Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

I stumbled across this last night while trying to figure out some POD-related stuff for my Onyx2. The Internet Archive has the SGI Hardware Quick Reference Booklet for Origin 2K/Onyx2 systems available for download. It contains a bunch of information about DIP switches, midplane jumpers, cable configurations for multiple racks, PROM, and POD commands. It helped fill in a lot of the blanks that I had in understanding my own system. I hadn't run across this on the SGI Support site or anywhere else, so I thought this might be helpful to some other folks here.

Link: https://archive.org/details/Origin2k_Hardware_Guide

The PDF with text is a scan of the PDF so it includes the figures but with searchable/highlightable text.

Awesome, thanks for the tip. But how can they call a 303 page document a "quick reference booklet?" How does "book let " even work, let alone "quick?!"

Note that it covers the Origin 200, Metarouter - the whole generation of gear.

Yeah, the fact that it's called a "booklet" amused me as well. They must have had a massive stapler.

On page 185 it mentions an Origin2000 and Onyx2 Power-On Diagnostics manual. I bet that one contains a lot of useful information, but I haven't been able to find it yet. This "booklet" actually contains a fair amount of detail on the subject, though, such as which diagnostics require CAC mode instead of DEX, and which diagnostics should be run before other ones.

Great find! Thanks for sharing.

grabbed it, too. very nice find thanks

Uploading it to nekowiki right now, will edit this post to show a link when the upload is complete, going pretty slooooooowly at the moment...

EDIT: I guess it ain't gonna happen, the wiki said This file is bigger than the server is configured to allow.

vishnu wrote: Uploading it to nekowiki right now, will edit this post to show a link when the upload is complete, going pretty slooooooowly at the moment... EDIT: I guess it ain't gonna happen, the wiki said This file is bigger than the server is configured to allow.

For all the semi-droll reasons we kicked around in the possible-to-delete-account-on-nekochan thread, please don't continue to try ( Stoo summed up the reasons quite nicely ).

Don't know that there's anyone who still cares, but why risk putting nekonoko in a position to have to find out the hard way?

In the flyleaf of HMQ-380-C, SGI wrote: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Unpublished Proprietary Information - All Right Reserved

A few copies of HMQ-380-C have made appearances on eBay. The ones I recall had starting bids in the silly money range and got quickly bid into the stratosphere: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13610&p=107110&hilit=Hardware+Quick+Reference#p107110 I also recall at least one auction for an HMQ-380-C getting pulled the same day it was listed.

The rumor at the time was HMQ-380-C required an NDA and was intended for SGI's Field Engineer staff or for sites with large enough SGI hardware deployments to have a support contract that allowed for their own in-house SGI-qualified FE.

In the flyleaf of HMQ-380-C, SGI wrote: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Unpublished Proprietary Information - All Right Reserved

I noticed that and thought it must be a typo, along with the purple front pages, or it was a beta prior to the final version or something. I guess that must be why it's not on techpubs. Now I'm curious to go through the whole ridiculous 288 page thing to figure out what were the juicy bits they didn't want anyone to know!

EDIT/ADDENDUM: BTW that same verbiage is in virtually all the SGI C and C++ header files, well, actually it says "unpublished proprietary source code," and in fact they had that in the STL code which I think, but am not sure, they later changed to a BSD-like license, which allowed the FSF to include it in gcc/g++. Later, of course, the FSF wrote their own version of the STL but sgi's version was in there for at least a few years...

(Edited to fix a typo and improve readability, content unchanged) ...

I believe a "unpublished and proprietary" legend is required to restrict disclosure of information by the government under DFARS. otherwise, the details of technology supplied by a military contractor would be subject to freedom of information requests et cetera.

vishnu wrote: EDIT/ADDENDUM: BTW that same verbiage is in virtually all SGI C and C++ header files, well, actually it says "unpublished proprietary source code," ...

I get emails with that shit across the bottom, too. Makes me laugh .. "Confidential secret information, if you are not the intended recipient ..."

You're sending this across the Internet, you imbeciles. That's the same as writing it on the stall of a NYC subway bathroom. These people have lived in lalaland way too long ....

vishnu wrote:

In the flyleaf of HMQ-380-C, SGI wrote: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Unpublished Proprietary Information - All Right Reserved

I noticed that and thought it must be a typo, along with the purple front pages, or it was a beta prior to the final version or something. I guess that must be why it's not on techpubs. Now I'm curious to go through the whole ridiculous 288 page thing to figure out what were the juicy bits they didn't want anyone to know!

IIRC, you needed to go through SGI's two week Origin training and certification courses to get these books. Basically, they were proprietary lecture notes and supplementary materials and weren't made available through external channels. SGI didn't mind system owners doing things like adding drives and peripherals to big Origins and Onyxes, but they could be pretty finicky about owners poking around in greater depth, especially when they could charge many tens of thousands of dollars for annual support and maintenance contracts. If you messed with something you weren't supposed to, and it broke, the contract could be voided, and then you'd pay truly jaw-dropping sums for parts and labor. I took a few other courses from SGI back when they had a nice office and training center in Hudson, Massachusetts, and I always tried to sneak into the Origin Technician classes to see what they were up to, but they'd boot me out pretty quickly.

It's easy for us to throw darts at sgi for their Cadillac pricing policy but the simple fact is that creating documentation like this is a very expensive and time consuming process...

vishnu wrote: It's easy for us to throw darts at sgi for their Cadillac pricing policy but the simple fact is that creating documentation like this is a very expensive and time consuming process...

So is buying, installing and maintaining a 200" Betts VBM. Your company is still here. Has been since before WW II.

Why isn't SGI ?

hamei wrote: So is buying, installing and maintaining a 200" Betts VBM. Your company is still here. Has been since before WW II.

Why isn't SGI ?

Vertical integration killed SGI and all the rest of the commercial Unix industry. When we realized we needed a 200" VBM we bought one from Betts, when SGI realized they needed one they designed it from scratch and built it themselves...

vishnu wrote: Vertical integration killed SGI and all the rest of the commercial Unix industry. When we realized we needed a 200" VBM we bought one from Betts, when SGI realized they needed one they designed it from scratch and built it themselves...

Ah, but SGI is (was) Betts. They aren't the end user. They are supposed to take the GE motors and the G&L controls and the solder and resistors and Intel memory chips to build that VBM.

There is a reason that Betts no longer exists - they had too many assets for their stock price, they got destroyed by the job creators of laissez-faire capitalism. But they made it through 100 years or so before that happened.

What's SGI's excuse ?