June 2003 Archives

And now for something completely different ...

While browsing about this morning I came across this interesting announcement - a MIPS optimized build of a very bizarre, Turing complete language/compiler with an amusing name:

"For all the SGI brainf* developers out there, I'd like to introduce Thalion Graphic Solutions eK. bf-sgi-1.0, the brand-new, MIPS-optimized implementation of Urban Mueller's infamous creation, the programming language brainf*.

Regards
Helmut Schulz
Thalion Graphic Solutions eK"

If nothing else, check out some of the source code available for this thing -- it's quite interesting to say the least.

Thanks to the efforts of Nekochan forum member nicolas, Mozilla Thunderbird is now available for IRIX.

The other half of the Firebird web browser (SGI's Freeware site has an older version of Firebird - aka Phoenix - available for download), Thunderbird is a new e-mail client which will eventually become part of the standard Mozilla suite.

Two archives are available for download, a packaged tardist which installs to /usr/local/thunderbird with a binary link in /usr/local/bin and a bzip2 compressed tarball which can be extracted anywhere.

Thanks to dexter1, new optimized builds of XMESS/XMAME are now available! Both packages were compiled/optimized with MIPSpro 7.3.1.3m and are mips4 only for maximum performance.

Information on the 0.70.1 release can normally be found at the XMAME Home Page, however the list of changes for 0.70.1 hasn't been posted yet so it's not certain what's changed since 0.69.1.

http://x.mame.net

Download:

xmame-0.70.1.tardist - 12.5MB
xmess-0.70.1.tardist - 5.6MB

A new version of the free biomolecular visualization package has been released.

From the press release:

"VMD "Visual Molecular Dynamics" 1.8.1 Announcement

John Stone
vmd@ks.uiuc.edu
June 10, 2003"

Erik Hofmann is collecting performance information from IRIX FlightGear users.

"Hi,

Erik"

Make sure to drop him a note after installing FlightGear; I'm sure this information will be used to make FlightGear even better.

A new version of FlightGear was released last week, and an IRIX tardist of the core package is available for download.

From the 0.9.2 press release:

"The Flight Gear Flight Simulator project is a free, open-source, multi-platform, cooperative flight sim development project. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GPL. The Flight Gear project is working to create a sophisticated flight simulator framework for the development and pursuit of interesting flight simulator ideas. We are developing a good basic sim that can be expanded and improved upon by anyone interested in contributing.

Erik Hofman"

Some of my observations while setting up the sim under IRIX:

1. Make sure to install the base package -- for some reason it isn't included in the FlightGear tardist. Currently the download link for the 0.9.2 base package on the IRIX download page doesn't work. Get it here instead:

ftp://ftp.flightgear.org/pub/fgfs/Shared/fgfs-base-0.9.2.tar.gz

Extract this file into /opt/lib32 (you'll need to create the lib32 directory first) and rename the resulting FlightGear-0.9.2 directory to FlightGear.

2. There are additional IRIX specific notes on the IRIX download page (tips for increasing framerates, etc):

http://www.a1.nl/~ehofman/fgfs/

Forum member chicago-joe discovered SGI posted the new Mozilla 1.4rc1 binaries on their Developer Central Open Source page sometime in the last week or so. Many thanks go out for the heads up; I've been away on business this week and haven't been able to make the rounds as much as I would have liked.

Download:

ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/mozilla/download/irix/1.4rc1/fw_mozilla.tardist

The contents of the famous Blender 2.0 manual, previously available only in printed form, has been released in both browsable HTML format as well as a downloadable tarball:

Blender 2.0 manual in HTML

This is great news for those who may just now be looking into Blender for the first time and find themselves needing something to get them going. I bought the printed book when it first came out and it's quite a nice guide to have around.

Time for some emulator fun!

A trio of new packages for today -- both XMAME/XMESS (Multi-Arcade Machine Emulator/Multi-Emulator Super System) versions 0.69.1 and VICE (Versatile Commodore Emulator) version 1.11. All three packages were compiled/optimized with MIPSpro 7.3.1.3m and are mips4 only for maximum performance.

Once again, thanks go to dexter1 for providing the new IRIX MIPSpro patches for all three emulators. He also provided this IRIX XMAME Gallery screenshot showing XMAME in action.

More general info on the 0.69.1 release can always be found at the XMAME Home Page:

http://x.mame.net

Discussion regarding this and other IRIX XMAME builds can be found in this forum thread. XMESS discussion is available here.

Moving on to VICE; more information on the latest 1.11 version can be found at the VICE home page:

http://viceteam.bei.t-online.de/

The discussion thread for VICE is located here. All of the forum threads mentioned contain source code patches and compilation instructions if anyone wishes to roll their own build (i.e. for mips3 support).

James Holden of MicroCosmos dropped a note that he has just published an article detailing his experiences applying noise reducing foam to an Indigo2. Details and photos are available from the web site at http://www.microcosmos.co.uk -- it's very much worth checking out if you're interested in making your Indigo2 a bit quieter.