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As stated here, repGL (a library to emulate SGI's IrisGL on top of OpenGL) can be found at this address: ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/pub/grafik/.

I can see the file, indeed (it's named repGL-0.2.tar.gz), but I can't download it since I always get a 551 error from the FTP server, therefore I was wondering if anyone knows of any other server providing this archive.

Stephen Kitt
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stef
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  • That's one unhappy server. – Alex Hajnal Nov 11 '18 at 23:28
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    Since the server's still live(ish) you could try contacting the site owner to see if they can help you out. http://www.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de redirects to https://uol.de/informatik/ which has contact info. – Alex Hajnal Nov 11 '18 at 23:46
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    repGL seems to have gone up to at least 0.3.1. This thread leads to this no-longer extant site: ftp://ftp.uni-bielefeld.de/pub/graphics/opengl/repGL-0.3.1.tar.gz – Alex Hajnal Nov 12 '18 at 01:41
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    Random thought: you know it's retrocomputing when search results return a .SU site! (no, it's not kremvax) – Alex Hajnal Nov 12 '18 at 01:46
  • @AlexHajnal Thanks for your comment. Perhaps, since repGL has gone up to 0.3.1, before contacting the university I'll try on Mesa mailing lists. – stef Nov 12 '18 at 11:32
  • I also saw mention of a Win32 (Cygwin?) port with the oh-so-useful filename repGL.tar.gz. One might be able to derive the original Unix sources if you can track that down. – Alex Hajnal Nov 12 '18 at 19:27
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    @AlexHajnal I was able to find the win32 port here: https://web.archive.org/web/20010404015805/http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Forum/6298, but even the link in that page is dead – stef Nov 13 '18 at 20:37
  • @AlexHajnal wow this is the first time I got actually a notification from a chat ... until now it was never working in any SE site properly or at all. My humble off-topic feeling is that your question is not about retro computing but about finding off site resource instead ... but my perspective may be biased by SO/SE where any off site search stuff is considered off topic ... as I am still a newbie in RC/SE I might be wrong but as I am not the only one who close vote this I don't think its the case. – Spektre Nov 14 '18 at 21:52
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    Posting this as a comment since the question's been closed. I just ran across igl which is a currently-maintained IrisGL-on-OpenGL emulator (plus a few related extras such as SGI-specific font support). While older versions supported X11 on MS Windows, the current code only supports X11 on *nix. – Alex Hajnal Nov 21 '18 at 21:09

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It looks like wherever they're storing that stuff is in what's known as a serious but stable condtion. Serious as in it doesn't work, but stable inasmuch as it's consistent in not working. Maybe that server is buried deep in the basement somewhere and hasn't actually been maintained since 1995.

You don't get much information when accessing it through a browser but the command line output is a solid indication that the storage medium is on its last legs. The large amount of time it takes to generate a file listing (large even for the normally slow-ish FTP) is the first clue but the below transcript seems to show that the media is corrupt or flaky in some way:

pax@paxbox$ ftp -p ftp.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de
Connected to ftp.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de.
220-
    FTP.Informatik.Uni-Oldenburg.DE
    Moin!
220 ftp.Informatik.Uni-Oldenburg.DE FTP server (FreeBSD) ready.
Name (ftp.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de:pax): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, type your name as password.
Password:
230-
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.

ftp> cd /pub/grafik
250 CWD command successful.

ftp> ls
227 Entering Passive Mode
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for '/bin/ls'.
total 3
drwxr-xr-x  2 ingo  14    1536 Jun  5  1996 format-docs
drwxr-xr-x  2 ingo  14     512 Jun 30  2001 jpeg
drwxr-xr-x  4 ingo  14     512 Aug 29  1995 netpbm
drwxr-xr-x  6 ingo  14     512 Jun 30  2001 png
-rw-r--r--  1 ingo  14   59523 Aug 29  1995 repGL-0.2.tar.gz
drwxr-xr-x  2 ingo  14     512 Jul 25  1996 seminar
drwxr-xr-x  2 ingo  14     512 Aug 29  1995 test-images
-rw-r--r--  1 ingo  14  573908 Jun  5  1996 tiff-v3.4-tar.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 ingo  14  673234 Nov 24  1994 urt-3.1.tar.gz
226 Transfer complete.

ftp> get repGL-0.2.tar.gz
local: repGL-0.2.tar.gz remote: repGL-0.2.tar.gz
227 Entering Passive Mode
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for 'repGL-0.2.tar.gz' (59523 bytes).
551 Error on input file: Input/output error.

In terms of getting access, I can see two immediate possibilities. The first is to contact the university itself. The second is to try and locate the author, who seems to be one Michael Krause. The author is proving difficult to find using my normal methods (though I'm not the NSA) so I suspect the university may be the more useful approach.

Alternatively, a bit of dedicated research by one Alex Hajnal has turned up this link, which purports to be "an Open Source drop-in replacement for IrisGL using OpenGL under X11". That may well be suitable for your needs if the original cannot be found.