SGI: Hardware

Morning,

Anyone know the specifics of what kinds of PCI cards work / do not work in VW320 PCI slots? I remember a post a long while back saying they were "non-universal". Does this mean they were electrically incompatible? Does the prom not walk the PCI bus correctly and present the device tree to w2k?

I have a need to unearth a win2k box, and have a couple VW320s (including one with dual 1g cpus) in boxes in the closet that would be nice to use instead of actually going and finding parts to put together an old shitty win2k box...

Thanks,
E

The PCI slots are 3.3v only <no 5v PCBs>. From the Silicon Graphics 320 Visual Workstation Owner's Guide; Chapter 5; Option Cards :

TechPubs wrote: Note: The Silicon Graphics 320 visual workstation supports 3.3-volt PCI cards only. It does not support 5.0-volt PCI cards.

http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi ... /ch05.html

The 3.3v and 5v slots are keyed differently, so you couldn't physically insert a 5v only card. There was a 'universal' PCI voltage spec - cards that were designed to support either voltage were keyed to fit in both 3.3 and 5v slots.

Also, only a few SCSI cards are bootable in the 320.

What kind of cards will you be needing to use?

Hi, thanks for replies.

I'm getting my NPDP-GDEV up and running again (or trying). It uses a special PCI interface card to interface to a PC with the development environment on it which runs under win2k. The PCI card is a NPDP-ODEM card (optical disk emulation card). I had to buy one on eBay since my old one is shot. I'd also like to get another one as a spare if anyone has one they would like to sell. There's at least $200 in it for you.

Its a universal PCI card (two notches 3.3v or 5v) I believe.
Here's a pic if your interested (kudos to assemblergames.com forums for pics):



So I'd rather not have to go out and build an old windoze pc to run this since I gave away all my old PC parts and cases long ago...except for the VW320s.

Best regards,
E

Based on the keying on that card, it's universal, so as long as it doesn't load its own BIOS, or require anything specific to PC BIOS (that isn't emulated in the 320, I'm not completely clear on what is and isn't), it should work fine.

I love it. The N64 dev was done in an Indy, and now Gamecube dev is being done in a VW320.

Success!

The card works perfectly under Win2k on the vw320. It took a reinstall of win2k to get there due to my drive being partitioned in a way which didnt leave enough space on the C: drive for some of the SW that had to be installed.

Still a pretty snappy machine for how old it is.

Will post some pics when I get home from work tonight.

Laterz,
E

It lives!



E

Nice!

emachine wrote: The PCI card is a NPDP-ODEM card (optical disk emulation card). I had to buy one on eBay since my old one is shot. I'd also like to get another one as a spare if anyone has one they would like to sell.

Looks like there's another one on eBay.uk: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... %26fvi%3D1 - it's higher than your target price, but it seems to include some hardware you didn't originally mention: