IRIX, MP3 and so on
===================

At Saturday I  had an opportunity to  play with my SGI  Indigo which is
hidden in  our village house.  I did some useful  stuff here but  it is
probably not so interesting.

I also  tried to  play some  MP3 files  here. This  Indigo is  a 64-bit
computer with the MIPS R4000 CPU  (the very firs 64-bit MIPS which runs
at 100MHz). It's a computer from 1992  (or even 1991?) so no one should
expect that such think will work (try to  play a MP3 on a 386 or 486 on
from these years!).  Anyway, on my (even older) Indigo  with the 32-bit
R3000 CPU (33 MHz)  it is possible to play MP3  files with the "mpg123"
(the version I have is a venerable  IRIX port). But it is not that easy
- any GUI operation has influence on playback.

On the R4000 Indigo  there are no such isses. It  is easily possible to
work  and  have  the  mpg123  running  in  the  background.  There  are
limitations:  the  only  "mpg123"  available is  an  old  version  from
1999  which cannot  play web  stream  (no problem  for a  non-networked
workstation,  though) and  which segfaults  on any  non-ASCII character
inside the MP3  file header. The later issue is  more important as many
official MP3 files include "correct" names of bands and songs and these
often  include non-ASCII  characters (Japan  symbols, Central  European
letters and so on). Of course  it is technically possible to modify MP3
headers but  I don't  want to  modify files I  bought as  it (probably)
might violate  someone rights.  SO I  cannot listen  some songs  on the
Indigo.

So I  am able to  work on  this computer (by  work I mean  Vim editing,
compiling  and viewing  of PDF  files)  and listening  the music.  Even
playing the files  directly from the SD card (with  the SCSI2SD adapter
connected  to the  external  SCSI  connector of  the  Indigo) makes  no
problems.