About two months old, but still, important news for the IRIX users: “As of May 8, 2002 IRIX 6.5.16 is releasing with all new systems shipping from SGI worldwide manufacturing centers. The IRIX 6.5.16 release contains updates for both the maintenance (6.5.16m) and feature (6.5.16f) streams. This release continues the focus on stability, reliability and compatibility required in the IRIX 6.5.X quarterly release process.” On a related note on releases of heavy-weight Unix OSes, HP extendeded its leading HP-UX with 11i Version 1.6 on June, while as we already reported a few days ago that IBM plans to bring new releases for its AIX too.
The SGI IRIX 6.5.16 Release
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Eugenia Loli
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I haven’t had a problem with it since I upgraded to 6.5.16 and it still runs great on my Indigo2. Microsoft and Apple could learn a thing or two on how to get an OS to run well on older hardware.
Howdy,
It’s been an awfully long time since I’ve had anything to do with SGI. But the low, low price of the SGI workstations on Ebay is kind of attractive.
How much does a copy of Irix cost these days? Have they switched to the Sun model (free on our hardware) or is it still expensive and non-transferrable? What about the developement environment? Is that a charge as well? Would GCC and the toolchain work without extra money being thrown to SGI?
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier
IRIX Maintenance releases (i.e.: 6.5.16m, rather than feature, or ‘f’ releases) are available for free, although you do need to get a SurfZone account (also free).
Look here:
http://support.sgi.com/colls/patches/tools/relstream/
GCC does work on IRIX, and is available in a lovely inst-able format from here (along with an awful lot of other cool Open Source Software):
http://freeware.sgi.com/
The C support on GCC for IRIX is okay, although the C++ support leaves something to be desired! You can get more information on the development options for the IRIX platform here:
http://www.sgi.com/developers/program/
If you join at the Developer Plus level then you get the MIPSpro compiler bundle. MIPSpro is much better at optimization than GCC, is more standards compliant than GCC, has full support…
Cheers,
Ralph
Unless you have an IRIX 6.5 version installed already, you’re going to have to buy up. The upgrade packs don’t go from previous versions. We had a whole bunch of IRIX 5.3 boxes where I work, and upgrading the OS to IRIX 6.5 was going to be cost prohibitive. Back in 1998 I priced out a 5.3 to 6.5 upgrade for my professor. I believe the price we were going to pay through the school was around $500. That could have changed drastically by now.
I’m not sure what the cost of IRIX is nowadays, but it’s best to get a machine that comes with the CD’s. Alternatively, 6.5 CD sets are sometimes sold on ebay as well.
how is IRIX pronounced?
eye-rix? eye-rex?
…IHrix