Re: SGI Octane

On Thu, 31 Aug 2017, 0x1b wrote:
> I was reading on http://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/sgimips/ that the Octane 
> IP30 is not supported because mips64 toolchain is required, however some 
> people over on the IRC channel said there was a mips64 toolchain.

I don't know if LLVM / CLANG, or GCC have a MIPS64 toolchain. I *do* know 
that SGI made one. The MIPSPro compiler suite definitely was 64-bit but I 
realize that doesn't address your question.

> Is
> the information on the ports page out of date? Should it be updated?

I can tell you that I own nearly every MIPS-based SGI and I've never tried 
to install on an Octane or Octane2. My assumption was that it wasn't even 
worth trying.

> Does anyone have an Octane? I've been looking to get one for the 
> specific purpose of NetBSD testing, but I can't seem to find one 
> affordably.

Forgive me if you already know this, but both the Octane and the Octane 2 
were used by General Electric as workstations for (very) expensive MRI 
scanning equipment. The software is a custom MOTIF based suite made for 
the scanner. So, those models get bid up and often sell for vulgar amounts 
of money. Don't get me wrong, the Octane is pretty awesome hardware 
because of the crossbar architecture. However, a Fuel or Tezro will cost 
similar amounts and run circles around the Octane (but also won't run 
NetBSD).

I can vouch for the Indy, Indigo2, and O2 being NetBSD friendly. The O2 is 
probably the easiest to work with since you don't have to bother with 13W3 
video conversion and the PCI slot works, too.

My guess is that the SGI hackers of today don't have the energy & interest 
to port NetBSD to anything beyond the IP32 platform (the O2).

-Swift