Nekonomicon - Bought an Intellistation POWER 275

jocc
Stranger
Who joined Aug. 17, 2009, 2:43 a.m.
and authored 1 notes

Wrote the following at Aug. 17, 2009, 2:50 a.m...

Hi!

I have an Intellistation 275. This seems to be a 1-way machine, the documentation says: "The Model 275 can be configured as a 1-way to 2-way symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) system." This means there are systems with single-core and dual-core POWER4+ CPUs ? Or this is just the good old CoD technology and the machines are the same, but in some systems the second core is disabled ? If so, is there a possibility to enable it ?
Another question. I'm running AIX6.1 and Debian Lenny on this machine. In debian the X server crashes, so i have no X. Can you recommend a linux distro that runs fine on this machine ?

Thanks,
Jocc

ritchan
Enthusiast
Who joined March 31, 2008, 6:47 a.m.
and authored 229 notes

Wrote the following at Aug. 17, 2009, 3:09 a.m...

Second core is disabled. The POWER4 was IBM's first multicore CPU. I heard a Mac Radeon 7000 PCI flashed to a XVR-100 might work. Or you could just find a GXT130P or something like that. Nothing to do with the distro, just whether it includes the drivers out of the box or not.

R-ten-K
Old Salt
Who joined Nov. 15, 2004, 11:36 p.m.
and authored 1614 notes

Wrote the following at Aug. 17, 2009, 11:20 a.m...

Was there a power4+ with a single core?

IBM's terminology has been all over the place regarding multicore systems. In its current iteration, IBM parlance seems to refer to n-way as the number of processors, not cores. Processor now seems to imply "physical" chip.

A friend was offered a pSeries for a song, but he ended up having a hard time telling from the description if the n-way referred to the number of physical power5 chips, or the cores.

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kramlq
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Who joined Sept. 20, 2005, 5:10 p.m.
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Wrote the following at Aug. 17, 2009, 11:58 a.m...

R-ten-K wrote:

IBM's terminology has been all over the place regarding multicore systems. In its current iteration, IBM parlance seems to refer to n-way as the number of processors, not cores. Processor now seems to imply "physical" chip.

Back in the early Power4 days, I think "Processor Core" was the more common term for a logically independent CPU in a physical chip, but sometimes they were referred to as "processors" in a "chip". I've never noticed any consistent usage of such terminology.

R-ten-K
Old Salt
Who joined Nov. 15, 2004, 11:36 p.m.
and authored 1614 notes

Wrote the following at Aug. 17, 2009, 12:32 p.m...

And the fact that a lot of the new POWER implementations come in multichip packages seems to add more confusion to IBM's terminology.

I have read some papers from IBM talking about an n-way system. But they did not specify if the n referred to the number of processor boards (or books in IBMspeak), or number of packages/modules (or chip carriers in IBM's parlance) per processor board, or to the number of processors/dies per module, or to the number of cores per processor/die.

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bradbobak
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Who joined May 16, 2006, 11:11 p.m.
and authored 49 notes

Wrote the following at Aug. 17, 2009, 12:43 p.m...

my 7026-b80 is referred to as 4-way, and it has 2 cpu boards and 4 processors total. So i'd guess its just the number of processors.

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hamei
Old Salt
Who joined Feb. 24, 2004, 5:10 p.m.
and authored 6612 notes

Wrote the following at Aug. 21, 2009, 5:35 a.m...

R-ten-K wrote:

... add more confusion to IBM's terminology.

I'm not sure it's possible to add more confusion to IBM's terminology

eMGee
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Who joined Nov. 15, 2008, 2:50 p.m.
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Wrote the following at March 17, 2010, 4:09 p.m...

What is the part number for the brackets? I recently ordered four of FRU 00N7281, and they don't fit in my 275!

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ritchan
Enthusiast
Who joined March 31, 2008, 6:47 a.m.
and authored 229 notes

Wrote the following at April 22, 2010, 11:47 p.m...

I just figured this out while taking another Intellistation apart - IBM says you can only put 4 HDDs in the POWER 275, but in this photo you can clearly see that there's a filler panel at the bottom. Well guess what, there's actually another connector down there. Take out the black filler thing in the front and put in a real SCSI backplane, and voila you can have 8 SCSI hard drives in that thing. Haven't tried it, never found a need for 8 small noisy SCSI drives yet.

EDIT:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocente ... /pa520.htm
It seems to share some parts with the Intellistation POWER 275, so I suppose if you wanna buy parts directly from IBM (quite expensive really) then the part numbers here would work instead, because the ones in the Service Guide seem to have been changed to these.

eMGee
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Wrote the following at April 23, 2010, 3:53 a.m...

ritchan wrote:

I just figured this out while taking another Intellistation apart - IBM says you can only put 4 HDDs in the POWER 275, but in this photo you can clearly see that there's a filler panel at the bottom. Well guess what, there's actually another connector down there. Take out the black filler thing in the front and put in a real SCSI backplane, and voila you can have 8 SCSI hard drives in that thing. Haven't tried it, never found a need for 8 small noisy SCSI drives yet.

I know it is possible, it's just a bit expensive (more of those expensive, zany, custom trays/brackets). I've wasted enough money on my system already, in all the spares I've been ordering as of late. The system itself was a steal, very cheap, but then it had to break down on me. With IBM refusing to even help me a tiny bit. Whatever offerings they gave me were wrong, riddled with spelling errors (truly incredible) and totally not to the point. Even if I had the money, I'd not want to rely on their shoddy ‘technical support’ (or whatever would have to pass for it). SGI , even since the takeover, is vastly superior in this regard. I saw you wrote that IRIX is ‘dead’ (or something like that) on your blog/site, but SGI treats IRIX users a whole lot better!

