Indigo.......

oddle · n00b Joined: 11 May 2004 Posts: 24

I am hoping someone out there has gotten Gentoo running on a standard Indigo. I just got one that I would love to get gentoo running on.... so make with all the good news about "yeah it works great... " :-)

thanks in advance for the responses
Oddle

Kumba · Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 8:22 pm Post subject:

The old IRIS Indigos will likely never be supported in linux anytime within the forseeable future. I believe the machines are just too old. However, Pay attention to NetBSD's sgimips port, I believe they are looking to have NetBSD run on those systems in the near future.

--Kumba
_________________
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic

Dwayne Walker · n00b Joined: 28 Apr 2004 Posts: 10 Location: Minnesota

I too have an iris Indigo. IRIX is quite expensive...whatsmore I would like to run Linux as there are things like Blender, Cinepaint etc. I didn't see what one oddle has. Mine says it has an R4400 (cpu?). It's IRIX 6.2 is corrupted.

So the experimental stages are not usable?

DW

evil_twin_of_Machiavelli · n00b Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 3

Both blender and cinepaint are available for IRIX, but then again it depends on what version you are running.
It's actually relatively cheap if you sign up on the supportfolio site you can download the maintenane releases (well the one that was current 3 releases back). That and the base 6.5 discs are relatively easily available on ebay.
Now i will agree that when it comes to Compilers the license keys for Mipspro are quite expensive, but GCC is also available for IRIX.

I'm not all together sure wether 6.5 runs on an Indigo, as i only have an octane myself. Check out
www.nekochan.net
http://forums.nekochan.net/

Kumba · Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 6:52 am Post subject:

IRIS Indigo's are classified as IP19, that is, that's the machine number SGI calls them by. The R4K stages available are for IP22 machines, essentially, the Indy and Indigo2. While IRIS Indigo uses a supported processor in linux (R4x00), the machine itself is not supported. Also, the IRIS Indigo wasn't a very fast box -- the Indy and I2 smoke it.

Even if Linux ran on such a system, the running of X and X-based applications is a whole different ballgame. IIRC, IRIS Indigo uses the Extreme Graphics chipset for its graphics board, and that one isn't supported in Linux. The only SGI Frame buffer devices either supported, or in an experimental stage is Indy/I2's Newport (Not I2 Impact or Extreme) chipset(s), O2's GBE (experimental), and Octane's Mardi GRAS (Variant of Impact, very experimental).

Assuming X ran on such a machine, you can hang up Cinelerra or Blender too :) The machine just would not be fast enough to handle that stuff. SGI's X server is a highly optimized beast, which is why it runs so efficiently on their hardware. The XFree86 and X-Org stuff wouldn't hold a handle to the IRIX X in terms of speed and such. Especially considering such applications like Blender and other video editing tools would crawl on a slow MIPS cpu without specialized fine tuning of the code (again, SGI's video editing tools are likely optimized specifically for their hardware).

Lastly, it's possible IRIX 6.5 will run on an IRIS Indigo, but likely you'll need an early 6.5 release. SGI recently dropped Indy/Indigo2 support from IRIX in 6.5.23, meaning IRIS support was probably dumped a long time beforehand.

--Kumba
_________________
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic