Ahhhhh.!@#!!!..Nightmare….Have managed to aquire a pretty nice working 02 machine
running Irix 6.3….Also side effects have just posted me a copy of apprentice 5.5…whoo hoo ready to install….Houdini tells me at install that
it needs irix 6.5, and that it is not installed correct ..!…So I mail a guy at
SGI IRIX Home …and he rings me this morning telling me I need to spend $600 to upgrade to 6.5…it comes on 10 disks apparnetly….surley
there is somthing on line somewhere I can upgrade my Irix…..Please help
……wat can I do …..can I get it to run under 6.3……there must be a fix ..
Oh yeh…and im new to Irix…iv sussed it out as far as the GUI but man I know there is so much more to this little puppy..PLEASE..HELP!@#!…..

Welcome to the world of SGI, and one of the major reasons we won't touch them in 3D ever again. They charge you a fortune, screw you on support costs(one of their major profit centres), and have an attitude to match. Grrr…

I understand your scenario - you were able to get a cast-off for little or no money, but now to get it to run, you have to jump through hoops. We had the same problem with their 320 Intel series - it became so much of a headache and a costly one at that, that we simply scrapped the damn thing…and gave it to someone like yourself who's also cursing it.

You may be able to find a kind soul that would let you borrow their upgrade disks, but you didn't hear that from me.

There's a few SGI users floating around here that might have a workaround, but I suspect the upgrade is the way to go…

Cheers,

J.C.

Agh. I run a number of O2's, and I like them very much, despite the problems John mentions.
It can take a bit of work & futzing, but they can be made to be quite productive all the same.
#include <tlc.h>

There's quite a few differences between IRIX 6.3 and IRIX 6.5. It's not a simple upgrade for a machine configured with 6.3. The O2 was first released with 6.3, but a number of sys config files changed thru to 6.5 (eg. when /usr/etc/nsd & /etc/nsswitch.conf was introduced)

Also, you don't want to touch anything before 6.5.4. (eg. IRIX 6.4.* was a disaster). The latest release, if you can find it, is somewhere between 6.5.18 and 6.5.20

I wish sgi would be more relaxed about making IRIX available. It would mean more people might actually use IRIX! duh… and so more people might actually use sgi's (but still render elsewhere! ;-))

good luck,
ben.

#include <tlc.h>

Oh, you see? There's my problem - I was using

#include <cursesgi.h>

:twisted:

I wish sgi would be more relaxed about making IRIX available.

It's a problem they've always had, and it's only gotten worse. Essentially they see everything post-sale as a way to make a buck. They could get away with it when they were the only player on the block, but now…

Cheers,

J.C.