Nekochan Net

no, not really. whatever came together to produce what we enjoy is gone. to attempt a reanimation would be to birth some Frankenstein melding of open source, web apps, and cloud bull into the world.

the era of unix differentiation and excellent is gone. it's a 'crappy os' eat 'crappy os' running on x86 world now.

you can't go back.

boy do i miss the old minicomputer days of the 70's/80's

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DECUS Member 368596

Yes, very well put.

I guess I contradicted my earlier post, touting the cleanliness of IRIX, new development would only serve to ruin that in all likelihood.

Computing for the masses dictates our age of unices has come and gone.

I'll keep enjoying what I've got though : )

I would like it if Rackable let someone mess with the kernel tho ... a company that size should be able to afford one person and there are still customers using Tezros and Origins. IBM did it with OS/2 for years. One guy was enough and he did a lot. Fixing firewire support, fixing fm, fixing the small nagging pain in the ass aspects of Irix would not cost that much. If they didn't value the SGI brand, then why did they buy it ?

One of the reasons SGI lost so many customers is that they treated their customers like dirt (aka cash cows.) It would not hurt to turn around that perception.

If that sounds naive, we just got a major account here - after two years of being cheated by other suppliers a major company came back to us because we told the truth and don't cheat people. Believe it or not, modern United States, the traditional values do have "business" value. (And I'm not talking about the pretense of having principles which you stomp on any time it's convenient, Mr Republican Party.)

Does anyone know if the Matador Reference Guide and Tutorial Guide PDFs are still available from somewhere? I checked the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and the Matador support page is still available, but unfortunately the links to the PDFs don't work.

Thanks in advance,
Goran

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- R12k 2x360 MHz, V8, 1.5 GB RAM, 73 GB HD

But it's cheap and as for the problems, well, "we'll fix those in an upcoming release..."

The availability of the Internet was one of the things that ruined the quality because companies now could cheaply issue updates and fixes. Nice in that the fixes were available and fast, but for some reason things seemed to be checked much better back when the companies knew that any serious bugs would require them to dispatch service people with new PROMS, or send out disks, or something else that cost money.The proliferation of firmware bugs, especially, is inexcusable - especially when combined with the attitude of certain companies "oh, you need to update your BIOS/PROM to have it work right. BTW, if anything happens to your machine while you're doing the upgrade or because of the upgrade we won't cover it."

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Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Systems available for remote access on request.

(single-CM)

How about "you need to kiss my rosy red ass" as a response ?

Here's a clue, dipshits : we don't need to download anything. We don't need any of the crap you are selling. Pencils and paper work fine. If you would like to have an income, then maybe you should consider doing your job ?

The quality of software is generally so bad ....

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MAYA, nut-
Octane 2 R14k 600 V12 4GB, Octane2 R14K 600 V10 1GB ,
Onyx2 IR3 4GB Quad R14K 500 DIVO, Onyx2 IR Quad R12K 400 2GB,
SGI Indigo 2 R8K75 TEAL Extreme 256MB,
SGI Indigo 2 R10K 195 Solid Impact 256MB, MAX Impact Pending ,
Apple G5 Quad, NV Quadro 4500 + 7800GT, 12GB RAM
Sun Blade 1000 Dual 900 XVR 1000

Wow, that's some excellent work! How long does it take to produce a character like that for you?

Yep, that's what I've been figuring out, mental ray is great. I have an o300 on the way for some rendering horsepower.
I hope to set it, and a few other sgi's to render, and I use the octane with V8 cards for modeling. I have maya 2009 on the pc, and
honestly I prefer the responsiveness, and simplicity of 6.5 on IRIX, so far anyway. (Obviously I dont have a multicore xeon with nvidia quadro.)
I've taken it up as a hobby to start producing some pretty scenes in maya. Modeling, and photo-realistic rendering always interested me when I was younger, and I drooled over the sgi's that did it. I used various packages under windows and linux (Rhino3d, Autocad, 3dsMAX, inventor), but now I can own those dream computers! Hopefully I can develop some useful skills as a benefit. Not to mention its a fun way to put sgi's to work!

You seem like the right person to ask: Any tips, tricks / good reading for setting up distributed rendering with mental ray? I find myself quite comfortable with modeling, I am currently working at understanding the finer details of shading and texturing to produce my desired surfaces. Understanding the "shading networks" in maya, and all its endless possibilities is a tough task for me, but also very rewarding when I can produce exactly my desired effect.

Haha, I doubt my "creativity" will ever pay the bills, but its always been a goal of mine to be proficient in modeling/rendering as art and creative form. I did the CAD and drafting stuff in school, much easier for my left dominant brain to handle.

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MAYA, nut-
Octane 2 R14k 600 V12 4GB, Octane2 R14K 600 V10 1GB ,
Onyx2 IR3 4GB Quad R14K 500 DIVO, Onyx2 IR Quad R12K 400 2GB,
SGI Indigo 2 R8K75 TEAL Extreme 256MB,
SGI Indigo 2 R10K 195 Solid Impact 256MB, MAX Impact Pending ,
Apple G5 Quad, NV Quadro 4500 + 7800GT, 12GB RAM
Sun Blade 1000 Dual 900 XVR 1000