old computer

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > old computer

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Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

Panty Saluter posted:

oh. maybe? or i accidentally looked up the wrong computer. idk

what actually used R12k?

all i can think of off the top of my head is SGI and Siemens/Nixdorf

# ? Jan 31, 2016 23:14

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# ? May 23, 2024 07:06

Panty Saluter: Jan 17, 2004; Making learning fun!

Doc Block posted:

I have an SGI Octane in storage. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I was able to find the pics I took of it back in 2003. Here's the whole setup, including SGI-branded Sony Trinitron monitor

The beige box on the right is an external SCSI CD-ROM drive, since the Octane had no room for an internal one.

It's got a 64-bit MIPS R12000 CPU @300mhz w/640MB RAM

Not pictured: the support I had to add to the underside of the desk to stop it from sagging under the weight of a 19" CRT and an 80 lbs SGI workstation.

edit: this particular Octane only has the SE graphics, meaning the (2nd generation?) entry-level 3D graphics hardware with no texture memory.

oh ya its this one :o:

# ? Jan 31, 2016 23:14

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

Panty Saluter posted:

oh ya its this one

Yeah, I was gonna say, by the time that PDP-11/73 rolled around the PDP-11 was functionally obsolete and any sales were on the strength of compatibility with existing software/applications.

# ? Jan 31, 2016 23:15

Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

Citizen Tayne posted:

Yeah, I was gonna say, by the time that PDP-11/73 rolled around the PDP-11 was functionally obsolete and any sales were on the strength of compatibility with existing software/applications.

this is not really true. the performance of an 11/73 or a pro/380 was pretty good for the money.

people were using them as workstations and industrial controllers instead of micro-mainframes with tens of users.

# ? Jan 31, 2016 23:18

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

this is not really true. the performance of an 11/73 or a pro/380 was pretty good for the money.

people were using them as workstations and industrial controllers instead of micro-mainframes with tens of users.

Actually, what I said was very true. They were industrial controllers in the eighties for the same exact reason you still find 486s with RS232 output doing the same thing today.

# ? Jan 31, 2016 23:30

Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

Citizen Tayne posted:

Actually, what I said was very true. They were industrial controllers in the eighties for the same exact reason you still find 486s with RS232 output doing the same thing today.

the original j-11 chipset was from the late 1970s. in 1984, cranking over at 15 MHz, it was pretty drat fast for the money.

for perspective the 8 MHz 80286 was the fastest intel chip at the time. (and those sure didn't run unix very well.)

Notorious b.s.d. fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Jan 31, 2016

# ? Jan 31, 2016 23:32

Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

here is a screenshot of osf/1 failing to boot in gxemul from a hacked-up disk image.

i'm not sure where i got the disk image. maybe from a physical 5000/240?

# ? Jan 31, 2016 23:51

Samuel L. ACKSYN: Feb 29, 2008

Beeftweeter posted:

i could swear that came on the cd version of win95. if not, then it came on some other cd that came with an old p1-122 mhz gateway 2000 i had

its not on the cdrom version of win95 but there is a perry/aniston cd-rom that you could buy

idk what was on it because i haven't found any info on it but maybe thats what u had

edit - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/%22Friends%22+Go+Interactive+in+Support+of+Windows+95+GT+Interactive...-a017119755

# ? Jan 31, 2016 23:52

Pham Nuwen: Oct 30, 2010

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

what actually used R12k?

all i can think of off the top of my head is SGI and Siemens/Nixdorf

somebody gave me an octane2 and it was R12k. at that time none of the free *nixes supported it (guess netbsd does now) and i couldn't find irix. didn't have the weirdo hard drive sled either so even if i found irix discs i couldn't have installed it on a hard drive.

