Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

Hi, my name is Nathan, i'm 21 years old and i live in France. i recently bought my first SGI system, an octane with a single 300mhz R12k, 1gb of RAM, 9gb HDD and SI graphics (without TRAM ). I already spent a lot of time trying to get it working, without success. i suppose i made all the noob mistakes. Here's the story, i hope that it helps someone.

-first i had no display and the front led stayed red. i thought about a hardware problem, so i reseated/cleaned the internal boards, checked the front panel with the diagnostic LEDs (which were good) only to discover later that the problem was that i had no keyboard plugged in. so, i plugged a PS/2 keyboard ( /!\ an USB keyboard with a PS/2 adapter won't work, you need an actual PS/2 keyboard )

so my octane finally booted but i still had no display. i was using a 13W3 adapter advertised as working on SUN and SGI systems. with those adapters you apparently need to have an SOG compatible monitor. which of course none of my monitors are. i tried the octane on my main LCD screen which is an acer AL2216W (the one without DVI), on my LG 42" television, on an old 17" lcd, on an acer AL2016W, a philips 15" lcd and even some CRTs. none of them worked.
At this point i was doubting that the problem came from the screens themselves so i took my octane to a friend's house where he has a SOG monitor (an old proview 700P 17" LCD). 150km at night with an SGI octane in the passenger seat of your car is something you have to do once in your lifetime .

So, when i was there the octane booted right up and an image appeared on the screen immediately. i finally got the chance to see my system working. so when i got back to my house and after a lot of searching about 13W3 adapters on the neko forums i noticed that in cases similar to mine ot was advised to strip the 10 center pins on the 13W3 side of the adapter.
After a lot of swearing and cutting myself by accident i managed to do this with a small pair of pliers. it didn't work at all. needless to say i was pissed. So i bought an actual new SGI VGA cable (part number SGI 018-0881-002, available on ebay). i think (hope) that with this i should finally be able to use my SGI. i haven't received it yet but i will post about it when i do (probably tomorrow).

pic of said octane:



also i noticed this on one of my friend's install CDs (from the 6.5.11 release):


wtf, SGI ? (my friend also told me that the 6.5.11 gives errors/problems with scripts when installing, on both octane and O2 systems. SGI systems sure are a lot of fun! )

i know, cool story bro

Bonjour et bienvenue

While waiting for the video cable, you could also try using it via the serial port:

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/Headless



All the best.

Salut, bienvenue sur Nekochan.
J'admire la croissance de la communauté sgi francophone. C'est extraordinaire.
La suite en anglais pour le reste de la population.


As previously said, using a serial console will start you going. Or make sure your 13W3 adapter is the good one (if you have a chance to try replacing it on a working setup, it will let you know if you have the right one). Although the adapter I bought for my first octane was advertised for sgi and sun, I had no luck with it and ended up getting another one.

I hope you will get this sorted soon.

It's an interesting CD you have. The first time I notice Octan t e2!

Keep us updated

If you are handy with a soldering Iron, and have a electronics store near by you can whip your self up an adapter. I made my own from an old video card connector and a old 13w3 cable. It works great with my octane2 v6

here is the thread that I obtained the info from

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16426&p=128122&hilit=indy+2+vga+hack#p128122

By the way congratulations on the new system !

acidchrist wrote: At this point i was doubting that the problem came from the screens themselves so i took my octane to a friend's house where he has a SOG monitor (an old proview 700P 17" LCD). 150km at night with an SGI octane in the passenger seat of your car is something you have to do once in your lifetime .

Wait a few years to when you're doing it with an Onyx/Onyx2/Origin/Challenge deskside. That's even better.

also i noticed this on one of my friend's install CDs (from the 6.5.11 release):

(Picture of CD with two demo versions)

wtf, SGI ? (my friend also told me that the 6.5.11 gives errors/problems with scripts when installing, on both octane and O2 systems. SGI systems sure are a lot of fun! )

i know, cool story bro

While I haven't used that CD, my guess is that there are Octane/Mardigras (IMPACT *I or *E graphics) demos and probably some other demos specifically for Odyssey/VPro (the 1.0 demos for Octane2), showing off the fancy new features of the Octane2 graphics.

thanks for your replies

i received the cable today. when i plugged my acer al2216w i still had no display but the screen stayed powered on this time.

so i tried it on my HDTV and IT WORKS !

finally seeing the octane boot screen, and on a 42" screen was just awesome

however my joy was short-lived because the system doesn't boot. my keyboard apparently isn't compatible (it's an el-cheapo PS/2 keyboard with extended keys for win 98 ) i get an error, it tells me that i can't plug more than one keyboard, which is i think caused by the additional win keys.

so the first thing i thought was "im just gonna open this fraking keyboard and unplug the module with the win keys". so 23 screws later i finally saw that the additional, and useless keys were in fact hardwired on the PCB itself and there was no way i could just make the keyboard become a regular, non-windows98 ps/2 keyboard

i tried "resetenv" but without luck. so i just need a working keyboard and i will finally be able to play with my huge vacuum cleaner/electric heater.

A keyboard with windows keys should work fine, I've used one with my octane before. Do you also have a PS/2 mouse plugged in, and are they in the right ports?

yes i have a ps/2 optical mouse, but a very basic one, extremely light. it works fine during bootup (i can see and move the cute little red pointer). keyboard works fine too in the prom, except that the numlock and caps lock keys aren't where they should be. i get a similar error message about the mouse too during bootup, but even without mouse it does the same thing (keyboard error)

also every time i press a key the error reappears and the keyboard apparently is reinitialised (the leds blink once all at the same time like when it boots)

they are in the right ports too. as i mentioned earlier, the system booted fine with my friend's SGI keyboard/mouse setup so i really think that the problem comes from my keyboard

Your keyboard might not like the signal codes the SGI ones use, I suggest getting another one.

SGI uses scancode 3. I've had good luck with IBM keyboards, and I'd suspect that any good PS/2 keyboard would work, but it's likely that the cheap ones won't because scancode 3 isn't used much.

PymbleSoftware wrote: Bonjour et bienvenue

While waiting for the video cable, you could also try using it via the serial port:

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/Headless



All the best.

If you have another computer and null modem serial cable somewhere about you can always do the serial port thing until you get keyboards and sync on green monitors...

My Samsung Syncmaster F2380 is a cheap cPVA panel with much better colour and contrast than most TN panels out there, is only 250 Euros, and supports sync on green. Just make sure you're using a SGI pinout 13W3-VGA adapter, because Sun 13W3 adapters (more common) don't work.

hi everyone

it is finally working ! i'm using an old microsoft ( ) keyboard and it's perfect.

so far i created an user account, set up networking, and downloaded the nekoware distribution.

i put the nekoware on my macbook, launched an NFS server on it and the SGI recognised it and mounted the filesystem without any problem. I installed boinc and seti and the Octane was crunching all night. Nekoware is awesome. And i have to say i was impressed by the performance of the octane in floating point. For 300mhz and old ram it's very powerful. Irix is really fast too, probably due to the 1gb of ram.

is there a nekochan seti team?

Congradulations on getting the machine set up.

acidchrist wrote: is there a nekochan seti team?

I recall some discussions about team nekochan on seti.. Using the search button on top right of this page... I found:
search.php?keywords=seti+team+neko&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

i am now a member of the nekochan seti team

i only have the octane and the macbook running for now but once i get the core2/CUDA machine back on i should have an acceptable RAC

acidchrist wrote: ...macbook running for now but once i get the core2/CUDA machine back on i should have an acceptable RAC

Isn't that cheating?

no