More information, discussion and download links for pjcap can be found in this forum thread. Give it a try and let kshcsuf know how it works out!

The game itself is a tribute to the 1980 classic vector game ‘Rip Off’ by Cinematronics.

Download link, information and discussion can be found in this forum thread. Have fun!

“Chromawaves” is an interactive OpenGL demo featuring colorful waves which can be panned and zoomed via a mouse. Downloads for both binary and sourcecode can be found in this forum thread.

An IRIX binary download and information on its use can be found in this forum thread. It’s a fun way to test out the performance of your machine and generate some nice artwork at the same time. Worth checking out.

New features in this version include:

• Displays the whole solar system with the sun
• Orbits of the moons and planets are shown
• “-lame” commandline switch for machines without hardware-OpenGL

More information and the download link can be found in this thread (scroll down for the latest version).

Ouch.

I sincerely apologize for this. I betrayed the trust of those following me, and I feel awful about it.

Thumbo is a small tool for creating thumbnails from a folder of images for use on the web. A binary download for Thumbo can be found on the project web site:

http://www.sgi.faktor0.de/thumbo/

A discussion thread for feedback and more information can be found here.

Not being much of an IRC user myself I gave it just a cursory run, but it seems to work well. A download link for the binary tarball can be found here (scroll down a bit for the latest version). Give it a try and be sure to let uridium know if it works for you!

Some highlights in this batch (in no particular order) include:

• ncurses-5.7
• perl-5.8.9
• scummvm-1.0-branch
• rssglx-0.9.0 (Really Slick Screensavers)
• flex-2.5.35
• pbzip2-1.0.5
• xaos-3.5

Many thanks go out to to all the Nekoware packagers for crafting these updates!

For those not in the know, Ayam is a free 3D modelling environment for the RenderMan interface distributed under the BSD licence. You can use it in conjunction with freely available IRIX RenderMan binaries such as BMRT.

Though far from the glory days, it’s still nice to see recent 3D graphics applications running on SGI IRIX hardware. Check it out, give it a spin, leave feedback in the forum thread dedicated to the release.

http://www.vizworld.com/2009/08/breaking-sgi-terminates-graphics-division/

It was a long time coming, but nonetheless it’s sad the day finally came to pass.

Twitter is shaping up as an ideal way to mention brief retrocomputing tidbits, gripes, etc. without filling the blog proper with abbreviated content.

As it was fairly cool this morning, I gave the application a quick launch check on my Tezro (screenshot below).

The latest and greatest version can be had from the Blender website at http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/.

A quick note — apparently the next release of Blender requires a newer Python than we currently offer in Nekoware (requires 3.1). Nekoware doesn’t currently have a Python maintainer, and there are a couple areas in the latest Python that require some porting work for IRIX. If anyone has any patches for an IRIX MIPSpro build of Python-3.1, please let me know!

There have also been a few interesting IRIX software releases that have come about recently that I’ve not personally tried. Powering up my Tezro to try out software during the summer is just an invitation to misery — it easily boosts the already uncomfortable indoor temperatures by an additional 10 degrees in short order. Thus, most IRIX hacking will need to wait until the fall. I’ll post up some links shortly regardless, with the caveat that I’ve not personally tried the software myself.

The following are some photos I took the other day for the RetroMacCast website of a prototype Apple Disk III drive I picked up last year with a lot of Apple III parts, peripherals and software. It’s basically a Disk II chassis with a prototype Disk III analog card and some interesting Apple “racing stripes” on the sides. There are also Apple inventory stickers complete with “Property of Apple Computer Inc.” on the top and front of the unit.

For comparison, here is a production Apple Disk III analog card:

I’ve been building this system up from parts, as the 1977 vintage Horizon chassis — though complete with a battered wooden chassis cover, HRZ-MB-3 motherboard and power supply — had been stripped of its complement of S-100 cards and diskette drives.

The HRZ-MB-3 motherboard supports up to twelve S-100 cards (only six are populated with connectors on my unit), and has a built-in serial terminal interface at the rear. I was able to track down a Horizon ZPB-A2 Z-80A Processor Board, Horizon RAM32 Memory Card and Horizon MDC-A4 Micro Disk Controller from additional eBay auctions. For the diskette drives, I went with Shugart SA-450s which are close to original spec (SA-400).

Next steps involve locating a new fuse holder for the power supply as the existing holder’s retention cover and fuse are missing. I also need to locate an appropriate floppy cable and operating system diskettes.

Perhaps later down the road, I’ll attempt to rebuild or repair the wooden chassis cover as it is in pretty poor condition. The original Horizon chassis cover was constructed of cheap veneer covered plywood (kind of a seventies thing), so repair would involve stripping the old veneer away, filling areas with wood putty and then applying fresh new veneer. It might just be easier to build a new cover to similar specifications out of quality wood, though it would be arguably less authentic I suppose.

Anyway, I’ve had fun putting this together so far; kind of a treasure hunt locating all the parts to form a mostly complete Horizon. Hopefully I can get it to a state where it will actually run once again!

Update: I noticed another NorthStar Horizon chassis has shown up on eBay. This one is missing the motherboard which may be a show stopper for many, but does have the Shugart SA-400 floppy drives, drive cable and a complete power supply. Kind of interesting - not sure why the Horizons that turn up these days are stripped, but I have seen a number of loose Horizon boards as well (including a bare motherboard last month) so it may not be too difficult to rebuild if one is so inclined.