# ? Feb 1, 2016 00:11

Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

Pham Nuwen posted:

somebody gave me an octane2 and it was R12k. at that time none of the free *nixes supported it (guess netbsd does now) and i couldn't find irix. didn't have the weirdo hard drive sled either so even if i found irix discs i couldn't have installed it on a hard drive.

the sleds turn up on ebay from time to time

installing irix from cd really, really sucks but it can be done with enough patience. it's usually easier to set up an irix install server on freebsd / netbsd / solaris. linux does not work very reliably due to nfs / rsh quirks.

at a minimum you will need two sets of discs:
irix 6.5.22m or 6.5.30 "overlays" (4 discs)
irix 6.5 base media (4 discs)

to do anything useful you will also need:
idf/idl
mipspro

# ? Feb 1, 2016 01:06

~Coxy: Dec 9, 2003; R.I.P. Inter-OS Sass - b.2000AD d.2003AD

maniacdevnull posted:

Lol at everyone using the os from when apple was legit doomed

Brb gonna reinstall windows me just to rep my os, laffo

well if you wanted to play some old PC games or whatever that don't run under win 7+ you have a lot more options including well-supported VMs

on the Mac side you have far fewer options that don't work as well

# ? Feb 1, 2016 01:14

fack you: Sep 12, 2002; For Life

eschaton posted:

Spectre

Glider, which John Calhoun just made Open Source, along with motherfuckin Pararena

My Mom called John Calhoun because the original b&w Glider's intro screen had naked boobs on it. I think he emailed an alternative image with instructions on how to replace it using ResEdit. also the source code to his joust clone, glypha was the first real full program I'd ever seen as a teen and I studied everything about it and made me want to be a game developer. now i write horrible enterprise java.

Ambrosia... Cassady & greene... metrowerks codewarrior...spriteworld...quickdraw...gently caress me

# ? Feb 1, 2016 01:14

~Coxy: Dec 9, 2003; R.I.P. Inter-OS Sass - b.2000AD d.2003AD

the Ambrosia game "Barrack" (jezz-ball clone) had blasphemous sound effects in it so we removed them with ResEdit so we could be allowed to play it

# ? Feb 1, 2016 02:29

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

~Coxy posted:

"Barrack" (jezz-ball clone)

jezzball was a clone of xonix which was a clone of qix

# ? Feb 1, 2016 05:18

Olivil: Jul 15, 2010; Wow I'd like to be as smart as a computer

You Am I posted:

I threw out my DEC (well, it was branded Compaq) Alpha workstation a couple of months ago. It was too noisy, nothing worked on it anymore in regards to an OS and sucked down power big time

same

i saved it from the dump but i'm moving in july and i'm not going to move it

kind of hope i can find someone to take it tbh

im youre a massive dork in montreal hit me up

# ? Feb 1, 2016 07:58

r u ready to WALK: Sep 29, 2001

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

the playstation was under development for like a decade. if it had come out on time it would have been a very expensive console.

the remarkable thing about the psx is that it's really a very ordinary architecture. it looks a lot like an early 1990s unix workstation under the covers. no weird coprocessors, no funny memory, just a RISC cpu and a bus and some memory and some devices hanging off the bus

Well it did have a bunch of coprocessors to make it not suck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_technical_specifications

The main bits that made the PSX a success was the geometry translation coprocessor and the design they used for the GPU where the focus seems to have been speed rather than precision. The thing didn't even do floating point if i remember. Early psx games had geometry holes, texture warping and other glitches all over their graphics but they were actually capable of rendering at 60fps. As time went on the developers got better at hiding the flaws in the 3d math processors by breaking up polygons into smaller chunks and so on.

Meanwhile the N64 had lots of bells and whistles in the gpu like perspective correct texture mapping, texture filtering, mipmapping, z-buffering etc that completely gimped performance. Holy crap the N64 CPU ran at 90mhz compared to the PSX 33mhz and Zelda still couldn't achieve 30fps. It ran at 17fps on PAL systems :laffo:

# ? Feb 1, 2016 08:01

Olivil: Jul 15, 2010; Wow I'd like to be as smart as a computer

error1 posted:

It ran at 17fps on PAL systems

wait what is this for real?

