Nekochan Net

What is the significance of having two graphics cards in the "deskside" Prism? Can they work together in parallel and output to one monitor, or is the configuration only useful for multiple monitor setups? If it's the latter, it seems like a waste.

Also, unless I'm missing something, SGI have not announced any digital media (read: video) I/O hardware for the Prism series. Without said hardware, it seems these systems would be worthless to a company like discreet (oops, I mean Autodesk Media and Entertainment--pfft, whatever).

So without particularly special graphics abilities or digital media hardware options, who would buy the Prism "deskside" vs. a cheaper Linux box from another vendor?

-zolo

i cant wait to turn one into a speakerbox!

and WTF IS WITH THAT SATA SHIT???
who the hell is gonna spend 8500 on a box and then buy shitty 1year-warranty crap neon-case-boy type drives for it!

Well, the CFD crowd will not really get excited over a dual CPU, I know, I'm part of this crowd

A 16x would for sure, provided the CFD code is designed for this... I guess the only reason they put CFD on screens is that with the right post-processing tool you can create some amazing pictures... These were taken off the different CFD vendors websites though, nothing more than a little photoshop...

I believe there are Linux drivers for the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR cards ... hth

EXACTLY!

well, I suppose if there are linux drivers you could add on these boys... though how that makes this prism deskside special...

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/OEMDivision. ... angue_ID=7
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/EDIUS ... rdware.asp
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/EDIUS ... IUS_HD.asp
http://www.canopus.us/US/Products/EDIUS ... rdware.asp

and if you want out, but not in
http://www.nvidia.com/page/qfx_4000sdi.html

This guy has been working on a Linux clone of 4dwm, I wonder if SGI will pick this up?

I doubt it. His development pace is slooooooow. His binaries are for Red hat 7.3 (!). He doesn't respond to email and who knows when the next beta will be out.

No, actually the line of DigitalMedia (OpenML) professional option boards for LINUX (or even IRIX) based SGI(s) is:

SkyMicro Merlin

_________________
Oh!, let me write that!


Octane / Dual Head

http://twitter.com/GeekTronixShop

..but wait, ..isn't "Novell SUSE Enterprise server" the "default" version of Linux on SGI Itanium2 systems (supplied on CDs with system purchase)? If so, than, at least by looking at packages included in their Linux distribution at Novell website, OpenMotif should be one of the choices so you can set Motif during the installation instead of Gnome?

Edit:

..maby I better ask: What Linux do you get on CDs and installed on disk with SGI Itanium2 system purchase? Is it Novell (with all those GNU packages and OpenMotif) or some kind of SGIs own Linux distribution?

RHEL or SUSE. I believe you can choose which one. In theory you get the ProPack so you can install whatever you want, but there are support issues.

Cheers,
TOM

_________________
--
"Tell them we are not Gods, but SysAdmins, which is the next best thing,"

I still think it'll only be a matter of time until some one has Windows running on it, dammit!

And this must be why they're calling it a desk side:



Seriously though, I ask you!

_________________

That thing is Badass! If I had 8500 I'd buy it. The only question I have is will it be used for Discreet products?

PS Windows XP support has been pulled from the Itanium line so you'll have to run a server version of Windows if it's going to run one.

Indeed Windows 2003 (aka. NT 5.2) quite a decent version of Windows in my experience. My work involves adminstating about 15 Win2k3 boxes. As a tangent the 64bit version of Windows XP (for AMD64/iAMD64) is built off the Win2k3 codebase and not the standard XP one (NT5.1)

_________________
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better"

Yeah, MS dropped support for IA64 XP some time ago. TBH, I thought they'd dropped 2003 too. I can't imagine many people paying for Itanium2 and then installing something as unreliable as Windows on it!

My real question though, is how easy is it to port existing software from other IA64 systems to Prism? Just because it has the same CPU, doesn't mean it can run the same OS. Look back at the old Motorola 68000. I never saw an Atari ST running Mac OS!

_________________