An experimental SGI emulator built on QEMU. Vibe coded paper silicon.
Inspired by Iris, and nostalgia for the SGI systems I cut my teeth on. This became an adventure in burning tokens. Somehow, IRIX boots.
My personal SGI era is the post-Indy, Origin/Octane/Onyx systems. So that's what I built.
- SN0: Origin 200, Origin 2000, Onyx2.
- SN1: Origin 300, Origin 3200, 3400 and 3900, Onyx 3000, Onyx 350, Fuel, Tezro.
- Other: Octane / Octane2.
| Hardware | Emulated bits |
|---|---|
| Configurations | Deskside, rack and GIGAchannel; SMP, multiple nodes and NUMA |
| CPUs | R10000, R12000, R14000 and R16000 |
| Graphics | PsiTech RAD1 / RAD4, IMPACT / SI (MGRAS), InfiniteReality (Kona), VPro (Odyssey) |
| Interconnect | Hub, Bedrock, Crossbow, Bridge, XBridge, routers and CrayLink |
| I/O boards | BaseIO, BaseIO-G / MediaIO, IO-8, MENET, MSCSI, PCI carriers and shoehorns |
| Storage | QLogic ISP1040 / ISP12160 SCSI controllers, disks, CD-ROMs and tapes |
| Networking | IOC3 Ethernet, Tigon, BCM570x and Neterion Xframe adapters |
| Peripherals | Serial ports, PS/2 or USB keyboard and mouse, OHCI USB, RAD1 audio |
| Housekeeping | ELSC, module management, L1, flash, EEPROMs and clocks |
Origin 200, two chassis, four CPUs. An expensive way to run hinv.
Origin 2000 with SI graphics. Some polygons escaped the serial console.
The Rust origami CLI manages machines, disks, consoles and network installs.
QEMU does the emulation. Instigator
serves the installation media.
The CLI has fewer presets than QEMU has configurations. The user guide covers the built in options, and the QEMU machine reference covers the rest.
Some combinations boot to a desktop. Others are an opportunity to stare at a serial console. This is a vibe coded experimental playground. Expect broken things and frequent changes.
Preview builds target Linux x86-64, Windows x86-64 and macOS arm64.
PROMs and default IRIX installation media are pulled on-demand, or you can use local copies.
Start with origami machines and the user guide.
Have fun vibing away...
Build steps, prerequisites and packaging are in Developing Origami.
Machine models pass IRIX online diags as well as offline field diags where they exist.
BSD 3-Clause for the frontend and all my modifications. QEMU and bundled dependencies retain their own licenses.
James Braid (let's be real, it was Claude & Codex all the way down)
Thanks to -
- jrra.zone for the fantastic archive of SGI software
- @suigintoulain for the RAD4 software
- Miod Vallat for porting OpenBSD to SGI systems, fantastic reference
- SGI and the Linux-MIPS project
- Many more... standing on the shoulders of giants.