Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

As you can see in the subject, I finally managed to get my hands on an Onyx2 Deskside. This thread is just to share my happiness with you and maybe to prepare you for a bunch of questions that will most certainly arise on my way of getting to know the system.

If this sort of announcment better belongs into a general chat forum instead of the "getting started" please feal free to move it.

Actually what I bought (unfortunately they obviously don"t throw these things at you like they seem to do in the US here in Europe or I simply don't know the proper sources, so I had to pay for them) was 6 big boxes and 4 small boxes. Why do I say boxes? Because the systems were more or less untested and of uncertain content. Of course on top of that, they were local pickup only. But I felt it was time for me to finally get an Onyx2...

So I mounted my little family van early in the morning in Brussels and travelled to Cologne to exchange it for a Mercedes Sprinter. Then rode on to near Frankfurt. There I did some inspecting / testing (more of that later) loaded everything and went back to Cologne. Shifted half of the load to the family van and went back home late during that night. So right now halve of the stuff is in Cologne, half of it in Brussels.

What did I get:

1 Onyx 2 Deskside, 2 x R10000 - 250, 1GB, IR2E, DIVO, GVC, with Skins (new logo) (unfortunately quite some scratches)
1 Onyx 2 Deskside, 2 x R10000 - 250, 1,28 GB, IR2E, DIVO, GVC, with Skins (old logo) (even more scratches)
1 Onyx 2 Deskside, still untested because the Nodeboard was not installed and I don't have an 7/64 Hex tool, Skins
1 Onyx 2 Deskside, still untested because the fan tray is missing, Skins ripped of by some idiot destroying most of the notches in the process
1 Origin2000(?) or Onyx2 Rack compute module, I can't tell the difference yet, 2 Nodeboards installed, 2 Nodeboards loose. Strangely enough the system has a null router only, so these boards can't have been operating in that cube together, no fan tray; How are these systems cooled when in a rack?
1 Origin2000(?) or Onyx2 Rack compute module, I can't tell the difference yet, 2 Nodeboards installed, no PSU, no fan tray

4 naked Octanes - 2 "dead" (need further investigation), 2 alive, one dual R12k300 one dual R10k250, one MXE one MXI both with a board that identifies as Galileo1.5(?) and a dual channel FC card with DB-9 copper connectors.

As you can imagine this will lead to multiple questions in the near future. Will try to post some hinv asap.

For the time being just wanted to share my being happy with you altough I fear I paid a little to much after what I found so far to be included.

Cheers,

Frank

This batch, I assume ? Congratulations

Every unit is supposed to have a PSU and a fan tray, but they are amongst the parts that fail most often. Looks like someone gutted one or two systems to keep the rest going.

7/64 inch hex keys can be ordered online, or from shops that deal with machinery from the US (like a Harley Davidson shop).

If you search the forum you'll find some recipes to recover scruffed skins. Often an amazing recovery is possible. At least you've got plenty of parts to pick and choose, and you can recover part of your cost by selling of the remains.

I can't check right know because our companys proxy forbids eBay, but if the seller is vintagetools than that's the one.

Yes, looks like it. I will try how many "complete" systems I can assemble and sell the rest as spare parts.

I ordered one online in the Netherlands. Hopefully it will arrive soon. This Harley tip is cool. Should have known that before ordering. There should be a Harley shop somewhere in Brussels I guess.

I will search for it. Thanks for the tip.

Yes, that's the idea. I just doubt it will cover my cost. But then again: It's a hobby and hobbies cost money. Once I have a clear picture what I want to keep and what can be sold I will probably put it into the appropriate group.

Cheers,

Frank

Congratulations - that's a very nice haul.

Capital of Europe Harley-Davidson is <or was> located at Exit 13 on the Brussells Ring. If you want to call first they list their phone number as 0032 (0) 2 454 01 54.

I magnetized a 7/64 Allen <hex> wrench, painted the center portion day-glo orange and and stuck it near the card cage of my G-Brick. That way it's always handy when I need it <and easy to find if I drop it>.

Does GVC = DG5-2/GVO?

Yes. That's what I meant. I am sitting here in my office and can't do any hinv so I was writing the inventory from what I remembered. It is an option for the DG5-2 ("Graphics to Video Option?").
They also have a card that shows up as DIVO as a XIO Option. From what I heard these machines were used in a TV studio. Unfortunately I have no cabling or peripherals (nor knowledge) to put this stuff to use.
The Octanes have a similar looking board. It shows as Galileo 1.5. It seems to be a digital SD Video option for MGRAS equipped Octanes pretty similar to the DIVO.
The Origins contained 2 x 1000BaseSX, 1 x QL2200 (HSSDC Connector) and 1 x QL2310 (LC Connector) Fibre Channel cards in PCI horseshoes. No cardcage unfortunately but 4 horseshoes is pretty cool already I think.
Since I now have enough FC Boards to equip almost every SGI I own with one its time to put that FC-Array to proper use. Unfortunately it is a JBOD. I managed to define a software raid from my Octane on it but to all others on the SAN they just look like individual disks. I am not looking for a real SAN with storage management software but it would be cool to have one raid mounted rw on one Workstation and ro on all the others for common files.
Maybe I should put a search in the appropriate area ...

