Are any of these SGI software CD's of any value?

[SGI Guy]

We had an SGI Indy back in the 1994 - 1998 time-frame (at least that was
when it got the most use). It developed a bad power supply and I gave
it to a friend (about 5 or 6 years ago) who was into unix. I could
probably get it back from him if there's any interest here for that old
hardware.

I was going through some old boxes and came across the following SGI
cd's:

Irix 6.2 Beta (1995)
Open Inventor 2.0.1
C++ Translator 4.0
CaseVision / Workshop 2.2
IRIS Media Libraries 2.0
IRIS Development Option 5.2
IRIX 5.2 for Indy R4600SC/XY & Presenter
Developer Toolbox 5.0 (and 4.1, 4.2)
Cosmo Software Suite
InPerson Desktop Conferencing Software

Are they of any value? I don't know if I can read them on a Windoze PC,
but if so, I could post their contents to some file-locker for anyone to
download.

Is it worth it?

[Jason]

> Irix 6.2 Beta (1995)

This could be worth $50 by itself.

[SGI Guy]

Jason wrote:

> > Irix 6.2 Beta (1995)
>
> This could be worth $50 by itself.

So that item consists of 3 CD's in two CD trays.

The first tray contains 1 CD as follows:

----------
IRIX 6.2 Beta
Part 1 of 2
December 1995
Not a released product
812-6.2beta-001
----------

The second tray contains 2 CD's as follows:

----------
IRIX 6.2 Beta
Part 2 of 2
December 1995
Not a released product
812-6.2beta-002
----------
Separately Purchased Products for IRIX 6.2 Beta
December 1995
Not a released product
812-6.2beta-003
-----------

My Win-98se system (that's what I run - Win-98) can find no files on any
of these CD's when inserted into my DVD-rw drive. Disk properties tells
me that the file system on them is "CDFS" and it tells me the bytes used
(400 to 620 mb depending on the CD) but that's it.

What do I have to do in order to read these disks? View them on a PC
running XP+ ?

Or a mac?

[Günter Frenz]

An SGI-Box or Linux will do, I don't know about a Mac

[Gary Heston]

In article <50BABBB6...@Guy.com>, SGI Guy <S...@Guy.com> wrote:
>We had an SGI Indy back in the 1994 - 1998 time-frame (at least that was

>when it got the most use). [ ... ]

Please post a real email address or email me.

Thanks,

Gary

[Richard]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

SGI Guy <S...@Guy.com> spake the secret code
<50BC28ED...@Guy.com> thusly:

>What do I have to do in order to read these disks? View them on a PC
>running XP+ ?

You need a CD-R drive that supports 512 byte blocks. Without that,
you won't be able to see anything of the structure inside the disc,
even if it's a linux box.
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[Jason]

> You need a CD-R drive that supports 512 byte blocks. Without that, you
> won't be able to see anything of the structure inside the disc, even if
> it's a linux box.

No true, you can dump the disc contents to a disk image, i.e.:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=diskfile.iso bs=512

then mount it in loopback, specifying the efs block size, i.e.:

modprobe efs
mount -o loop,ro,bs=512 -t efs diskfile.iso /path/to/directory


Cheers!

[SGI Guy]

Günter Frenz wrote:

> > What do I have to do in order to read these disks? View them on
> > a PC running XP+ ?
> >
> > Or a mac?
>
> An SGI-Box or Linux will do, I don't know about a Mac

Well I can tell you that running a recent version of OSX under a VM
running on Windoze 7/64 can't read anything on these disks, and a real
macbook laptop also can't see anything on these CD's.

Someone I know has linux or ubunto or some-such crazy OS - I'll let him
have a try next.

[SGI Guy]

Gary Heston wrote:

> > We had an SGI Indy back in the 1994 - 1998 time-frame (at least that was
> > when it got the most use). [ ... ]
>
> Please post a real email address or email me.

Check your mail.

[SGI Guy]

Richard wrote:

> You need a CD-R drive that supports 512 byte blocks. Without that,
> you won't be able to see anything of the structure inside the disc,
> even if it's a linux box.

I still have the original CD-rom drive that was connected to the system
at the time.

It used a tray or cartrige that you put the CD in and then inserted the
cartrige into the drive.

Oh yea - it was a scsi CD-rom drive...

