Was digging around the back of the "storage" area looking for laptops to try OS4.2 on, and came across a stack of vw320's I forgot I had. If I remember correctly they all function (or at least did 5 years ago). Some had NT4 on them, and others had been updated to win2k. Don't remember much more about them, but If anyone is interested in one let me know and I can see about getting more info.
Chef
me want! maybe i can afford one of these sooner than a turbo color slab... :)
Quote from: "helf"me want! maybe i can afford one of these sooner than a turbo color slab... :)
Maybe I need to setup some sort of "payment plan" or account for you. I assure you my interest rates are very reasonable :wink:
Just kidding BTW
I will dig through my inventory notes and see if I have more detailed specs on them. I will let you know what I find.
Chef
Those are more win2K machines I think.
I never had one but I hear that they have no linux support (at all) and there are a few proprietary parts inside the box.
They don't use a BIOS (thank god) and the PCI slots are nonstandard.
Apparently, if you do the HAL trick during the Windows XP install (I've done this before) you can get XP to load using the HAL from Windows 2000.
Be a fun machine to play with :)
Quote from: "pentium"Those are more win2K machines I think.
I never had one but I hear that they have no linux support (at all) and there are a few proprietary parts inside the box.
The one I used to have at a previous job ran NT4, which is what it came with new if I remember correctly. I still have the original install disks somewhere around here. I have one currently with win2k that I use to run a few windows only programs I still need. If I still have to use windows, at least I can do it with some style. :) It has the SGI flatpanel adapter and widescreen lcd connected to it, and is a damn stable win2k box. The proprietary memory can be a problem, as it is very easy to mishandle it and knock some of the surface mounted components off of the top edge.
As helf said it is possible to get XP running on it by swapping in the win2k HAL, as microsoft dropped support for this hardware in XP. I have no need or desire to run XP on it, so I have never bothered to try this.
Chef
If I got one, I'd probably run NT4 SP6 on it and be happy. That revision runs all the software I use and is plenty stable.
Quote from: "helf"If I got one, I'd probably run NT4 SP6 on it and be happy. That revision runs all the software I use and is plenty stable.
And it can be installed in a small amount of space and not feel stripped down, which is good on the smaller drives.
Chef
Quote from: "pentium"Those are more win2K machines I think.
I never had one but I hear that they have no linux support (at all) and there are a few proprietary parts inside the box.
Just to correct this in case someone thinks of buying a VSW320/540, they do have linux support, but it is ancient. Slakware 8 included support using the 2.2.10 kernel. I own a VSW320 and it will load Linux, but it isn't easy. You can update to Slakware 9, and I've tried updating to Gentoo/2.6.x via a chroot install but once you get the 2.6.x kernel to boot (you have to remove SCSI support) the network card refuses to work properly, with the firmware not loading. As for graphics support, it works fine in XFree4 on Slakware in 16bit, but Xorg doesn't seem to cope well, the colour palette is completely off. Basically you may as well stick with win2K if it's for graphic work since nothing is accelerated in Linux (the docs for the chips was lost in the various SGI upheavals according to folks on the nekochan forum, so no hope of the situation improving).
http://www.bsystems.de/index.php?cat=01_Documents&page=01_SGI-nbsp-320-nbsp-Linuxhttp://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-4055848.html?sid=235df88059f0f220c0f3424f3e187ec0