SGI O2 Webcam

The SGI O2 workstation has a multimedia card option, fitted in the right hand side rear slot. Two versions of these are available,

• An audio only card which is of no use for a webcam as there is no video interface.
• An audio and video capture capture card.

The combined audio and video card is required for the webcam. It supports video input via the analogue input on a phono connector, or the O2 camera via the SGI specific interface. This looks like a SCSI-3 connector but only supports the the O2 camera. The camera is not particularly good image quality, but good enough for a simple webcam. I have not tried the webcam capture scripts with a video (phono) input.

I believe there is a FireWire PCI card option available, but it is not cheap. Also a dual SDI input and output card was produced. Not at all common and quite pricey but pops up on eBay from time to time.

To produce a working webcam, there are several steps the capture script has to perform:-

• Set the camera parameters, chiefly the shutter speed.
• Take the picture.
• Upload it to a web server.

Hinv output:-

bash$ hinv -vm
CPU: MIPS R12000 Processor Chip Revision: 2.3
FPU: MIPS R12010 Floating Point Chip Revision: 0.0
1 300 MHZ IP32 Processor
Main memory size: 128 Mbytes
Secondary unified instruction/data cache size: 1 Mbyte on Processor 0
Instruction cache size: 32 Kbytes
Data cache size: 32 Kbytes
FLASH PROM version 4.13
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version ADAPTEC 7880
  Disk drive: unit 2 on SCSI controller 0 (unit 2)
  CDROM: unit 4 on SCSI controller 0
Integral SCSI controller 1: Version ADAPTEC 7880
On-board serial ports: tty1
On-board serial ports: tty2
On-board EPP/ECP parallel port
CRM graphics installed
Integral Ethernet: ec0, version 1
Iris Audio Processor: version A3 revision 0
  PCI Adapter ID (vendor 36868, device 32888) pci slot 1
  PCI Adapter ID (vendor 36868, device 32888) pci slot 2
Video: MVP unit 0 version 1.4
AV: AV1 Card version 1, O2Cam type 1 version 0 connected.
Vice: TRE
bash$