Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

Hi all
Finally my Octane arrived so I can start post on this forum and bother all you with regular newbie questions

So
I've got this Octane (together with SGI 21'' monitor for 100 Euro is it reasonable price?) It has few small scratches here and there but most important for me is that it starts... sort of. but after start some problems begins.
here's the first screenshot:

all I get after this message is a PROM menu and autobooting doesn't work...

This Octane has 2 9BG Compaq Wide SCSi discs and I think one of them isn't working. All I hearr after booting is few clicks from the discs and then I can hear it tryes to spin...
After this I see the message I showed you above.
When only second disc is inserterd it can't boot (my guess is due to not having OS or boot sector or something - forgive me I'm new to SGI)
So any ideas how to start fixing this. I can see from hinv it only has SI gfx board so I won't be able to run all the cool textured demos but it will be nice to having this running.
Please find attached these picture below and please suggest anything. how to start fixing this? If it's the system disc which I assume is broken then how can I get IRIX 6.5. copy and install it on this machine.

more photos here:

Welcome crrn, and congratulations on your new Octane!

Looks like you don't have a bootable drive. Fortunately you can still find relatively new (5+ years old) SCA SCSI drives on eBay and such - you don't need more room than 9GB to get IRIX running, but a newer, faster drive is always welcome.

You're right that you'll need to get hold of IRIX media. Such media kits appear on eBay fairly frequently, just be aware that the 3 or 4 CD Overlay releases are not enough, you need something that includes the 8-10 Foundation or base set of IRIX 6.5 as well. Instructions for what to do once you have them can be found in the Nekochan wiki , though you'll see it references Ian's instructions here .

A friendly Nekochan member might be able to install IRIX on a drive for you, to get you started - I'd offer, but there's probably somebody much, much closer.

Welcome and good luck!

If you haven't yet, pull open your machine and carefully reseat the RAM and drives. Then pull out one of the hard drives and see if you still get the SCSI error, then the other. Even without an IRIX install you shouldn't be getting SCSI errors (though they mainly are something easy, like an unseated connector).

OK Sounds liek I can do this, but how do I reset RAM and drives?
I can take the fornt panel off but is this what you mean? what then?

Honestly, I would leave the mainboard (where the RAM is) in place for the moment.

The boot message is pretty clear: the disk fails diagnostics, apparently because there's something wrong with RAM on the disk (could be cache memory).

SCA SCSI disks are easy to find and cost next to nothing. Try to find something with FD bearings like a Seagate 10K.7 or 15K.3, 15K.4 ... Those are as silent as a modern SATA disk.

With a new disk your problems will probably go away.

The Octane uses 'compression' connectors internally. Even touching them can destroy them. There's probably dust inside, if that gets on the compression connectors they will become unreliable too.

If it ain't broken, don't mess with it.

(and if you've got to mess with it, change one thing at a time. starting with that disk).

Yeah, you've got to be careful, but I still would recommend reseating all friction-fit components if the machine has been shipped. Shippers can bang things around a bit, and making sure everything is tight can save problems later. When I get machines I make sure everything is tight and evict all resident dust bunnies first thing.

Thanks for the replies so far.
I cleaned the inside of this Octane with compressed air and tried tighten everything up just to make sure everything is connected.
As I expected not much changes after this so I sterted to setup bootp and tftp server on my linux bos and will try to install on the second disc which apears to be working.
will update you if succeeded or failed.
thanks.

Hi crrn,

Good idea to reinstall the OS from scratch. However, you'll probably face problems with tftp on Linux. I don't know exactly how and why (others could probably answer), but it doesn't manage the protocol in the same way as Irix. *BSD does it. So, it would be much easier and straightforward to use deBug's DINA instead (which is based on freeBSD). Have a look on the wiki here .

Have fun !

According to his signature, crrn also owns an Indigo2 with R10k. So I think he can follow Ian's guide which can be found here http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/netboot.html in order to configure another SGI as an alternative to DINA. Worked perfect for me...

Just my 2cts

HDC

Good point. I didn't notice that.
From my experience, DINA would be faster, simply by the fact that Indigo2 has a 10Mbps Ethernet connection. The Octane has a fast ethernet. The installation speed does not directly depends on that but also on processor speed and hard disk, but it's a way to speed up a little bit the process.

You're right, the 10Base-T NIC in an Indigo2 is a disadvantage. Unless crrn is a lucky owner of a Phobos GIO or EISA or a 3c597 EISA

If not, using DINA is better from a performance point of view.

Regards
HDC

WOW! It's working now!
ok let me explain myself first... my Indigo2 is not working anymore. I bought it one month ago (or so) but couldn't get it to work anyway.... that's why i registered month ago but didn't post since then. now I have this Octane and with some help from fellow Nekochan'ers I have it running with fresh Irix 6.5 install.
Here's the proof:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21703767/sgi/O ... G_0419.jpg

Now...
What I did was:
1. removed broken SCSI disc (It was seriously broken as it gave strange sounds while booting)
2. use these tutorials to create linux tftp and bootp server
- http://techpubs.spinlocksolutions.com/i ... linux.html
- http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/netboot.html
- http://software.majix.org/irix/install- ... inux.shtml
but actually the first one was the most helpfull as I was using debian gnu/linux (squeez) to serv as tftp/bootp/rsh (my note: dns part is not crucial. you can avoid it if you are going to use these modern wifi/ethernet hubs with build in dns servers)
anyways... following these tutorials was easy, and straightforward.

in the meantime some fellow Nekochan'ers sugested DINA, but I was in the middle of the process so I'll look at DINA next time, because it's not my last word for SGI hardware.
Thanks guys.
I wish I could get this kind of help on other retro-computer forums where I'm also involved.

Now here you can see how this Octane fits my "Mansion"

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21703767/sgi/O ... G_0416.JPG

Regards!

Hooray! Glad to hear the Octane is working. Now, to fix the Indigo2...

Good to hear that you now have a full working Octane. That's definitely a nice machine.


For sure. You'll soon become addict.

By the way, thanks for the first link. I didn't know it.