This is a list of other SGI related sites not covered elsewhere. All highly recommended – visit them all!

• Gerhard Lenerz’s SGI pages
  
  Gerhard has a tonne of information on his site – pictures, specs., model summaries – well worth a look.

• IrisIndigo
  
  Lots of useful info about the Indigo. I have a soft spot for these – they were the first SGI machine I ever saw and used. Still an impressive piece of kit.

• Mood Indigo forums
  
  Some very active German SGI forums. Obviously you need to be able to read German :-) or if you’re adventurous you could try the Babelfish.

• The SGI Zone
  
  Lots of useful tips and info, covering mostly Indigo2 and older kit

• Useful IRIX software
  
  Andreas Backhaus has compiled an excellent list of useful software that’ll work on IRIX. Some good audio and graphics tools. here.

• Marcus Herbert’s IRIX archive
  
  Marcus has an excellent archive of IRIX software. There’s all sorts of pre-compiled goodness here.

• Nekochan.net
  
  Not only is Pete’s site visually stunning, he also has lots of goodies on there. I can highly recommend having a look through his Gallery, at the very least.

• MicroCosmos
  
  James Holden’s new SGI related site. News, reviews – check out the File Typing Rules tutorial!

• The SGI Addict – dead :-( – was http://www.sgiaddict.net
  
  Nice looking site with a good load of information, tips, and pictures.

• Skywriter’s Big Old Nasty SGI Page
  
  There’s something lurking in his basement ….

• Never Beige – dead :-( – was http://www.orcawerks.com/sgi/
  
  Some very useful O2 info and images, as well as some good non-SGI stuff.

• Jodeman’s SGI & Stuff pages
  
  I don’t think these have been updated for a while, but a good load of links, info and images for Octane and older kit.

• Marcus Herbert’s web site
  
  This is the place to look for images of SGI and SGI-related kit. If it’s rare or bizarre Marcus will have a picture of it.

• Basquiat’s IRIX screenshots
  
  Some good images showing what you can do with Indigo Magic.

• Alex’s SGI pages
  Excellent model summaries, and a wealth of information. Very good stuff.

• Impact’s SGI Site
  Some good guides and nice pictures in the gallery.

• Simon Pigot’s SGI pages
  Lots of Crimson and Power Series information.

• Al Corda’s This Old SGI site
  Buckets of information on older machines like the 4D series, Personal IRIS, etc.

This is a (by no means comprehensive) list of vendors for 2nd hand SGI kit. Many of them I’ve used myself.

• Ian Mapleson’s SGI Depot

  Ian has refreshed his site, and has a lot of good stuff for sale. I can recommend his CD sets and OS installs – he knows what he’s doing, and you end up with a very usable machine.

• SGD Systems

  Check out their clearance offers. They also tend to have a good stock of older parts.

• Rapid Technology Partners

  I bought a load of Indys from them when Ian Mapleson was helping them clear a large amount of stock. Worth talking to – they have some good deals.

• SGI Warehouse

  I haven’t dealt with Neil Stevenson, but Ian had some systems listed and the prices seem good.

• 13W3

  I’ve dealt with Ian before – good prices, and he usually has some goodies in the software section.

• Cordnet

  Their website tends to be a bit out of date, but Cordnet have some good deals, and a large stocklist. Well worth giving them a call to see if they have what you need in stock.

• Danic Ltd.

  Danic have some good stock and fairly keen prices – worth calling, as not all their stock list is online.

• AM IT Solutions

  Formed by one of the chaps from RTP. Their website doesn’t have much stock listed, but they do good deals on older kit. Worth calling.

• Reputable Systems

  Greg Douglas has excellent prices and is a great guy to deal with. Get one of his LED light bars for your Octane!

• Mini Computer Exchange

  MCE have a good range of stuff, and quick international shipping.

• B & B Solutions Inc.

  Based in Canada, they have some insane deals. Good guys to deal with

• SGI Remarketed Products

  Refurbished and off-lease kit direct from SGI.

• Mashek Systems

  Haven’t dealt with him, but his prices can be good. Usually has a good stock of VW 320s.

• XS International

  I’ve heard good things about them, and they seem to have a good list of parts and systems.

SGI has their complete publications library online – Owner’s Manuals, Man Pages, Release Notes, the lot.

The URL is http://techpubs.sgi.com.

Their Technical Publications are also available as downloadable PDFs.

There is a range of different operating systems available for various machines produced by SGI. The main SGI Operating System home page can be found here.

• IRIX is SGI’s SVR4 based Unix.
  The IRIX hompage can be found at http://www.sgi.com/developers/technology/irix/index.html

• Windows NT – SGI’s Visual Workstation range were Intel-based workstations running NT 4. Although there was a port of NT to MIPS, none of the MIPS powered SGI machines will run NT.
  The SGI NT home page used to be found at http://www.sgi.com/developers/technology/nt/index.html. Check out http://www.webarchive.org to see if there are any archived pages left.

• Linux – SGI’s most recent range of servers are powered by Intel processors and run Linux. SGI has been quite active in the Linux community, extending existing parts of Linux, and making available SGI developed enhancements.
  The SGI Linux home page can be found at http://www.sgi.com/developers/technology/linux/index.html

• Linux on SGI – the Linux on SGI home pages cover an SGI port of Linux to run on the Visual Workstations, as well as a MIPS port to run on the SGI Indy.
  The Linux on SGI home page can be found at http://www.linux.sgi.com

• NetBSD – there is a port of NetBSD to some of SGI’s MIPS based boxen.

If you’d like to see what SGI has been up to in the Open Source community, SGI has a page up within Developer Central.

XFS is SGI’s scaleable, high performance extent-based filesystem. CXFS is an evolution of XFS that allows multiple clients to access the same filesystem at the same time on your SAN.

As systems scale and data volumes grow, access to, and manipulation of that data becomes a serious bottleneck.

I’ve found that many people are unaware of CXFS, or it’s benefits, and in general there’s a fair amount of confusion over the difference between concurrent access to a SAN filesystem versus shared cluster filesystems, as provided by something like Clustered VxFS.

So, I’ve collected together some documents and information which will give a good grounding on CXFS, and hopefully help show what an impressive feat it is.

DMF – Data Migration Facility – is a valuable tool that can live off the back of CXFS. You might be familiar with the concepts of HSM – Hierarchical Storage Management. DMF is pretty much the same thing.

• SGI’s CXFS page
• CXFS Administration Guide from Techpubs
  • Local copy
• Local copies of:
  • CXFS datasheet
  • CXFS whitepaper
• Los Alamos National Laboratory CXFS briefing
  R. Kent Koeniger’s April 1999 briefing – a very good overview
  • Local Mirror
• Backing up and Restoring multi-terabyte datasets

  A white paper where SGI demostrate 10TB per hour backup throughput

  • Local Mirror
• NCAR Visualisation and Enabling Technologies
  A report detailing CXFS performance
  • Local Mirror
• SGI Mobile Innovation Centre at University of Waterloo
  Notes from SGI’s MIC visit to UWaterloo in September 2003 – details of CXFS and DMF
  • Local Mirror
• Scaleability and Performance in Modern Filesystems
  An SGI paper comparing UFS, XFS, VxFS and NTFS – a good overview of XFS and how it works, and how that compares to other common filesystems
  • Local Mirror