Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

Newbie intro and O2 questions

pettersson
Who joined Feb. 28, 2015, 7:34 a.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 7:49 a.m...

Hi,

I am pettersson and recently one of my teenage dreams came true - I now own a SGI o2 (r5k, 128mb).
After cleaning it up a bit, I connected it to my Monitor (DELL U2711, manual says it supports SOG). Machine turned on, I can hear the startup sound, but I get no picture, the power led is green. I have to add, currently ther is no Harddisk installed (got the machine from work and I had to remove the hdd). I thought I might get into some kind of bios to check if the machine is still working, even without a HDD.
Is there any basic tutorial about these machines?

regards
pettersson

uunix
From Stourbridge / England / UK
Who joined March 27, 2011, 12:48 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 9:02 a.m...

A few things here, on an o2 using the standard svga out, you don't need to worry about Synce On Green. There may be a possibility the Console (in the PROM) output is set to 'd' and 'g' meaning that it will not display anything until it passes diag.

You may need a serial cable.

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Hey Ho! Pip & Dandy!
:O2:

uunix
From Stourbridge / England / UK
Who joined March 27, 2011, 12:48 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 9:07 a.m...

I think (without restarting my o2) if you fire it up an type:
5
SETENV console d

Then reboot, you may possibly et something.

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Hey Ho! Pip & Dandy!
:O2:

uunix
From Stourbridge / England / UK
Who joined March 27, 2011, 12:48 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 9:10 a.m...

sorry I meant

SETENV console g

or SETENV console=g

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Hey Ho! Pip & Dandy!
:O2:

josehill
Moderator
From New England, USA
Who joined June 6, 2005, 9:53 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 10:03 a.m...

Welcome, pettersson!

uunix's advice might fix the problem, but the problem might also be that the O2 doesn't know what to do with a 2560 x 1440 resolution display. Is there some way to set the display to use a lower resolution or to use a different display? You might try setting your display to run at 1280x1024 @60Hz or even 1024x768 @60Hz, if possible.

SGI has a lot of documentation at its Techpubs site, including an O2 hardware guide .

PS. O2s do output a SOG signal, so while many modern displays will show the O2 desktop, if they are not truly SOG compatible, the display will have a green tint. For what it is worth, I just plugged an R5k O2 into an older, non-SOG Dell display, and I took a screenshot of the supported resolutions . Notice the green tint.

uunix
From Stourbridge / England / UK
Who joined March 27, 2011, 12:48 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 10:18 a.m...

josehill wrote: Welcome, pettersson!

uunix's advice might fix the problem, but the problem might also be that the O2 doesn't know what to do with a 2560 x 1440 resolution display. Is there some way to set the display to use a lower resolution or to use a different display? You might try setting your display to run at 1280x1024 @60Hz or even 1024x768 @60Hz, if possible.

SGI has a lot of documentation at its Techpubs site, including an O2 hardware guide .

PS. O2s do output a SOG signal, so while many modern displays will show the O2 desktop, if they are not truly SOG compatible, the display will have a green tint. For what it is worth, I just plugged an R5k O2 into an older, non-SOG Dell display, and I took a screenshot of the supported resolutions . Notice the green tint.

josehill, where did you get that resolution from? I can't see it in the OP?

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Hey Ho! Pip & Dandy!
:O2:

josehill
Moderator
From New England, USA
Who joined June 6, 2005, 9:53 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 10:23 a.m...

uunix wrote: josehill, where did you get that resolution from? I can't see it in the OP?

I looked up the specs of petterson's display on the Dell website .

uunix
From Stourbridge / England / UK
Who joined March 27, 2011, 12:48 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 10:26 a.m...

o2s do not worry about SOG, I could plug mine into a microwave and it would work. Any monitor will work. If I'm wrong I will eat humble pie and stand in the corner.

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Hey Ho! Pip & Dandy!
:O2:

guardian452
From Kentucky, United States
Who joined Aug. 21, 2007, 10:12 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 10:30 a.m...

Your screen does not need to be SOG capable because with O2 it will send the H and V sync on the right pins (unlike using a sun 13w3 adapter which is the wrong pinout for SGI).

It does need to be SOG-tolerant. Meaning, if it isn't compatible it will have a green tint. Lots of very cheap and or very expensive monitors will do this. Your typical dell monitor will work fine

You eat Cadillacs; Lincolns too... Mercurys and Subarus.

ClassicHasClass
From Sunny So Cal
Who joined July 25, 2012, 7:12 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 10:31 a.m...

I have an active SoG filter on my Indy's video output for this reason.

smit happens.

:Fuel:

bigred , 900MHz R16K, 4GB RAM, V12 DCD, 6.5.30
:Indy:

indy , 150MHz R4400SC, 256MB RAM, XL24, 6.5.10
:Indigo2IMP:

purplehaze , R10000, Solid IMPACT
probably posted from

bruce , Quad 2.5GHz PowerPC 970MP, 16GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.4.11
plus IBM POWER6 p520 * Apple Network Server 500 * HP C8000 * BeBox * Solbourne S3000 * Commodore 128 * many more...

uunix
From Stourbridge / England / UK
Who joined March 27, 2011, 12:48 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 10:33 a.m...

josehill wrote:

uunix wrote: josehill, where did you get that resolution from? I can't see it in the OP?

