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From: whitley@cs.buffalo.edu (John Whitley)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc
Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community"
Date: 20 Mar 1997 00:42:56 GMT
Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Comp Sci
Lines: 51
Message-ID: <5gq16g$6d1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu>
References: <331BB7DD.28EC@net5.net> <5fj37m$oeb$1@kayrad.ziplink.net> <5g9mfj$emd@news.ecn.bgu.edu> <5glc5l$io6$4@kayrad.ziplink.net>
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Mikhail Teterin <mi@ALDAN.ziplink.net..remove-after-`net'> wrote:
>=My PPro is running Linux and has the same amount of memory as my SGI.
>=Compile time are faster on the PPro, but at least glDrawPixels works right
>=on the Indigo, unlike the MetroX version of OpenGL that runs on the Linux
>=box.
>
>MMmm, OpenGL is SGI's invention, of course it works there...
OpenGL is the "invention" of the OpenGL ARB, which includes SGI, and
just a few others (IBM,Dec,Intergraph,Sun,Microsoft,3Dlabs,E&S, HP,
etc, etc.) SGI "invented" the GL, which formed the core of OpenGL for
good reason -- they did good work on designing GL in the first place.
The point is that OpenGL support on PC-level hardware has some
problems right now... this is natural as the market for this level of
3D graphics has only just become reality in the PC world.
>=You can pick up a nice O2 for $6,000.
>
>The 1G SCSI drive from SGI costs ~1000 dollars... Upgrades would be
>too expensive...
Get a clue and buy from a third party vendor like everyone else in the
world. As some astute poster mentioned elsewhere, the SGI prices are
only for corporate buyers that want a turnkey solution and can't be
bothered to see the inside of a case themselves. SGI (and EVERY other
major vendor out there) makes a tidy profit off of such customers
without having to incur the overhead of becoming a dealer of {disk,
RAM, CD-ROM drives, etc.}.
>That's what we did. And it had Irix 5.2. And SGI will not give us patches,
>as we purchased it second hand without "service contract".
So your last two comments indicate that you didn't know enough to do
your homework before buying and/or that you didn't factor in the cost
of the right level of support contract for your needs. And I'm
supposed to be sympathetic...?
To make a general commentary on this (pointless-and-yes-I'm-bored)
thread: Sure, there are contexts within which the Free Unices have
finally achieved a great goal: that of being robust enough for serious
commercial uses. Inexpensive Intel-based systems abound for both
personal and industrial use. Kudos to all who brought this about!
OTOH, this doesn't mean that SGI/IRIX don't have their domains of
dominance. Simply put, serving news is not the sum-in-toto of the
computing experience. Maybe the words "visual computing" will ring a
bell somewhere...
-- John