SGI: Hardware

I found a stack of 350's at a electronics surplus place but, all the power supplies were removed. More stuff may be removed but, if I can't find the power supplies no point in going further. They may be somewhere around but, I am not sure what to look for. The line drawings around are not specific enough to stand out in shelves full of power supplies.

Anyone able to provide a picture of one removed from the system or better than me finding one on Google ?

leaknoil wrote: Anyone able to provide a picture of one removed from the system or better than me finding one on Google ?

Ask and ye shall receive ...



Sorry about the quality, I ain't a wunderful fotogroffer

That helps a lot. Thanks. The way people charge for parts like those if I can't find them in the shop there is little point of grabbing the rest. Its odd every single power supply was removed from them too. Although nothing in surplus land makes much sense.

leaknoil wrote: That helps a lot. Thanks. The way people charge for parts like those if I can't find them in the shop there is little point of grabbing the rest.

My guess is, it's something pretty common. By this point int their career, SGI would run down to Fry's to pick up whatever they could put on Bozo's wife's credit card to finish an order.

Looks the Altix 350 uses the same power supply as the Origin 350, and the O350 uses the same off-the-shelf Delta EPS-500EB power supply as other 2U servers.

If that is also the case with the A350, they don't look to be especially rare or expensive: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=delta+DPS-500EB

BTW - Jan-Jaap posted some info on a recall of some DPS-500EB power supplies - might be worth looking into before you pick up any replacements. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16725720

Unfortunately, I'm abroad for some days, but I think mines also have these pretty standard Delta power supplys. I can check when I'll return, if you still need the info.

By the way, if you found several modules and what to grab one, make sure you buy the "base compute module", which has an IO9 or IO10 daughter board (network, SCSI or SATA, etc.). You can even have more than one and still use them as a single system (then don't forget to take as much NUMAlink cable as you can). I was not not aware of this and am now still missing two of them, unfortunately. Don't make the same mistake.

leaknoil wrote: I found a stack of 350's at a electronics surplus place but, all the power supplies were removed. More stuff may be removed but, if I can't find the power supplies no point in going further. They may be somewhere around but, I am not sure what to look for. The line drawings around are not specific enough to stand out in shelves full of power supplies.

Anyone able to provide a picture of one removed from the system or better than me finding one on Google ?

Sorry I have a feeling I bought all those power supplys from the seller - I didn't want the Altix systems as I have loads already, just wanted the PSU's for upgrade purposes and shipping 8 PSU's was far cheaper than 8 Altix systems.

If you don't want 'em, Pete, might you be willing to share the location of these machines?

Sorry, I completely forgot to take pictures of mine. I've just checked right now and they are exactly the same model and revision as in the pictures from hamei (in my eight modules).

tjsgifan wrote:

leaknoil wrote: I found a stack of 350's at a electronics surplus place but, all the power supplies were removed. More stuff may be removed but, if I can't find the power supplies no point in going further. They may be somewhere around but, I am not sure what to look for. The line drawings around are not specific enough to stand out in shelves full of power supplies.

Anyone able to provide a picture of one removed from the system or better than me finding one on Google ?

Sorry I have a feeling I bought all those power supplys from the seller - I didn't want the Altix systems as I have loads already, just wanted the PSU's for upgrade purposes and shipping 8 PSU's was far cheaper than 8 Altix systems.

Hah it was you. The guy told me a guy in the UK bought them all when I asked about them. It's funny when he said that I immediately thought it had to be someone who is on nekochan. Anyone dedicated enough to SGI gear to ship a bunch of power supplies across the globe had to be on nekochan.

So, I dug thru the pile and found the compute module with the io board and such. I didn't think it was there and of course it was the very last one on the bottom. I went ahead and bought it and one of the cpu/ram versions. I bought a power supply off ebay and it came today. I was playing with it and realized the internal scsi cable is MIA. I guess I could use external scsi devices but, that's a pain. Anyone know where I might find a cable ? It looks like a 68pin external scsi connector to a 68pin drive style connector but, I understand it carries IDE for the cdrom drive too. No idea how that works.

If you've got a SCSI backplane you've got an IO9: http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi ... 631-PARENT

Yes, it has SCSI and IDE, but they are on different connectors.



(ok, these are Origin 350, but the Altix is similar)

You need power to the backplane too.

