Target-Earth Blog!
Here's the TargetEarth blog, it's mostly useless information with a few extremely niche tech posts…
Some useful shortcuts:
- Video Game database - Current database of my gaming systems and games.
- Tech stuff - Retro gaming and computers, old electronics, network installers for Unix-like systems.
- Model making - Scale model making, sci-fi, Gundam.
- Car stuff - Rebuilds, projects and previous cars.
- Personal projects - Days out, DIY jobs, other unsorted stuff…
These pages have recently been changed or updated:
| SGI Indigo 2 Workstation | 2021/06/30 20:01 | John |
| Vise Restoration | 2021/06/30 19:37 | John |
| SGI Octane 2 Workstation | 2021/06/30 15:45 | John |
| Tech Stuff | 2021/06/30 15:16 | John |
| Personal Projects | 2021/06/28 08:23 | John |
| Garage Workbenches | 2021/06/25 09:22 | John |
| Master Grade 1/100 Geara Doga (Heavy Armed Type) | 2021/06/24 21:05 | John |
Latest Posts
Pages which have been added most recently:
SGI Octane 2 Workstation
I bought this Octane 2 workstation long after they had been end-of-lined by Silicon Graphics, in fact it was well into the stage that they were only producing Intel/x86 systems; the heyday of their high-end MIPS workstations such as the Octane and Indigo being long forgotten.
The system was bought with the following specification:
- Single R12000 400MHz CPU
- 2GB RAM
- 18GB SCSI HDD
- Odyssey VPro V6 graphics option (32MB RAM, full 3D acceleration)
The system was advertised as being in first class condition - and indeed it was… before it was shipped. As is the case with many of these machines, they are very heavy, much heavier than a regular PC tower. Sadly when it arrived it had not been protected properly and the front, hinged door panel was absolutely smashed to dozens of splinters. It should have looked like this:
Instead, being in so many pieces, my poor Octane has spent all of its life with me looking like this:
SGI Indigo 2 Workstation
This was bought in ~1999 as a tool to write my Computing Science undergraduate final year project: “A multi-threaded, multi-platform VOIP application for Unix systems”.
I bought it configured as follows:
- MIPS R10000 195MHz CPU
- 256MB RAM
- 4GB SCSI HDD
- Solid IMPACT graphics option (wireframe/flat-shaded 3D acceleration)
I used the Indigo 2 through my industrial work placement year and the final year at University - ultimately gaining my degree and putting me on the path to a career in Unix (and Linux) technologies.
Vise Restoration
This vise dates from the 1950's and was inherited by my father from his. Fortunately dad had a lot bigger vise', so this was spare.
Here I've already cleaned most of the 60+ years of dirt and grease off it with degreaser and given it a good rub down with a drill and wire brush attachment:
It needs to have the mechanism seperated now in order to fully clean it, ready to be painted again.
Levelling Garage Floor & Epoxy Floor Paint
After we had our house extended in 2020, one of the final things left to do was to finish the garage floor - where the existing concrete slab had been extended to meet the new walls. Unfortunately this wasn't finished quite level or smooth, so we had to apply a levelling compound first, before we could apply the resin floor protection I wanted.
MT32-Pi, 286 Installation
This is part of my 286 PC adventures, a bit of a finishing touch, if you like. I already have a MIDI card for the machine, and was intending on adding a connection to my bank of physical MIDI devices… however I caught wind of the latest state of the MT32-Pi project and considered adding a software emulation of a Roland MT-32 synth inside the PC itself…
The aim, in short, is to put a virtual one of these:
inside this:
In more detail: The emulation of the Roland MT-32 has come on significantly in recent years, with the Munt project releasing a very accurate software emulation of the device - good enough for most purposes.
More recently, a project to run the Munt emulator on a Raspberry Pi (on 'bare metal', i.e. no Linux OS to boot), called MT32-pi, has reached a milestone where packaging a working MT-32 emulator on a device that can fit in the palm of your hand is possible.
Lots of people are now building these devices, packaging them in to small instrument cases or similar. However, I really liked the idea of having one or two computers where all of the MIDI functionality was entirely built-in, and not reliant on external boxes or power supplies. “Hmm…” I thought; “…that 5.25 drive bay looks like just the place I could fit such a device”.