I looked up the specs of petterson's display on the Dell website .

What you looked up sounds like the max, I think all monitors will display 1280x1024 etc heck I may be wrong. I've never heard of a monitor that wont go down to required res automatically. BUT.. if the o2 (or any unix machine) is set to a certain display, then that of cause is a different matter.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey Ho! Pip & Dandy!
:O2:

josehill
Moderator
From New England, USA
Who joined June 6, 2005, 9:53 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 10:59 a.m...

uunix wrote: What you looked up sounds like the max, I think all monitors will display 1280x1024 etc heck I may be wrong. I've never heard of a monitor that wont go down to required res automatically. BUT.. if the o2 (or any unix machine) is set to a certain display, then that of cause is a different matter.

Yeah, his display supports 1280x1024, which is why I suggested using it directly. However, I've run into the problem several times when an O2 and a modern monitor are unable to come to an automatic agreement on resolution. In some cases, it seems to be a timeout issue, where if agreement isn't reached quickly enough, one or the other gives up. In those cases, I've either had to manually set the monitor to a known-good resolution, or I've had to toggle display modes manually.

smj
From Berkeley, CA, USA, NA, Earth, Sol
Who joined Nov. 12, 2007, 7:54 p.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 4:02 p.m...

uunix wrote: If I'm wrong I will eat humble pie and stand in the corner.

Waiting for pictures...

Then?

... Now?

+MLA

... Other: DEC :BA213:

Sun , DG AViiON , NeXT :Cube:

pettersson
Who joined Feb. 28, 2015, 7:34 a.m.

Wrote the following at Feb. 28, 2015, 11:06 p.m...

Good morning guys,

thanks a lot for your help! Setting the console to g did indeed fix the problem. About the Monitor: It auto adjusted to 1280x1024 and scaled the picture to fill the screen from top to bottom with black bars on both sided. Looks quite good

So I guess it's safe to say the DELL u2711 is compatible.

Now I need to get a compatible HD. I can't wait to play Quake on this little machine

Trippynet
Who joined Aug. 15, 2013, 6:22 a.m.

Wrote the following at March 1, 2015, 3:12 a.m...

Best of luck with it! The O2s aren't the fastest things around, but they are very small, neat and cute. It's also fairly straight-forward to replace the fan in the PSU to make them almost silent in operation as well.

Hard drive wise, any 1" high 80pin SCA drive will do. I'm fortunate in that I've acquired quite a pile of them from old decommissioned servers at work. Hence for a while, my O2 (back when it was in use) had two 300GB 10k hard drives in it. Of course, next step after that is to hope you've got a set of IRIX CDs kicking around

Systems in use:
:Fuel:

- Lithium : R14000 600MHz CPU, 4GB RAM, V10 Graphics, 36GB 15k HDD & 300GB 10k HDD, New/quiet fans, IRIX 6.5.30
:Indigo2IMP:

- Nitrogen : R10000 195MHz CPU, 384MB RAM, SolidIMPACT Graphics, 36GB 15k HDD & 300GB 10k HDD, New/quiet fans, IRIX 6.5.22
Other systems in storage: :O2:

x 2,

x 2

josehill
Moderator
From New England, USA
Who joined June 6, 2005, 9:53 p.m.

Wrote the following at March 1, 2015, 8:45 a.m...

Cool! Congratulations!

...and "well done" to uunix, who nailed the solution!

pettersson wrote: Good morning guys,

thanks a lot for your help! Setting the console to g did indeed fix the problem. About the Monitor: It auto adjusted to 1280x1024 and scaled the picture to fill the screen from top to bottom with black bars on both sided. Looks quite good So I guess it's safe to say the DELL u2711 is compatible.

Now I need to get a compatible HD. I can't wait to play Quake on this little machine

uunix wrote: There may be a possibility the Console (in the PROM) output is set to 'd' and 'g' meaning that it will not display anything until it passes diag.

mopar5150
From Palm Springs, CA
Who joined April 24, 2012, 6:02 p.m.

Wrote the following at April 8, 2015, 5:12 p.m...

I will send you a bootable 73 gig drive and O2 sled for the cost of shipping. Welcome to the forum and PM me your address.

If the thing isn't on fire it's a software problem.

:Tezro:

Krokodil
Who joined April 17, 2015, 2:32 p.m.

Wrote the following at April 17, 2015, 4:34 p.m...

I also recently got myself an SGI O2 R5K - 128MB.

. So welcome from a fellow owner.

O2 - (Mantadoc) - R5K - 200MHZ - 128MB RAM - 6.5.30
:Octane:

Octane - (Montrealais) - R12K - 2*360MHZ - 1024MB RAM - EMXI. - 6.5.30
Alphaserver DS10 - (Vandoc) - EV6 - 466MHZ - 256MB RAM
Sun Ultra 5 - (Quedoc) - UltraSparc II - 400MHZ - 512MB RAM
ASUS K55VD - (Mapleglen)- I5 - Dual Core 2.5GHZ - 8 GB RAM
Dell L502X - (Algorail) - I7 - Quad Core 2GHZ - 6 GB RAM