posted by gore
happy holidays ,im still recovering from new years eve , i had a ok Christmas spent it watching someone reload ammo ,i got a Christmas gift for myself , 1.5 terabyte drive with 570gb of punk metal and classic rock ,my music collection i had backed up at my friends house so i can piss off my neighbors with misfits ,pantera ,and morbid angel again lmao,i guess i was naughty so im buying my own stuff a vox valvetronix guitar amp a zoom effects processor and a epiphone Les Paul starting to play guitar more ,
For a good true story:
One day, I was sitting in here with my Wife, and we both heard a door shut next door. A family was looking at the house next door, and they had like 4 kids. I don't have an issue with kids, but in my neighborhood, they let those little ****ers run wild.
I grabbed a quick play list of Anal****, and turned it up. When they came out side, and heard AC playing, they took off and didn't come back lol.