As jan-jaap points out, the SCSI and IDE connectors on the IO9 are separate - you should be able to use standard 68-pin (SCSI) and 40-pin (IDE) cables (SGI used 'round' cables in both locations in the O350).

If you haven't already done so, you can get a better idea by removing the IO9 so you can see the connector-side of the board (if you haven't had the chance to pull yours there's a photo in this post ).

The SCSI connector (the silver one on the top right side) and the IDE connector (the black one located at the center top) are pretty obvious. The large white connector (located on the right side just below the SCSI connector) attached to a not-so-common-ribbon-cable that runs from the serial-PS/2 daughter board in Origin 350s. Those ports don't seem to be used/included in the A350 - or at least they aren't discussed or shown in the compute module section of the Altix 350 manual .

Ahh I see now. Two separate cables. The IDE one is easy but, a cable that goes from 68pin external to 68pin internal style is going to be difficult. Especially a short round flexible one. Never mind. I just looked again and it is the same as the internal connector just metal with latches. I thought it was the wide external type.

Power cable is already to the backplane so, I'm ok there. I guess I should be good to go now. Is the console port standard DB9 serial 9600 8N1 ?

leaknoil wrote: Is the console port standard DB9 serial 9600 8N1 ?

38,400-8-N-1

leaknoil wrote: Ahh I see now. Two separate cables. The IDE one is easy but, a cable that goes from 68pin external to 68pin internal style is going to be difficult. Especially a short round flexible one. Never mind. I just looked again and it is the same as the internal connector just metal with latches. I thought it was the wide external type.

If you haven't already found some these look like they might do the job. The planar end of the round SCSI cable even has the latches to match the IO9.

Hard to sure of length/connectors from a photo, so just be safe I'd ask for some measurements/connector pin-counts to compare to your Altix.

Both cables are from the same seller, which ought to help minimize question asking and shipping (also has some SGI gear listed, which is how I happened to run across these).

http://www.ebay.com/itm/290678121151 - DELL F2387 POWEREDGE 2800 PE2800 SCSI BACKPLANE CABLE 68PIN CN-0F2387
http://www.ebay.com/itm/300766521323 - Dell Optiplex GX520 GX620 HD CD DVD Drive IDE Cable 0C6012 C6012

I included whatever OEM part number references I could find in the listing, just in case someone down the road needs something similar (after these are long gone).

Leaknoil - if you try either of these or cables from some other source/manufacturer, could you update this thread for future reference?

I've got it rigged with generic pc cables atm. Seems to work ok and about the only way I can do it as I don't have the panel portion that interfaces the IDE cable to the laptop style cdrom drive. I just have the scsi backplane portion. Not going to be able to have a internal optical drive.

What's the OS of choice for these ? Just a generic IA64 linux distro or is there one that's customized for these ?

leaknoil wrote: I don't have the panel portion that interfaces the IDE cable to the laptop style cdrom drive. I just have the scsi backplane portion. Not going to be able to have a internal optical drive.

You'll need a JAE-to-ATAPI adapter, there's usually a large selection on eBay or other sources: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=JAE+Adapter

If you want to be as original as possible (there are dimensional limitations), the JAE adapter in the O350 has "JMRER1" screened on the PCB, one of those even turned up on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/320896890722

If you don't already have a optical/DVD drive in your Altix, you might find this post helpful. Can't speak for the Altix, but the PROM in the O350 won't boot from the drive unless it's drive 0 (master) - slimline optical drives are typically hardwired as drive 1 (slave). If you end up in the same position there's some notes on making the necessary (and relatively simple) modification: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16726461&p=7349209&#p7349209

leaknoil wrote: What's the OS of choice for these ? Just a generic IA64 linux distro or is there one that's customized for these ?

Debian has been working fairly well on the A350s I have

OK so, next problem. I was testing ram in the thing and one came up bad. The system disabled 4gb out of 12. I replaced the bad simm and it passes all the tests but, the system is still disabling the 4gb. I suspect I need to tell it to enable it now but, the console is so cryptic I haven't been able to figure it out.

Anyone know how to tell it to enable all the ram again ?

EFI Boot Manager ver 1.02 [12.38]

Partition 0: Enabled Disabled
CBricks 1 Nodes 1 0
RBricks 0 CPUs 2 0
IOBricks 1 Mem(GB) 8 4