Irix OS

After repeatedly ignoring my phone messages and emails, a representative of SGI finally answered the phone when I called Friday, and gave me the answer to the question I’ve been looking for:

An Irix 6.5.22 license is available to me at US$600.

The sad part is that I’ll probably pay it. I have this old Indigo2 Impact sitting here useless because I don’t have a username or password for it, and because I don’t have the patience or resources to attempt a brute-force password hack. I could buy a set of CDs from eBay, but all of those are clearly labeled as sold without license, and when it comes down to it, I don’t want to have a machine with an unlicensed OS. I’m funny that way.

I know that I could put Linux on it, but phaugh! I’m not sure why I’d get this cool piece of hardware and not have the original (or at least a newer implimentation of the original) OS on it. Besides, the fun of having an SGI (even an ancient one) is to run crazy graphics apps on it. The SGI uses old round Mac-style serial ports and there’s a Wacom tablet at work that my boss would probably let me take home for free since there aren’t any Macs around old enough to make use of it and everyone but me hates pen tablets anyhow. And has promised me a copy of Photoshop for the SGI that he’s got laying around (if he didn’t throw it away when he cleaned his basement). It’s supposed to be an old version, like version 3 or something like that, but I learned Photoshop back when it came out and fell in love with it at version 2.5, so I think for an old computer to diddle with, an old version of Photoshop would be great.

Nonetheless, $600 for a hobby machine seems like a lot. But I got my RS/6000 for $350 and put another $50 into the operating system, then a lot of time and energy tracking down a $20 Microchannel Architecture Network adapter, only to discover that there aren’t any non-commercial NAT packages for AIX. And yes, I did indeed toy with the idea of spending 2 grand on firewall software to remedy that, and I’ve thought about dumping hundreds of dollars on IBM’s native C compiler too. I haven’t done those things, but I’m told that the $600 Irix package includes a lot of development tools, and all the hardware I’ve got I’ve gotten for free, including a compatible monitor.

What is it my dad always used to say? The difference between men and their boys is the price of their toys.

What I’d like to do next actually is replace this chest of drawers I have with a combination computer rack/workbench and comic/magazine shelf. This will require some careful planning and a lot of measuring, but these drawers are mostly useless anyhow and I think I’d be better off if I could use my closet for something other than hiding computers.

On the other hand, computers are noisy. Maybe they should stay behind a door anyway.

Mercy—Moby