# ? Feb 1, 2016 08:45

Progressive JPEG: Feb 19, 2003

wonder hwat fps it got for 4 player on mario kart 64 or diddy kong racing lmao

# ? Feb 1, 2016 09:46

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

i can confirm mario kart 64's low framerate with 4 players

# ? Feb 1, 2016 10:03

A Pinball Wizard: Mar 23, 2005; I know every trick, no freak's gonna beat my hands; College Slice

I thought the problem with the n64 was it had no memory but the carts couldn't hold much texture data anyway

like if you just wanted plain flat shaded polygons it was fine which is why mario 64 looks the way it does

# ? Feb 1, 2016 14:21

Silver Alicorn: Mar 30, 2008; 𝓪 𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓹𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪 𝓲𝓼 𝓪 𝓬𝓾𝓻𝓲𝓸𝓾𝓼 𝓼𝓸𝓻𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓬𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓽𝓾𝓻𝓮

early carts didn't have much memory but later releases were pushing 100 megabytes

even smaller carts had space for textures well in excess of the texture memory. there were some games that dynamically loaded textures off the cart to sidestep the limit

# ? Feb 1, 2016 15:59

Panty Saluter: Jan 17, 2004; Making learning fun!

error1 posted:

Well it did have a bunch of coprocessors to make it not suck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_technical_specifications

The main bits that made the PSX a success was the geometry translation coprocessor and the design they used for the GPU where the focus seems to have been speed rather than precision. The thing didn't even do floating point if i remember. Early psx games had geometry holes, texture warping and other glitches all over their graphics but they were actually capable of rendering at 60fps. As time went on the developers got better at hiding the flaws in the 3d math processors by breaking up polygons into smaller chunks and so on.

Meanwhile the N64 had lots of bells and whistles in the gpu like perspective correct texture mapping, texture filtering, mipmapping, z-buffering etc that completely gimped performance. Holy crap the N64 CPU ran at 90mhz compared to the PSX 33mhz and Zelda still couldn't achieve 30fps. It ran at 17fps on PAL systems

yeah the focus at the time was getting textured 3d into a reasonable price for a home console and the psx did that, flawed as it may have been

# ? Feb 1, 2016 16:22

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

the n64's texture memory was a joke so you tended to get either blown-up blurry turds or sharper textures in conspicuously small sets

then they put out the ram pack and n64 games finally had decent textures, years after launch

# ? Feb 1, 2016 16:23

Silver Alicorn: Mar 30, 2008; 𝓪 𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓹𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪 𝓲𝓼 𝓪 𝓬𝓾𝓻𝓲𝓸𝓾𝓼 𝓼𝓸𝓻𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓬𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓽𝓾𝓻𝓮

perspective incorrect textures are an aesthetic now.

# ? Feb 1, 2016 16:23

Panty Saluter: Jan 17, 2004; Making learning fun!

i had like 900 dollars to my name in feb 1996 and i spent most of it on video games instead of, say, a car. which would have allowed me to be independent and socially functioning....but gently caress that, video games

# ? Feb 1, 2016 16:24

Panty Saluter: Jan 17, 2004; Making learning fun!

Sham bam bamina! posted:

the n64's texture memory was a joke so you tended to get either blown-up blurry turds or sharper textures in conspicuously small sets

then they put out the ram pack and n64 games finally had decent textures, years after launch

the n64 also launched almost 2 years after the psx

# ? Feb 1, 2016 16:24

Jerry Bindle: May 16, 2003

i had a car then, no one wanted to hang out, almost never used it. everyone was inside playing video games. so, you made the correct choice.

# ? Feb 1, 2016 16:26

Panty Saluter: Jan 17, 2004; Making learning fun!

