What should I buy with a r6000?
Jeff Smith
jeffs at soul.esd.sgi.com
Thu Mar 7 04:27:57 AEST 1991
|> 1. 3rd party memory?? IBM wants >$4000 to go from 8-16 meg.
I think there are companies that will sell IBM style syms, so you can upgrade
a 8M board to something higher. The board is harder to make, and I don't
know if they have been cloned yet.
|> 2. 3rd party disk drives? I will probably get a internal IBM 320meg
|> drive and a 3rd party 1.2 gigabyte, either fujitsu or seagate. Any info
|> on formating, disktab entries, etc?
Using 3rd party disks usually works pretty well. I would think a major 1.2G
drive should work, but hopefully you can get some real experiences.
|> 3. I can't afford the 24bit color, but should I get the 8bit '3D' board,
|> or stick with the low end color board?
This is a tough question to answer. It really depends on what you need to
do. If you can forsee the need to use the 3d capibility, then it is probably
a good bet (see slot stuff below). However the X server does not work well
on this card at this time. This should improve over time.
I have a conflict of interest here. I used to work for IBM on various UNIX
OS development, including the RS/6000. I now work at SGI, who OEM's the 3d
board to IBM...
|> 5. Does the field upgrade from 8bit color to 24 bit color take more
|> than just memory, i.e. can I do it myself for less than $13k?
I have never seen a fully configured board, but I think it can be up to
3 boards. The basic 3d board. The Z-buffer, and the 24 bit color. However
this is partially speculation.
I have no idea how much things cost.
|> 6. Any problem with just 4 slots? I need ethernet, an external scsi
|> controller and graphics. It would be nice to have 1 slot free. does
|> 24 bit color take 2 slots?
4 slots in the 320 is sorta a bad deal. You need one for ethernet, one for
SCSI, and one for a display. This make expansion sorta tight.
You probably want to find out how many slots a fully configured 3d card
takes.
|> 7. How is the IBM 19" monitor?
excellent. It's a sony trinitron tube.
Good luck with your 6000. Unfortuantely I never had one to my self for a
long time, although my SGI machine works just fine.
jeffs at sgi.com
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