Cheer,

Frank

Congratulations, not to bad price I think for that lot. You inspire me to do some work with my own systems.

I totally agree with you. Unfortunately the price was not for the lot but for one individual system! Multiply by the number of systems, reduce by some hard bargening, crying, yelling and begging and that's what I paid. I initially wanted one system only. But the idea of having multiple systems to get components from to enhance the one system I intend to keep in the end was just to tempting. I am pretty sure I will not have a good return on investment in the end.

But at least I was able to change my Onyx2 from one nodeboard with 2 x R10000 - 250 to two Nodeboards with 2 x R12000 - 300 already. My idea is to check and clean the other two Onyx2 that at least have skins and sell them to get a small part of the money I paid back. I will advertise them on Nekochan once they have been tested and hinv'ed.

Cheers,

A broke Frank

I see a lot more then.

The manual is pretty good - you'll also need the DIVO software - it's available at free at SGI's Supportfolio site <and is mirrored other places as well>. The installation instructions are here: http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi ... notes/divo
Though not an intended factory option, the Onyx2 DIVO can be installed in an Octane , which allows the user to run VPro graphics - unlike the Octane specific DIVO, which requires MGRAS graphics.

@recondas: Thanks for pointing me to the links.
I did a fresh install of IRIX 6.5.28 on a new 73GB disk. Than added the DIVO1.2 Software from Ian's page and updated via the Overlay2_3/dist/unbundled DIVO stuff. Seems OK so far. The board shows in the hinv. I can not recall seeing any demo packages as indicated in the release notes, though.
I will post a hinv -mv and a /usr/gfx/gfxinfo -v in the corresponding group shortly for you experts to take a look if you see anything fishy. I kept the original disk to be able to check whats on it later.
Did not do that with the second Onyx2 because it did not boot to a graphical login even though console was set to g. Turns out its probably an issue with the graphics pipe because the fresh install does not work either. Will post SYSLOG later.

Cheers,

Frank

Glad you were able to get it working. I still have a DIVO, but no longer have a system with XIO slots that fit it, so I'm working from memory on the DIVO demos. I'm certain they were installed, because I tried them out <though it seems like seems like at least a few wanted an SD video feed>. If you can't find them, you could double check to see if perhaps they weren't selected by default during the install.

If you don't already have it, there's also Shotmaker. If you scroll backwards in the previously linked 'DIVO in an Octane' thread, you'll find a copy of the complimentary license released by SGI and pointers on where Shotmaker can be downloaded. And if you haven't already used it, divotest is probably worth running. If you have several DIVO boards and enough slots in your Onyx2, you can test them all at once.
A bad pipe shouldn't stop the system from booting. You might clone the boot disk of your running system and try booting the problem system with the cloned disk. If you can boot <even in single user mode>, try running /usr/diags/IR/bin/irsaudit -c to test the IR pipe.

Thanks again for the advice.
I will check again for the demos. Don't want to bother you too much without any "hard" data. I am just typing this from the office and do not have access to the system to check directly.
I have the courtesy license of shotmaker somewhere.

The other system is booting. I can access it via a serial console on Port 1 without problems and it does not give any errors on the diag port. But the graphics screen just shows a screen with one open window without title bar (pretty much like the window during boot. It never gets a prompt or graphical login. So I checked the SYSLOG and found (trying to recall by heart) that I get welcomed to ARM land, I also get welcomed to GE land and then something fails and the system asks whether the display generator is missing. I will quote the exact messages once I get home and the kids are in bed (and I get free time by the management).

TGIF,
Frank

Coming back to my last post.
I was able to locate the DIVO demos and diags. It seems that the default is not to install them together with the basic DIVO drivers. Selected them manually and can run the diags now.

For the other system: I swapped the DG and got rid of the irsaudit errors (concerning GVO) and the sporadic reluctance to start the graphics. But I still had "graphis bugs" even though I had 0 errors in irsaudit. Changed the GE also and they are gone now and irsaudit still shows no errors.

Managed to get another two machines from Cologne to Brussels in the mean time which enabled me to do the above swapping in the first place. And got a third machine running. Some more cleaning and testing and I think they are ready to be offered to the collectors.

Cheers,

Frank