SGI: Development

I've been out of the loop for while. What's the status of efforts to bring usb mass storage device to Irix (if any?).

Is there any?
If someone makes the irix driver, I can make the hardware, but it will not be great in speed. I don't have many options to use on irix beyond the serial port.

Serial port would work for me.

it is not THAT hard. FTDI has a very interesting chip (VC1) which can be used as host USB controller, and even the entire system. BUT if you don't mind using SD instead of USB, I can do that in some moments.

Is there any interface on my Octane I can use for data transfering? Maybe pigbacking to the NIC?

zizban wrote: I've been out of the loop for while. What's the status of efforts to bring usb mass storage device to Irix (if any?).

You haven't missed a thing.

There have been reports of reasonable success with external hard drives and compact flash cards via firewire - but it requires specific hardware.

EDIT: In an effort to stem the tide of PMs sent my way asking who-what-where-when in regards to external hard drives and/or CF cards via firewire, all the hardware involved is listed in The Fuel (IP35) Hardware Aggregator. As far as "reports of reasonable success", the first hit I got on a search was this one by hamei <and as I recall, the CF card even appeared in the hinv hamei posted for his Fuel>: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=16719650&p=7290012&#p7290012

....and here's couple more <I'd suggest reading the entire thread for more details>:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3207&p=67700&#p67700
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3207&p=68273&#p68273

This is the problem. With USB/Firewire everything gets easier. But where to connect it on old hardware?
- SCSI is out of question, too much work for too little. Or not?
- Network, no way.
- Serial is too slow
- Parallel wouldn't be feasible,
- Is it possible to use the 1-Wire bus of the NIC?

I think I can build something that uses serial...But it is so slow...

Tabalabs wrote: This is the problem. With USB/Firewire everything gets easier. But where to connect it on old hardware?
- SCSI is out of question, too much work for too little. Or not?
- Network, no way.

Why no way? One of the cheap external drives with an Ethernet port or a linux box running as an nfs server could provide mass storage for your Octane.

recondas wrote:

Tabalabs wrote: This is the problem. With USB/Firewire everything gets easier. But where to connect it on old hardware?
- SCSI is out of question, too much work for too little. Or not?
- Network, no way.

Why no way? One of the cheap external drives with an Ethernet port or a linux box running as an nfs server could provide mass storage for your Octane.

NFS and/or SAMBA is more fun with gigabit Ethernet on both ends. I am fortunate that I got a shoebox in my Octane and a gigabit PCI Ethernet card.. I would not be as happy with the Octanes built in 100Mbit. Still I wouldn't have said network no way even with a 100Mbit.

ReadyNAS NV+ makes a nice little SMB/AFP/NFS box and gigabit too..

R.

PymbleSoftware wrote: NFS and/or SAMBA is more fun with gigabit Ethernet on both ends. I am fortunate that I got a shoebox in my Octane and a gigabit PCI Ethernet card.. I would not be as happy with the Octanes built in 100Mbit. Still I wouldn't have said network no way even with a 100Mbit.

I agree. 100 Mbit usually does fine for file share/transfer. It's not the speediest, but then again, the machine itself is not the speediest.

PymbleSoftware wrote: ReadyNAS NV+ makes a nice little SMB/AFP/NFS box and gigabit too..

Speaking from own experience, neither one of the ReadyNAS products are anywhere near speedy.

Like, my SheevaPlug has GbE onboard, but it can't reach anywhere near 100MB/s with that poor little hardware...

And this is why most 'NAS' products are deficient.

Once you set up a real fileserver and go the NFS route, you really don't care. A little Atom board with gigabit and PCIE, and you're cooking. You just plug the USB mass storage device there and mount away remotely.

Tabalabs wrote: - Is it possible to use the 1-Wire bus of the NIC?

Only if you want to achieve unprecedented slowness. Not only will you need a separate power source for your storage device, but all the 1-Wire bitbanging will shrink your bandwidth down to zilch.

Dr. Dave wrote: And this is why most 'NAS' products are deficient. Once you set up a real fileserver and go the NFS route, you really don't care. A little Atom board with gigabit and PCIE, and you're cooking. You just plug the USB mass storage device there and mount away remotely.