[Richard]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

Jason <sys...@openvms.org> spake the secret code
<50c0125c$0$65293$c3e8da3$fb48...@news.astraweb.com> thusly:

>> You need a CD-R drive that supports 512 byte blocks. Without that, you
>> won't be able to see anything of the structure inside the disc, even if
>> it's a linux box.
>
>No true, you can dump the disc contents to a disk image, i.e.:
>
>dd if=/dev/cdrom of=diskfile.iso bs=512

Have you actually done this?

Perhaps the CD-ROM requirement was for using the disc with an actual
SGI system.

[DoN. Nichols]

On 2012-12-09, Richard <legaliz...@mail.xmission.com> wrote:
> [Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

Hmmm .... I used to get those too -- until I "spamproofed" my
"From: " in the headers. :-) If you have to send an email, you look in
the .sig to see how. :-)

> Jason <sys...@openvms.org> spake the secret code
><50c0125c$0$65293$c3e8da3$fb48...@news.astraweb.com> thusly:
>
>>> You need a CD-R drive that supports 512 byte blocks. Without that, you
>>> won't be able to see anything of the structure inside the disc, even if
>>> it's a linux box.
>>
>>No true, you can dump the disc contents to a disk image, i.e.:
>>
>>dd if=/dev/cdrom of=diskfile.iso bs=512
>
> Have you actually done this?
>
> Perhaps the CD-ROM requirement was for using the disc with an actual
> SGI system.

Well ... for older Suns (I know -- wrong newsgroup collection --
but it is my experience -- one SGI, lots of Suns :-) you needed one
which could be switch set to 512 byte sectors as the default to *boot*
from it, but a booted system could command the drive to switch from its
default (2048 bytes, per sector, IIRC) to 512 bytes/sector to use a
drive from a PC or whatever in such a way as to keep the Sun happy. The
problem was that part of the boot sequence was a command to reset
everything on the SCSI bus to its defaults.

Later Sun systems added enough smarts to the boot ROM to command
a switch to 512 bytes/sec, so you can boot from other discs. I have a
IDE interfaced DVD ROM/burner with an ASUS bridge card to convert it to
SCSI which the system will quite happily boot from. Good thing, because
SCSI DVD burners are not cheap -- if you can find them. :-)

So -- it might well be that the SGI will also issue the command
to switch to 512 bytes/sector from the driver in the OS if necessary --
or perhaps just by default, since if it is already at 512 bytes/sector
it won't hurt anything. ;-)

Almost certainly linux should do this as well -- since it is
likely to confronted with almost any mix of hardware.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

[Richard]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

"DoN. Nichols" <BPdnic...@d-and-d.com> spake the secret code
<slrnkca1qg.pk...@Katana.d-and-d.com> thusly:

>On 2012-12-09, Richard <legaliz...@mail.xmission.com> wrote:
>> Jason <sys...@openvms.org> spake the secret code
>><50c0125c$0$65293$c3e8da3$fb48...@news.astraweb.com> thusly:
>>
>>>> You need a CD-R drive that supports 512 byte blocks. Without that, you
>>>> won't be able to see anything of the structure inside the disc, even if
>>>> it's a linux box.
>>>
>>>No true, you can dump the disc contents to a disk image, i.e.:
>>>
>>>dd if=/dev/cdrom of=diskfile.iso bs=512
>>
>> Have you actually done this?
>>
>> Perhaps the CD-ROM requirement was for using the disc with an actual
>> SGI system.
>
> Well ... for older Suns (I know -- wrong newsgroup collection --
>but it is my experience -- one SGI, lots of Suns :-) you needed one
>which could be switch set to 512 byte sectors as the default to *boot*

>from it [...]

Yeah, that sounds right. In order to bootstrap a raw system, you have
to boot sash/IRIX from the CD-ROM, or from the network.

[irixj]

SGI Guy wrote:
> Are they of any value? I don't know if I can read them on a Windoze PC,
> but if so, I could post their contents to some file-locker for anyone to
> download.

Hi,

I'm interested. Please contact me by email irixj <at> yahoo.com

Thanks

[MG]

SGI Guy wrote:
> Are they of any value? I don't know if I can read them on a Windoze PC,
> but if so, I could post their contents to some file-locker for anyone to
> download.

Consider me interested. (My e-mail address can easily be dissected.)

- MG