SGI: Hardware

I finally received the Onyx3800 I bought from Jesse ( hirudin ). The system is (almost) a 36-CPU (all R14K/600MHz 8MB) 2-pipe IR3 (2RM10
per pipe) with HD option + VBOB, four P-bricks, one X-brick. The original config was in 6 racks; Jesse kept 2 racks, I bought the contents of the
other 4 racks...



Just needs an I-brick now, which I've ordered from elsewhere; should arrive in a week or two.

It was an interesting experience getting it all unloaded, with oodles of help from a friend of mine, Gavin Saxby, who works at SUN (thanks Gavin!).
Mega thanks to Jesse for his excellent padding of the brick ends! No damage at all in transit. I used the WTA ( World Transport Agency ) to ship the
bricks by sea from Jesse in CA (Titan Packaging did the crating) door-to-door to me in the UK. My thanks to Anita Davies and Nick Thompson at
the WTA for all their help. If you need to ship any seriously heavy SGI stuff, the WTA are very good. The crate was 87" (L) x 49.5" (W) x 44" (H),
ie. just over 3 cubic metres. Total pallet weight was 1633 lbs (741kg). The shipping cost was 2139 UKP.

After the truck arrived , and despite some brave attempts , the driver wasn't able to reverse the truck up my drive, so he moved the crate
onto the tail lift ( not easy! Took about 15 mins but he managed it eventually ), rested the lift on the road, and then we had to whoosh it round and
up onto the initial rise of the driveway using the pallet mover, heaving the crate bit by bit all the way along to be as close to my
garage as possible (using a large plank from the truck and two old table tops I had as 'bedding' for the pallet mover; both the table
tops were trashed of course, but who cares, they're only chipboard - a worthy sacrifice for a greater cause, hehe.) Eventually did it though!...



Once the driver left (squinting heavily in this picture as the sun was in his eyes; I gave him a pack of Jaffa cakes for his troubles - above
& beyond the call of duty!), Gavin & I spent 2 hours unpacking everything...











Here's a short movie showing Gavin beginning to remove the lid (8MB QuickTime, done with my wierd digital camera. Play with mplayer or xanim, force no-audio; I'll convert it to a better format later.

With space in my garage prepared , we moved all the bricks inside, positioned more or less where I hoped they should be for eventual cabling...



The cables are just in a heap at the moment, will sort them out later.

Here's another image taken after I put the Onyx2 back into position - it fit nicely into the gap at the end:




Once I receive the I-brick, then begins the highly enjoyable task (ahem) of cabling things together, though I don't intend to use any
more than 3 or 4 C-bricks as I doubt the power supply to the garage could handle more than that (I'll see how it goes).

Lastly, in the modern spirit of recycling, the giant pallet base was collected on Thursday (12/Mar) by a guy who wanted to use it for making a raised garden bed,
while the side panels were collected by someone for use in his modern smokeless wood-burning stove. (hooray for the local Freecycle network!).

Cheers!!

Ian.

PS. The base pallet alone weighs more than 100kg. With hindsight, it would have been better to use two separate smaller pallets, but never mind.

Whoa Really nice config, such a beauty!!! Congrats for undamaged crates - I'm always nervous when I'm waiting for a comp from abroad - you know, bad experiences with uPs Everything that was shipped by them I've got with heavily damaged packaging. Fortunately there are careful packagers

Wow, that is a really *BIG* machine, onyx2 next to it looks like it was supposed for every sgi enthusiast.
I think that the propper cabling will cost me rest of my life...

It was a lot bigger in the original rack units (4 of them) but they're way too big for me to store, and would have added a lot of extra weight.

Infact, some of the bricks seem overly huge given their contents, eg. the X-brick. With the right tools, one could probably mod some of
the bricks to make them a hefty bit smaller.

Ian.

Oh my god that is far larger than I would of imagined!
How much did that cost you to ship?

ok, I want one now

sybrfreq wrote: ok, I want one now

No you don't. You think you do, but you don't.

Unless you need graphics, hold out for a half rack. Actually I'd love a half rack prism, altix or onyx 4, from a looks standpoint.

Seriously though, moving a full rack is a pain.

honestly I want to get the onyx I already have going.

But it looks very impressive.

pentium writes:
> Oh my god that is far larger than I would of imagined!

It's tiny compared to what an O3K is capable of being (2048 CPUs, 16 gfx pipes, etc.)


> How much did that cost you to ship?

Details are in my 1st post (you did read the text, yes?

Ian.

Anything interesting in all those P-bricks? Seems like a lot of PCI slots for what was a 48 cpu machine.

japes wrote:

sybrfreq wrote: ok, I want one now

No you don't. You think you do, but you don't.

Unless you need graphics, hold out for a half rack. Actually I'd love a half rack prism, altix or onyx 4, from a looks standpoint.

Seriously though, moving a full rack is a pain.

Quoted for truth. So much truth.

The only kind of huge rack stuff I have any desire for after having my O2Ks is an Onyx of any sort - having a G-Brick would be worth the space.

japes wrote: Anything interesting in all those P-bricks? Seems like a lot of PCI slots for what was a 48 cpu machine.

They all have a bunch of single-port 2Gbit FC cards, 4 cards per brick I think.

I'm not sure offhand if the X-brick has anything in it. The G-brick has the HD-GVO option, but the VBOB is indoors atm.

Ian.

Japes speaketh the truth. Moving that O3k put any thought of the rack O2k at RE-PC out of my mind immediately.

Now, cramming the contents of a rack Onyx2 (1 compute module and one graphics module) into two deskside chassis might be doable...

Japes has a really nice O2k deskside though that I wish I had the spending cash, space, and domestic capital to lay my hands on. Immaculate, 8x400 and with the graphics head hack. 95% sure it's cube logo skins, too.

Come on guys, I said I wanted one, not that I just bought one after seeing this. Although Ian does make it look easy

1) Since you've basically got a stack of bricks, I assume it is your intention to break it up and sell the bits rather than the whole system?

2) What's that purple Miranda box you've got there?