SGI: hinv

hinv -v


gfxinfo -v


This is the system that had a broken power supply a couple of weeks ago. As you can see, this problem has been fixed
When I got this one it was a 4D/420 and it had only a 5 span VGX.

System is in perfect running condition, with complete and perfect looking skins.

The following upgrades are in the pipeline (I have the parts, but haven't had the time to install and test them):
* VME FDDI network board
* VME dual differential scsi board
* Upgrade MC2 to 256MB RAM.

At that time I may have to upgrade it to IRIX 5.3 also. Not that I want to, but I don't have the drivers for the FDDI and SCSI board for IRIX 4.x. For IRIX 5.3 they're all on the CD, but for IRIX4 they were on seperate discs and of course these are long gone. Even SGI can't seem to find them anymore


In this configuration, with two 5.25" full height harddisks it consumes about 875 Watts electricty, or about 2.35 EUR/day

*sigh* I used to have a similar machine, a 4D/440 10-span VGXT. I even had the videolan board and breakout box. And even with the rare white/cream colour doors for VGXT...

I had to debug the VGXT boardset through the serial port of the command/control processor (VGX* had their own dedicated 68020 I believe), man it was fun!

R-ten-K wrote: I had to debug the VGXT boardset through the serial port of the command/control processor (VGX* had their own dedicated 68020 I believe), man it was fun!

I tried once, but didn't get very far:
viewtopic.php?t=6129&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=28

Any memories? I'm assuming the host side is pushing commands into the memory space of the GM so if you know where to set a breakpoint (on the host and/or GM) you might actually see this happening?

This is back in the 90s, let me see if I can dig and find some of my old log books.

But from what I can remember, the command processor on the VGXT (and VGX for that matter) can actually dump state and you can set state w/o need of pushing breakpoints from the host. The VGXT is really its own self contained computer, and there were lots of stuff that you could run on the command processor to push down the pipeline. It actually boots, and theoretically you can boot it independently from the host (although then you can not do anything useful really).

Most of the stuff in the VGXT pipeline is hardwired, so you can only play with whatever is in the buffer or modify whatever is microcoded. You need however a special loader that talks to the supervisor thing running on the control processor on the VGX. And that was something only SGI tech had, I believe one was called Burt and the other Ernie (forgot which side vgxt/remot was Burt and which Ernie) but I am not 100% sure, I rember something simliar because when you enabled this mode you got a prompt on your console that said: "Hey burt! What's up Ernie" I guess if you haven't seen Sesame Street this may not make sense

Anyhow, once you get Ernie to talk to Burt you can then download your microcode and modify local memory at will. It seemed to be a common problem of the VGXT of developing the "pinstripe of death" and it was just stuck addresses, but w/o going to that level the easiest solution usually is to get a new span board.

Updated. Now has the maximum memory (256MB), 100MBit network (FDDI) and an additional dual channel differential SCSI board (Interphase 'Jaguar').

hinv -v

Added picture. System now also has BVO (Broadcast Video Option for VGX) so it has a whole lot of BNCs on the front panel.

Update: it took me a couple of years but I managed to fix the power supply and this baby runs once again!

a true classic. what kind of disk(s) do you have in there?

foetz wrote: a true classic. what kind of disk(s) do you have in there?

One is a 1.2GB full height 5.25" Seagate, the second a plain old 3.5" 4GB IBM DDRS in a half height 5.25" adapter. They are both set to SCSI ID 1. The Seagate 'brick' has IRIX 4.05 installed, the IBM disk has IRIX 5.3. This system has an IO3 dual channel SCSI controller and both channels are wired to the drive bays. So by re-arranging the disks I can dual boot the system

Otherwise, this system has the v4.x PROM chips so it will recognize a CD-ROM for what it is:

I think it will boot any CDROM which is 512byte block capable, but this system has the infamous P6-CDROM first gen "really, I'm a harddisk" CD-ROM.

NB: that 1.2GB disk is rather unusual. Most of these things are 760MB. Deluxe

It will be great to see it up and running some demos. Still looking for one of these classics. to restore and add to my collection