Barnyard Protein posted:

i had a car then, no one wanted to hang out, almost never used it. everyone was inside playing video games. so, you made the correct choice.

ha, i knew it :chord:

# ? Feb 1, 2016 16:32

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Sham bam bamina! posted:

i can confirm mario kart 64's low framerate with 4 players

i also remember dumping the N64's framerate by repeatedly firing akimbo grenade launchers in Goldeneye so the explosions would start stacking up

# ? Feb 1, 2016 18:40

Captain Foo: May 11, 2004; we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

i also remember dumping the N64's framerate by repeatedly firing akimbo grenade launchers in Goldeneye so the explosions would start stacking up

N-Bombs or gtfo

# ? Feb 1, 2016 18:43

Doc Block: Apr 15, 2003; Fun Shoe

yeah, I think the prob with the n64 re: speed was having ridiculously small texture memory cache.

# ? Feb 1, 2016 18:54

eschaton: Mar 7, 2007; Don't you just hate when you wind up in a store with people who are in a socioeconomic class that is pretty obviously about two levels lower than your own?

error1 posted:

Meanwhile the N64 had lots of bells and whistles in the gpu like perspective correct texture mapping, texture filtering, mipmapping, z-buffering etc that completely gimped performance. Holy crap the N64 CPU ran at 90mhz compared to the PSX 33mhz and Zelda still couldn't achieve 30fps. It ran at 17fps on PAL systems

on the other hand I've heard playing N64 games on the SGI workstations used for development was an awesome experience, 1280�1024@60fps�possibly in stereo 3D!�and some devs added network code just for their own amusement

# ? Feb 1, 2016 19:06

barnold: Dec 16, 2011; what do u do when yuo're born to play fps? guess there's nothing left to do but play fps. boom headshot

the Nintendo 64 was a piece of poo poo console. so glad I never had to waste money on expansion paks or garbage rear end gimmicks just to play my games.

fuckin sony had the PS1, and then the dualshock came out and I spent most of the late 90s losing my mind over how cool sony's analog sticks and how poo poo Nintendo's were

# ? Feb 1, 2016 19:09

akadajet: Sep 14, 2003

A Pinball Wizard posted:

which is why mario 64 looks the way it does

mario 64 still holds up.

# ? Feb 1, 2016 19:11

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

Turdsdown Tom posted:

the Nintendo 64 was a piece of poo poo console. so glad I never had to waste money on expansion paks or garbage rear end gimmicks just to play my games.

fuckin sony had the PS1, and then the dualshock came out and I spent most of the late 90s losing my mind over how cool sony's analog sticks and how poo poo Nintendo's were

I spent most of the late nineties being cool and having sex, sorry for your lot.

# ? Feb 1, 2016 19:11

r u ready to WALK: Sep 29, 2001

IMO nintendo has never been very good at designing console hardware, they are all reliable but slow. They more than make up for it with stellar software development, but it really makes me dream about what nintendo games could be like if they ditched their own console and went multiplatform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3UjmiCvgpo

Gamecube was cool for its time though

# ? Feb 1, 2016 19:13

Smythe: Oct 12, 2003

Turdsdown Tom posted:

the Nintendo 64 was a piece of poo poo console. so glad I never had to waste money on expansion paks or garbage rear end gimmicks just to play my games.

fuckin sony had the PS1, and then the dualshock came out and I spent most of the late 90s losing my mind over how cool sony's analog sticks and how poo poo Nintendo's were

Cool autism. N64 had cool games to play with friends. Enjoy your jrpg, fucktard.

# ? Feb 1, 2016 19:26

CUNT AND PASTE: Aug 15, 2004; ~see my amazon wishlistu~

Silver Alicorn posted:

I think the only old computer I have rn is my tandy pc-3

it's programmable

i love pocket computers here's my collection

my PC-3 (with the cracked screen) is one i've had since childhood, i left it laying around a few years back and it got sat on

so i bought a mint sharp equiv when it popped up cheap on ebay. i also have a PC-2 but previous owner left batteries installed and they corroded all over the place and it's out in the garage waiting to be repaired one day

recently got this Poqet PC (this one is a very early model according to version numbers and timestamps in ROM) but still need to buy some memory cards so i can actually do something with it besides watch it boot up. runs on 2 AA batteries, CGA (B&W) graphics, claims to get 100 hours of battery life before needing a new set.