A thought occured to me today, is it possible to run OPENSTEP on a Silicon Graphics VW 320 or similar SGI VW?
Does anybody know, Blackcube maybe?
I'd be keen to find out, as I'm thinking of buying a VW, if nobodys had a go maybe I'll try.
There might be a few problems as the VW has no BIOS (using the ARCS firmware as SGI do) and also the Cobalt graphics might cause a headache.
Quote from: "brams"A thought occured to me today, is it possible to run OPENSTEP on a Silicon Graphics VW 320 or similar SGI VW?
Does anybody know, Blackcube maybe?
I'd be keen to find out, as I'm thinking of buying a VW, if nobodys had a go maybe I'll try.
There might be a few problems as the VW has no BIOS (using the ARCS firmware as SGI do) and also the Cobalt graphics might cause a headache.
The lack of a "real" BIOS and the Cobalt graphics chip set are big hurtles to cross.
Feel free to try but I don't feel that's it's possible. Linux support for the VW series is marginal at best. I run Windows 2000 on my VW and I have accomplished making XP Pro to boot on it but it's so slow that it is an exercise in futility.
I only got XP to run by substituting the HAL layer from Windows 2000 and building my own custom bootable XP disk. It wasn't fun, just one of those "they say it can't be done but I'm going to prove them wrong" things.
Let me know the results as I'm curious. Staying within it's parameters, the VW320/540 series have always been one of my favorite Wintel boxes. You won't regret buying one as the prices are really cheap for a well built workstation.
Thanks blackcube, I Googled it and there is not one hit, looks I'm on my own, I will try it, I like a challange!.
The W2K VW CD, is it special CD or just the normal W2K CD?, most of the VW's have no CD with them on eBay and I assume, all the drivers etc are on the W2K CD?
Quote from: "brams"Thanks blackcube, I Googled it and there is not one hit, looks I'm on my own, I will try it, I like a challange!.
The W2K VW CD, is it special CD or just the normal W2K CD?, most of the VW's have no CD with them on eBay and I assume, all the drivers etc are on the W2K CD?
It's the normal OEM install CD. When the Windows installer prompts you to press F6 to install a special disk controller, press F7 instead to select the Sgi MP HAL. Also the disk for the VW320 needs special partioning. You need a 20mb or so partition first that is formatted FAT. This is where the ARC loader resides. Then you need a 8096mb NTFS partition for a NT/2000 boot partition. Then partition the rest of the disk as NTFS as you desire for general storage. I found it easier to partition and format the disk on another 2000 box and then istall into the VW320.
I've got a VW320 (along with an Indigo and an O2) and I have to say that the machine punches well above its weight when it comes to video and image processing (i.e Photoshop, etc) - my box has dual 550MHz CPUs and 512mb of RAM and I've added a 120GB second hdd.
These machines are sturdily built, reliable and look great - especailyl with the 1600sw wide-screen display. I know that the main reason XP wasn't ported is that there was no support for the systems under the HAL, so presumably the slow running ofn the hacked install is down more to the need to bodge in a Win2k HAL to an XP install, as the system should at least meet the XP hardware requirements.
If anyone can get OpenStep working on these machines, I'd love to hear how it went, as I think that, short of porting Irix to x86 hardware, it's the ideal match to the hardware in terms of style and functionality. I'm sure that there are enough technogeeks here and on the Nekochan forums (SGI nuts!) that some actual progress could be made - I think that if this were done, you'd see a real surge in interest on these under-valued machines on eBay, etc....
*crosses fingers and hopes for OpenStep on VW320*
Even after you'd solved the ARC booting problem, you'd run into the Cobalt graphics and the other custom devices on the motherboard. AFAIK there's no public documentation on Cobalt, when I looked into running Linux on my VS 540 a while ago they only managed unaccelerated X.
I gave up and stuck with Windows 2000 Advanced Server at the time, haven't fiddled with it for ages.
Quote from: "un"Even after you'd solved the ARC booting problem, you'd run into the Cobalt graphics and the other custom devices on the motherboard. AFAIK there's no public documentation on Cobalt, when I looked into running Linux on my VS 540 a while ago they only managed unaccelerated X.
I gave up and stuck with Windows 2000 Advanced Server at the time, haven't fiddled with it for ages.
Well, given the lack of OpenGL, etc, in NextStep, you could basically get away with using a default 4mb SVGA type driver - if Windows can display on any VGA and above system by default, then there should be a way of running the NextStep OS display on the Cobalt chipset - after all, Linux has to support OpenGL, etc, whereas such technology was never in the hardware remit of NextStep - the good thing is that a system with quick internal bandwidth and reasonably quick CPUs should easily be able to mimic or outrun a NextDimension 68040 system. I'm not saying it's ideal, but if NextStep doesn't do OpenGL, then there is not much likelihood of being able to suddenly built 3d acceleration into NextStep, so getting some sort of high-res 24- or 32-bit colour up and running if people wanted to...
Just a thought.
Who said anything about OpenGL? :) I'm talking about the basic windows-type acceleration.