[Sheflug] Silicon Graphics (Iris?) / Smoothwall

[James Bruce <nospam [at] sheffield.ac.uk>]

Hi everyone, *long message alert* 

Thought i'd tell you all about [read: show off]  the exciting
possibility that I may actualy be getting a Silicon Graphics 'indy'
workstation (remember i said my dads company was closing down? well,
this thing was used to control one of the big laser cutters or
somehting like that, has a massive screen for cad work etc)... anyhew
i havent got it yet but ive had a chance to play with it and seen its
running something called IRIS , which ive heard is a 'flavour' of unix
just like linux. Well, I thought this would be nice to have in my
room, even i just use it to check my mail!!! Only thing is, it only
has a floppy drive (no cdrom), i have absolutely no idea how to use
it, and has an admin account on it so i can only get in as guest.
Basically, is there any chance out there that someone has experience
with one of these machines or with iris? Is it possible to put linux
on there?! Or can i reinstall iris off a remote cdrom drive (it has
network connection) and therefore have admin access. To be honest, I
am so out of my depth with this thing, but what the hell its not as if
im paying for the machine.... I would love to bring it in to the next
meeting once im back up in sheffield and let you all play with it etc,
but the screen is so huge i can't carry it (and I can't drive), i
would need someone to give me a lift if they could. (go on ill let you
play with it!!!)


Second point, i said earlier this month about getting an old pc to act
as a server running smoothwall so i can share a cable connection. Well
turns out it might be a rather cute PIII 450mHz 128mb ram instead....
obviously i dont want to use it to just run smoothwall on since then i
cant use the power for anything else.... Although it wont be my main
system, it would still be a server essentially,  i would ideally like
it to have the functionality of smoothwall but
 as a useable linux box aswell ; ie would anyone know how to put
debian or suse or whatever onto it and set it up to act as a firewall
cable connection sharing thing as well as a standard linux system when
i wanted (can the sharing thing run in the background?)

Sorry to post such long messages, but thought y'all might like to know
about the SGI workstation and stuff... plus i really need help with
eveyrhitng and you guys are cool... :)

Thanks, 
James

*glowing from the fact that he's gonna have a silicon graphics
workstation*
*with a 23" screen*
*just to check mail!*

(ps: i think i set my message settings correct now, i told it to wrap
to 74 characters before sending, sorry to whoever if it wasnt doing
that before)

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