The IRIX appreciation page

Unix is unix. Don't you just hate it when a unix desktop tries to pretend it's not a unix desktop? Gnome or OSX, whith their fancy virtual filesystems, hidden programs, and splashy eye-candy - what were they thinking? They might be fine for general office use, but if you want full control over your system, something to hack on, something with history, you might want something simpler, more elegant (and soon to be -sob- obsolete).

Ah, the ancient joys of shell scripting, vector icons, postscript fonts, dotfiles, and unhurried proprietary hardware. A green and pleasant land of curvy blue plastic, SCSI termination, 13W3 monitors, dumb terminals, 3D spaceballs, tape drives, ethernet printers and clicky PS2 keyboards. Where no one would ever think of finger-ing your box without asking, where you can always ask anyone the time. A world without viruses. Inside the firewall there is a magic garden where time stands still - it is always 1996. The sun will never (NEVER!) set on this glorious era of elitist computing goodness!

I post these files here in solemn memory of a golden era drawing to a close.

grlog.sh
Displays a window with the RCS changelog of the selected files. See screenshot 1.
grdiff.sh
Highlights the difference between the original RCS revision of the selected files, and the current one. See screenshot 1.

grdiffz.sh
Like grdiff, only displays the diffrence between the current and last revisions.

1408x1024_76.vfo
This is a complied video mode for the O2. You get an extra couple of hundred pixels over standard resolution.

vice.sh
This is the script used to generate this video mode, based on a script by Tony Mantler.

.auxchestrc
My .auxchestrc file adds a "Windows" menu to the toolchest, allowing you to show or hide all windows, and also take screenshots. See screenshot 1

This is my workstation. The design is from 1996. Production continued till 2002. Mine's blue and curvy, and like all my machines, is named after a James Bond villain. Mwah ha ha ha!

john@scaramanga john$ hinv
CPU: MIPS R5000 Processor Chip Revision: 10.0
FPU: MIPS R5000 Floating Point Coprocessor Revision: 10.0
1 300 MHZ IP32 Processor
Main memory size: 256 Mbytes
Secondary unified instruction/data cache size: 1 Mbyte on Processor 0
Instruction cache size: 32 Kbytes
Data cache size: 32 Kbytes
FLASH PROM version 4.18
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version ADAPTEC 7880
 Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI controller 0
 Disk drive: unit 2 on SCSI controller 0
 CDROM: unit 4 on SCSI controller 0
Integral SCSI controller 1: Version ADAPTEC 7880
  Tape drive: unit 3 on SCSI controller 1: DAT 
On-board serial ports: tty1
On-board serial ports: tty2
On-board EPP/ECP parallel port
CRM graphics installed
Integral Ethernet: ec0, version 1
Iris Audio Processor: version A3 revision 0
Video: MVP unit 0 version 1.4
AV: AV1 Card version 1, O2Cam type 1 version 0 connected.
Vice: TRE
Graphics board 0 is "CRM" graphics.
 Managed (":0.0") 1408x1024 
 32 + 32 bitplanes
 board revision 2, CRM revision C, GBE revision B
 Monitor 0 type: SGX 4608
 Channel 0:
 Origin = (0,0)
 Video Output: 1408 pixels, 1024 lines, 76.00Hz (1408x1024_76)

$Id: irix.html,v 1.14 2006/01/30 12:13:26 johnsmith Exp $
back to top