Quote:

[..] I suppose if you wanna buy parts directly from IBM (quite expensive really) [..]

No kidding, for example, they charge € 856,62 (excl. VAT) for a replacement “CD/W HDWR” drive for example. (Not that I need one, it was incorrectly quoted to me; IBM doesn't even have its part numbers right, or refuses to look up part numbers/parts from a catalog).

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thunng8
Member
Who joined July 29, 2005, 1:35 a.m.
and authored 89 notes

Wrote the following at April 23, 2010, 4:33 a.m...

R-ten-K wrote:

Was there a power4+ with a single core?

IBM's terminology has been all over the place regarding multicore systems. In its current iteration, IBM parlance seems to refer to n-way as the number of processors, not cores. Processor now seems to imply "physical" chip.

A friend was offered a pSeries for a song, but he ended up having a hard time telling from the description if the n-way referred to the number of physical power5 chips, or the cores.

There shouldn't be any confusion. n-way has always referred to how many cores are active in the system. So a 1-way POWER 275 here has only 1 core active. a 4 way system has 4 cores active (2 x 2 core chips).

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ppcaddon
Stranger
Who joined Sept. 8, 2009, 3:40 a.m.
and authored 8 notes

Wrote the following at April 23, 2010, 4:42 a.m...

R-ten-K wrote:

And the fact that a lot of the new POWER implementations come in multichip packages seems to add more confusion to IBM's terminology.

I have read some papers from IBM talking about an n-way system. But they did not specify if the n referred to the number of processor boards (or books in IBMspeak), or number of packages/modules (or chip carriers in IBM's parlance) per processor board, or to the number of processors/dies per module, or to the number of cores per processor/die.

here an answer for you:
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/systems/power ... Chipv3.wmv

--
GNU/Linux CRUX PPC on IBM 9114-275

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GNU/Linux CRUX PPC on IBM 9114-275

ritchan
Enthusiast
Who joined March 31, 2008, 6:47 a.m.
and authored 229 notes

Wrote the following at April 24, 2010, 7:40 a.m...

eMGee wrote:

ritchan wrote:

I just figured this out while taking another Intellistation apart - IBM says you can only put 4 HDDs in the POWER 275, but in this photo you can clearly see that there's a filler panel at the bottom. Well guess what, there's actually another connector down there. Take out the black filler thing in the front and put in a real SCSI backplane, and voila you can have 8 SCSI hard drives in that thing. Haven't tried it, never found a need for 8 small noisy SCSI drives yet.

I know it is possible, it's just a bit expensive (more of those expensive, zany, custom trays/brackets). I've wasted enough money on my system already, in all the spares I've been ordering as of late. The system itself was a steal, very cheap, but then it had to break down on me. With IBM refusing to even help me a tiny bit. Whatever offerings they gave me were wrong, riddled with spelling errors (truly incredible) and totally not to the point. Even if I had the money, I'd not want to rely on their shoddy ‘technical support’ (or whatever would have to pass for it). SGI , even since the takeover, is vastly superior in this regard. I saw you wrote that IRIX is ‘dead’ (or something like that) on your blog/site, but SGI treats IRIX users a whole lot better!

Quote:

[..] I suppose if you wanna buy parts directly from IBM (quite expensive really) [..]

No kidding, for example, they charge € 856,62 (excl. VAT) for a replacement “CD/W HDWR” drive for example. (Not that I need one, it was incorrectly quoted to me; IBM doesn't even have its part numbers right, or refuses to look up part numbers/parts from a catalog).

Yup, I emailed and called IBM support asking to buy some spare parts for the 9114-275 - the woman on the telephone said 63 EURs for a plastic door, while the email guy came back with "I'm sorry, it's too old - we don't sell spare parts for that anymore." Interestingly, he also forwarded a note from his higher-ups, who noted that I was most likely a private individual. Maybe that's why the guy who replied didn't bother to check if they still sold parts for the 9114-275.

hamei
Old Salt
Who joined Feb. 24, 2004, 5:10 p.m.
and authored 6612 notes

Wrote the following at April 24, 2010, 7:37 p.m...

ritchan wrote:

... he also forwarded a note from his higher-ups, who noted that I was most likely a private individual.

IBM is pretty open about the fact that they are big company-oriented. An IBM-er once told me that for DeutscheBank they'd parachute in a battalion of service people but they really had no way to deal with an individual's problems. That was a major problem with saving OS/2 - there was no one big enough to deal with IBM's lawyers who wanted it. Serenity was lucky - the main guy was an IBM Man for decades and knew everyone there.

It is what it is ....

ritchan
Enthusiast
Who joined March 31, 2008, 6:47 a.m.
and authored 229 notes

Wrote the following at April 25, 2010, 5:38 a.m...

I stuck a XVR-100 into my 9114-275 and it didn't even show up under a CRUX PPC boot CD, not under lspci -v, nor under dmesg. I guess I really need a true Mac Edition Radeon 7000... according to this random guy,
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~idr/graphics/cards_i_have.html
the Mac Edition Radeon 9200 PCI has a firmware problem that makes it not work with anything other than a Mac. I have no idea how to write a device driver that does 3D for it. I downloaded the ATi FireGL drivers for Linux, but I couldn't figure out if the 3D part was open source.
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/P ... linux.aspx
Ugh, really don't wanna run AIX again.

IBM

Bought an Intellistation POWER 275 - Page 2