That's why I built my own 'NAS' at home primary to take care of Windows 7 backups (for the PeeCee) and Time Machine (for the iMac), backup all the photos and in the same time have a placeholder for all my movies.
Built out of a Chenbro ES34069 with a Intel Atom-based mini-ITX mobo (with sufficient amount of SATA-connectors) and 1GB of RAM it serves four 1.5TB WD15EARS drives in Linux MD RAID-5. Got both AFP, NFS and CIFS running on it so the data can be shared among all my hardware at home I can think of, even plays nicely datastore for VMware using NFS with the right parameters.
It's nowhere near a NetApp filer, but it's atleast 1/4th of the power requirements and does it's job.

One of you backward fundamentalists wrote: 100 Mbit usually does fine for file share/transfer.

<rant>
Oh sure, and I guess you believe that people were netbooting and filesharing over sub-10Mbps networks a couple of begattings ago! You theocratic cranks amuse me to no end -- especially with all your hokey religious texts that are allegedly "factual, eye-witness accounts" by people who lived in the time of Cerf and Postel.

Next you'll go off just like any other street preacher, insisting that people were building stored-program computers using hollow glass rods, hand-claps bouncing around in mercury, and vast multitudes of tiny donuts that acted as delicious storage devices. And then just to keep your audience from noticing how absurd these claims are, you'll assert that these impossible constructs didn't just work, but that the ancients and their dieties somehow kept them running so well that the priest-attendants had to work in three shifts around the clock, seven days a week to keep up with these miraculous contraptions!

Let me tell you something, when I made up a whopper like that as a child, my parents beat me until I told the truth. Maybe if somebody had shown you how important it was not to tell lies, we wouldn't be stuck listening to these ludicrous ravings every holiday season. Please, if you insist on believing these delusions, keep it in your hermit-cave out in the countryside and let the rest of us get on with our lives in what we like to call the Real World.
</rant>

Sorry, just amusing myself while sleep deprived. I was going to get indignant about how accessing storage over anything as slow as Fast Ethernet called for a "no way" verdict when this popped into my head...

Now you kids get the hell off of my lawn and go get a haircut!

I'm old-skool here, a ZX10 motherboard (SGI bios!) with a pair of P3-1GHz processors. Serverworks chipset, dual-channel SDRAM. Bunch of 64-bit PCI slots, some 66 MHz. In an SGI rack case with (if I remember right) 11 hard drives with everything but the system disk running RAID. System cooked a Silencer 750 PSU a couple of years back with a BANG-BANG-BANG, it's got an Antec Signature 850 in it now - basically a good Delta server-grade PSU in a standard PC form factor. In the process of moving up to Infiniband for some of the fatter network links.

With GigE, pretty much you can consider the network storage local, whether the mounts are Windows native or NFS. I know the 4-disk 1.5 TB RAID stripe wonks about 130MB/sec when tested locally, so it's the Gig-E that's the bottleneck, and it's running 64-bit, 66 MHz on the PCI side. No matter what anyone says, it's really all about the bandwidth.

smj wrote: Oh sure, and I guess you believe that people were netbooting and filesharing over sub-10Mbps networks a couple of begattings ago!

That's crazy, dude. No way that kind of thing would have been possible! Next thing you'll tell me is that people were booting up GUI operating systems with floppies and only 128k RAM!

josehill wrote: I agree. 100 Mbit usually does fine for file share/transfer. It's not the speediest, but then again, the machine itself is not the speediest.

My employer's network is 100Mbit. Windows Domain, CAD share, everything.

ramq wrote: Speaking from own experience, neither one of the ReadyNAS products are anywhere near speedy.

The NV+ mentioned is an old system, and is slow. Current ReadyNAS products are over 100MB/sec on Gigabit LAN.

Dr.Dave wrote: Once you set up a real fileserver and go the NFS route, you really don't care. A little Atom board with gigabit and PCIE, and you're cooking. You just plug the USB mass storage device there and mount away remotely.

I think the ease of use/user experience of the NAS devices make them worth it for a lot of folks, doing all of the above and more. Yes, my Synology is a bit slower (60MB/sec for RAID5) but I don't find it a pain -certainly it's faster than the local drives on the SGIs!

I know about the Fuel and Firewire because I have one. Works pretty good.
However, everyone else in my world uses USB.

dc_v01 wrote:

josehill wrote: I agree. 100 Mbit usually does fine for file share/transfer. It's not the speediest, but then again, the machine itself is not the speediest.

My employer's network is 100Mbit. Windows Domain, CAD share, everything.

Exactly my point.

zizban wrote: ......everyone else in my world uses USB.

Fair enough - but how many of 'em use an IRIX box? Think of it as nonconformity by obsolescence.