FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) about the new Octanes
.
"What is that thing on top of the cpu, a camera or a microphone?"
- It's a microphone. There is no camera.
"What are the machine names?"
- The new machines are named for 5-letter islands, being bigger and
better than the old 4-letter machines. The machines in Sp-341 are:
samoa, crete, kauai, tonga, aruba, kayak,
heard, sable, kuril, ibiza, padre, orcas, and malta.
In addition, jerba will be in Sp-312, lummi in Sp-352, and lanai in
Sp-337.
"What is happening to all the old machines?"
-Be assured, they are all going to a good use. First of all, 5 are being tradedin as part of the contract (worth ~3K each). We are keeping 11 of the Indigos (we collected non-working workstations as part of the trade-in).
"I can't get zmail to work! How do I read my mail?"
- netscape mail. Set your preferences under netscape 4.0. "attu" is the
incoming mail pop server; "atlantis" is the outgoing SMTP server.
- mail command. This is the old-fashioned unix way. Open a shell (window)
and type
mail
"How fast are these computers?"
Using the matlab "bench" command, the octanes are 16 times faster than the
Indigos (~Sparc 2).
My tests show Fortran is about 100 times faster than the Indigos, but it
depends on the code.
"How can I make the num lock work?"
- It doesn't work in nedit. Turn num lock on and then open the file using
jot:
jot filename
"What software is available? What's not?"
Matlab 5.3 is the current version of Matlab.
Fortran 77 and Fortran 90 will run binaries that were compiled on
other sgi machines.
NCAR Graphics and Ferret are also useful graphics software.
For a complete listing of system software, type
versions -a
"I don't see my question here. How can I ask a question?"
Submit a question here!
In addition, please let us know if you have an application that
does not work.