What should I buy with a r6000?

[Jeff Smith]

|>   1. 3rd party memory?? IBM wants >$4000 to go from 8-16 meg.

I think there are companies that will sell IBM style syms, so you can upgrade
a 8M board to something higher.  The board is harder to make, and I don't
know if they have been cloned yet.

|>   2. 3rd party disk drives? I will probably get a internal IBM 320meg
|>     drive and a 3rd party 1.2 gigabyte, either fujitsu or seagate. Any info
|>     on formating, disktab entries, etc?

Using 3rd party disks usually works pretty well.  I would think a major 1.2G
drive should work, but hopefully you can get some real experiences.

|>   3. I can't afford the 24bit color, but should I get the 8bit '3D' board,
|>     or stick with the low end color board?

This is a tough question to answer.  It really depends on what you need to
do.  If you can forsee the need to use the 3d capibility, then it is probably
a good bet (see slot stuff below).  However the X server does not work well
on this card at this time.  This should improve over time.

I have a conflict of interest here.  I used to work for IBM on various UNIX
OS development, including the RS/6000.  I now work at SGI, who OEM's the 3d
board to IBM...

|>   5. Does the field upgrade from 8bit color to 24 bit color take more
|>     than just memory, i.e. can I do it myself for less than $13k?

I have never seen a fully configured board, but I think it can be up to
3 boards.  The basic 3d board.  The Z-buffer, and the 24 bit color.  However
this is partially speculation.

I have no idea how much things cost.

|>   6. Any problem with just 4 slots? I need ethernet, an external scsi
|>      controller and graphics. It would be nice to have 1 slot free. does
|>      24 bit color take 2 slots?

4 slots in the 320 is sorta a bad deal.  You need one for ethernet, one for
SCSI, and one for a display.  This make expansion sorta tight.

You probably want to find out how many slots a fully configured 3d card 
takes.

|>   7. How is the IBM 19" monitor?

excellent.  It's a sony trinitron tube.


Good luck with your 6000.  Unfortuantely I never had one to my self for a
long time, although my SGI machine works just fine.

jeffs at sgi.com