Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

I acquired a Indigo r4k sometime ago that was giving the TOD clock error, which I managed to fix with by replacing the battery only to discover there was a prom password. I managed to successfully clear the password by removing and reseating the eeprom chip. As expected the mac address reverted to ff:ff...... and I am unsure if the mac address can be reset on a r4k indigo or how to set the clock from the command monitor. IRIX is not bootable yet but I am working on that.

Any ideas on setting the mac address and clock?

Also hinv is showing IP20 R4000 at 75mhz but when I run diagnostics I am seeing IP20 R4400 at 150mhz. Not sure which is correct.

For a while computer companies specified the R4000 by its external clock speed, which is half of its internal speed. So 75 MHz clock on the board == 150 MHz R4000. The PROM version may be too old to recognize the PRid of the R4400, but I wouldn't expect any problems from that.

have you tried the PROM's date command?

Well, no, this is not to be expected on an R4k Indigo - they don't lose their Ethernet address when the TOD clock battery dies.

However, quoting from G. Lenerz' site ( http://www.sgistuff.net/hardware/systems/indigo.html ) :



I'd wager your Indigo had been used for a while with a R3000 Indigo CPU board. And apparently, you won't be able to restore the proper Ethernet address until you can put an R3000 CPU board in it.

Of interest viewtopic.php?t=894

The Indigo had a prom password on it and the guy I got it from had never used it and didn't know what it was. So last resort I took a chance and pulled the eeprom and used the resetpw command to clear the password, it worked however as a side effect this clears the mac address. The address is on the chassis but I am unsure how to add it again, not that I will probably be needing it, but I am fairly new to IRIX and I do not know if this will cause issues installing or starting IRIX. It still has the original XZ4000 badges on the front so I think it was originally a IP20 but it has probably changed hands a lot over the years so who knows.

Any and all help is appreciated.

If you'd post where you are then someone with a HP1 R3000 board might be nearby.

That would be awesome but unfortunately I am on Prince Edward Island in Canada, and as far as I have been able to determine am the only one on the island who owns any or has any interest in Silicon Graphics computers.

Hmm - you might be right there.

Do you know any electronics types who would have a EPROM programmer?

Does anyone know what monitors can be used with an indigo? I know that Sgi systems need sync on green compliant monitors and I have one Silicon Graphics Crt which works fine with a 13w3 adapter but none of my other Crt's or Lcd monitors even produce a image, SOG or not. I also have several O2's which work on the non SOG monitors albeit a green tinted image. Is this normal behaviour or is something wrong?

Bad 13w3?

Maybe.

There isn't a standard 13W3 pinout, pretty much everybody who used one went their own way. If you'd like to see if your 13W3 adapter is compliant with (one of) the SGI 13W3 pinouts, there's a table of a few of the varieties in the nekowiki. http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/13W3

This is normal behaviour for non-SOG monitors: they don't recognize and filter the sync signal, which causes the image to be greenish.

But what about for the indigo? The only monitor I have that works with it is a Silicon Graphics Crt. None of my Crts or LCD monitors (which work fine on my O2's and everything else) even produce an image with the indigo.
I am wondering if this is normal behavior for the indigo or maybe a bad 13w3 adapter.

Indy, Indigo2 and up provide a separate sync signal (as does LG1 Indigo), but I'm not sure if GR2 Indigo graphics do - earlier SGIs only provided sync-on-green.

I'm not sure about Indigo GR2 graphics either. Those pins were simply marked 'reserved' for a while. I know Reality Engine does *not* provide separate sync . Worse: it supplies +10V for stereo emitters on one of the pins. I think there are at least 3 or 4 different and sometime incompatible SGI 13W3 pinouts. The Indy &co used 'monitor id' pins, Octane, Onyx2 etc. used DDC. And then there's the Onyx Infinite Reality which leaves everything except RGB n/c.

Because the O2 has a commodity VGA plug, everyone has a cable which provides correct sync signals to a monitor and the monitor merely has to tolerate the SOG present in the RGB, but not necessarily be capable of using it.

The majority of 13W3-HD15 adapters out there is wired for SUN systems, which use yet another incompatible pinout. If such an adapter is used with an Indy, Indigo, Indigo2, ... it will not pass sync to the correct input pins of the monitor. If the monitor does not support SOG either, it will not sync at all.


Nah, the old SGI's with GT(X) and VGX simply supplied SYNC on a separate BNC I used that GT with a bog-standard iiyama LCD screen, btw.