SGI: Hardware

Hi All,

I have been searching the forum before flashing the L1 on a new IO8 board as I know of some issues that others have incurred, but I could not find either a definitive answer or a source for the recommended file. So, I thought having a new post on the subject might help future upgraders as well.

I have an Origin 300 system which uses an L1 controller (located on the IO8 board). It is currently using firmware version 1.18.1. I wanted to bring up to date, to match the other systems it will be connected too - they are using L1 firmware version 1.44.0 (Found in IRIX 6.5.30). According to another previous post http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13363 if running a version prior to 1.22.6 (Although I think this might be 1.22.2 having extracted the images) you should flash to this version first, then flash to the later version afterwards.

I've gone through the IRIX CD's to hand to make this reference page.

You'll find the images located within the "Standalone System Controller Environment" on your overlay CD



Update :
I did find this slightly confusing in practice. It turns out that the flashsc (System Controller Flash Utility) also has changes in it's life. I found eventually that the flashsc version 1.07 that came with 6.5.21 was good enough to use to flash any of the L1 PROM images from 1.22.2 until 1.32.6, but it was not suitable to flash the 1.38.4 or 1.44.0. You would get the following message :



Likewise, if you try using the latest flashsc utility version 1.4.1 found in IRIX 6.5.30 to flash an older version of firmware (certainly prior to 1.26.5) it would just print the first 2 lines of output and then stop - I had to CTRL+C to get back to a prompt. So you need to downgrade the flashsc utility to an older version, perform updates to mid life versions, then upgrade the flashsc utility in order to flash the l1 to version 1.44.0.

So now I have a 6.5.21 disk on the shelf with copies of all the l1.bin images I've extraced apart from 1.38.4 and 1.44.0 which I use - initially flashing the l1 not in use to 1.22.2, then once restarted the system using the newly flashed 1.22.2 image, i bring the other flash image upto 1.32.6. I then shut the machine down, swap the 6.5.21 build with a 6.5.30 build and bring the machine up again, flashing the 1.22.2 image upto 1.44 I'll try .0.

I'm guessing I could probably skip the 1.32.6 update, and just run the 1.44.0 update from the machine when booting from the 1.22.0 image? I'll try that next time....

Oh well, good learning excercise anyhow.


tjsgifan

Thanks a lot! My O350 had IRIX 6.5.30 and L1 firmware rev. 1.22.2, so 'flashsc' didn't work for me.

I first tried to take it to 1.32.6 simply by booting it from a fresh IRIX 6.5.26 disk prepared on an O300. 'flashsc' (v1.3.x) refused still. So, I tried again, this time with a 6.5.21 disk + L1 firmware from 6.5.26 (rev 1.32.6) exactly like you said. That (flashsc 1.0.7) worked to upgrade both L1s to 1.32.6

I then put my IRIX 6.5.30 disk back. 'flashsc' worked exactly *once*, to upgrade the L1 of module 001c01 to 1.48.1 (IRIX 6.5.30 + patch 7149). No amount of IRIX reboots, reboot_l1's could convince it to work after that (hung again).

Not someone to give up easily, I returned with a fresh IRIX 6.5.28 disk which succeeded in flashing the secondary flash bank of 001c01 and the primary flash of 001c02 to rev 1.38.4.

Only *then* did the flashsc 1.4.1 of my normal (6.5.30) disk flash the second module to 1.48.1

Lesson learned: don't do this unless you have to.

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... er_Updates

R.

PymbleSoftware wrote: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/L1_Controller_Updates

Thanks - though it would only be fair to give credit to Toby in the article, since it looks like quite a bit of work went into compiling that list of revisions/compatibilities.

recondas wrote: it would only be fair to give credit to Toby in the article, since it looks like quite a bit of work went into compiling that list of revisions/compatibilities.

That, or provide a reference to this thread so that the original context, or further findings reported here, are not lost. My addition to Toby's notes was just my observations while applying his recipe: anecdotal, with some unexplained things happening. Hardly a well written article, not really meant to be simply copy-pasted after Toby's text.

Make no mistake: I appreciate your efforts to distill things written on the board in a wiki. At the same time, upgrading an L1 is delicate business, and taking shortcuts makes this even riskier. Just read 'whiter's message about lost serial numbers when upgrading his O300 ; I think he needed help from SGI to get his system back online.

Toby's post (and mine) are all about taking shortcuts while upgrading the L1. But a collection of shortcuts does not make an "L1 upgrade HOWTO". For one thing, I'm pretty sure the recommended upgrade path is simply to install every IRIX overlay and flash the L1 every time.

Well, I'm glad my final conclusion made it to the wiki because that pretty much sums it up

recondas wrote:

PymbleSoftware wrote: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/L1_Controller_Updates

Thanks - though it would only be fair to give credit to Toby in the article, since it looks like quite a bit of work went into compiling that list of revisions/compatibilities.

in that topic in the wiki it was wrote: Nekochan forum topic about it

That links back here. If you want more direct attribution YOU edit the page. The wiki is a mess. I made over 1,000 edits over the last few days removing, resolving and redirecting about 1,000 red links, that is links in pages that go nowhere. It has gone from about 200 articles to over 400 and I don't have to be the only one doing this.

Make no mistake: I appreciate your efforts to distill things written on the board in a wiki. At the same time, upgrading an L1 is delicate business, and taking shortcuts makes this even riskier. Just read 'whiter's message about lost serial numbers when upgrading his O300; I think he needed help from SGI to get his system back online.

It is possible we now know more about serial numbers now:

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... Origin_300

No one is stopping you from updating the article.


R.

tjsgifan wrote: I'm guessing I could probably skip the 1.32.6 update, and just run the 1.44.0 update from the machine when booting from the 1.22.0 image? I'll try that next time.

Thanks to Toby's detailed research on the topic, I was recently able to update the L1 firmware in both modules of an Onyx 350.

As an indirect confirmation (I used an O350 rather than an O300) on Toby's thoughts as to how many intermediate flash steps were needed if the L1 firmware (to be updated) was lower than version 1.32.6, I was able to update a modules from 1.22.4 and 1.34.8 directly to 1.48.1.

In case there were any problems, I flashed them one at a time, starting with the oldest revision first :