SGI: hinv

Between what I had and what I pulled out of Rusti's basement a couple of weeks ago, I had enough to put together an entire Onyx2

This will be my test rig to test all of my (many more!) Onyx2 parts. I didn't want to use my 'normal' Onyx2 for that because I fear something would inevitably break. This is by no means the maximum config I can put together, it's just how it looks today. A working baseline.



Graphics: IR3, with dual RM10 and DG5-2/GVO:

It has no skins and sits on blocks because I've got no wheelbase either. Ah well


PS: to the right the project I was working on before I got side tracked by Rusti: my 4D/440 and it's broken power supply (which I'm trying to figure out and fix). I have a working PSU for it still, but I'm determined to figure out how these Power One PSU's tick before the last one dies on me... My 4D/70 is awaiting the same treatment.

PPS: The IR graphics are fine. It's the LCD screen which spent too much time in the garage and has clusters of dead pixels.

I got it one piece at a time,
and it didn't cost me a dime...

haha looks like a real workshop at your place. the power series logo in the back should put you in the right mood

That's not (just) a logo, that's an honest-to-god 4D/380 VGX Power Series rack. And with a bit of imagination you'll be able to recognize the 42U HP 19" rack behind the monitor

The point of the whole exercise: stuff accumulates over the years. I keep finding Onyx2 parts everywhere whenever I open boxes I have no idea what's inside. I can't bring myself to use my "collection" Onyx2 to test them, I don't want to sell them untested, and I don't want to throw them away either. Something has to be done.

So, I'll test everything, throw away all the broken bits keep a sane amount of spares for my Onyx2 and probably sell off everything else.

For starters: I have a couple of GB worth of 512MB kits for Onyx2/O2000/O200. And enough 256MB kits to fully populate at least 2 nodeboards. Tested good, and in ESD safe packaging. Ready to go

jan-jaap wrote: That's not (just) a logo

yeah i didn't mean it like that. i did notice it's the actual thing

Wow, deluxe!

This has given me an urge to finally play with the Onyx2 I got a couple of years ago. Time flies working 3 jobs but now things have slowed down a bit. I ran it for a few hours with one node board. I was just paranoid about power. I am already running a Macpro 3,1 with 4 monitors, a skulltrail PC maxed out (The only game I play is D3) so I don't think the 1k PSU is pulling that much power, 3 dell optiplex 980 sff (vmware esx cluster), 2 dell optiplex 990 mt, and a dell 745 nfs server.

Anyone have a guess at what power the Onyx2 would draw if I am just using terminal windows and not doing any serious graphics work? It has two 400mhz node boards with 2GB of ram if I remember correctly. I need to pull everything and check.

My second desk-side onyx2 is called junkyard for a reason lol

That looks exactly like my Onyx2! Unfortunately i misplaced the hinv somewhere, so i'm not sure what i have.
Also i have an Origin2000 sitting on wood since i donated the wheelbase to the Onyx2, but includes a shoehorn for the CADDuo card and an SE with modified bracket.
I do have skins for the O2000, but it's like glass: every part has broken corners and snapped latches and i don't think i will ever put it on again.

As for power usage, it depends on what spec you have. Can't find any info online so it's best to check with a watt meter

iirc a quad 300 with an ir2 was around 750w

I never measured the consumption of this one, but I remember that my other Onyx2 (4x 500MHz R14K, full RAM, IR3 w./ dual RM10's, couple of XIO and PCI options) consumes close to 1000W when running a demo.

That's probably roughly the thermal budget of a system that size without aggressive 'wind tunnel' cooling which would disqualify it from use in an office environment. A 4D PowerSeries with dual CPU cards and VGX with dual RMs uses roughly the same, an R10000 Onyx1 IR a little more, but if that single, large blower in the bottom of the thing kicks into fast mode you want to be far, far away ...

foetz wrote: iirc a quad 300 with an ir2 was around 750w

My 4x R14000/500 Onyx2 pulls about ~708W idle with just one SCSI disk. Graphics is not spun up because I'm booting Linux on the thing. I do have the PCI shoebox installed, but pulled all of the cards. Seems that for each PCI card, you raise the power consumption a couple of watts. I can't measure a similar effect on my Octane. The Onyx2 HD Video XIO board jumps the power draw by 50W easily....probably because that thing has 4-5 Xilinx FPGAs on it.

Highest I got it was ~768W. This is all on a standard US 120V system plugged into a NEMA-15 outlet and measured with a Kill-A-Watt. Wish I had a 240V socket and they made a 240V Kill-A-Watt...

I wonder what, in the Irix stuff, one has to run on a Onyx2 of 700 watt: Ansys, Maya ?
oh, and I also wonder how the CD-drive in the picture can work when its feets are standing up vertically

ivelegacy wrote: I wonder what, in the Irix stuff, one has to run on a Onyx2 of 700 watt: Ansys, Maya ?

Scientific workloads, visualization, VR, ... And don't forget the various Discreet titles, but you'll need a lot of additional hardware for that.

Basically, if it's too big for a workstation, you move up the food chain.

ivelegacy wrote: oh, and I also wonder how the CD-drive in the picture can work when its feets are standing up vertically

No problem, there are little catches in the CDROM tray which prevent the disc from falling out. Also quite handy if you want to place an Indigo2 on it's feet.

jan-jaap wrote:

ivelegacy wrote: oh, and I also wonder how the CD-drive in the picture can work when its feets are standing up vertically :shock: :shock: :shock:

No problem, there are little catches in the CDROM tray which prevent the disc from falling out. Also quite handy if you want to place an Indigo2 on it's feet.

These catches have been found in CD-ROM drives for a long time. Some require you to flip them out manually (especially in older drives), while newer drives have the tray designed so that little, almost unnoticeable knubs, are built into the outer edge of the tray depression.

my SCSI PlexWriter doesn't have them, and when it stands vertically the CD flips down