SGI: Hardware

vishnu wrote: many years of trying to find a quad 1GHz Tezro, I finally gave in to the inevitable, the quad 1 gigs are still too useful to their original owners, for them to sell them, or if they are for sale they're going for 10 to 12 thousand on Ebay as smoke/flint/flame machines..

I was in the same position -- I have this incurable problem that I like my systems 'maxed out' and I know by now it's usually cheaper to buy them as a complete max spec system rather than buy the premium parts individually and upgrade something (did that with my Onyx2 and it wasn't cheap). From casual conversation with 'the usual suspects' I remember that a quad 1GHz CPU board was in the 5K EUR range -- well well beyond what I'm prepared to pay.

So I held off on my desire to own this final piece that would complete my collection, the last system I didn't have yet.

Then someone got in touch and asked if I was interested in a quad 1GHz Tezro? Well, yes, how'd you guess

I made the guy a decent offer, he thought about it for a while, then posted it for sale here -- at which point I thought he would surely get a better offer -- but I didn't up my offer.

I did get the machine in the end. With all the DMedia stuff, the VBOB, cables, an FC array and some other misc bits and pieces. Shipping cost was half a tank of diesel fuel. And the price was closer to the to $1K figure Vishnu mentions than the 5K figure quoted for just the CPU board. That was still more than I ever spent on any other SGI

I get unsolicited offers on the Tezro or the CPU board from time to time, but she's my precious

TeamBlackFox wrote: The heatsinks are different, and they interfere with the placement of the DCD.

You mixed a few things up: a Tezro tower can have a DCD. I know, I have one

But the 1GHz nodeboards are taller than the 700 or 800MHz nodes. Because of this, a rack mounted Tezro (or Onyx350) module with the 1 Ghz CPUs does not have space left for a V12 graphics board.

edit: Jan-Jaap cleared up the confusion

So Jan-Jaap you're saying the 1GHz Tezro tower can have DCD? www.nekochan.net/wiki/SGI_Tezro#Graphics I have seen this here and in other places that the heatsinks on the 1GHz model won't have DCD on the tower. Of course, I haven't laid my hand on a Tezro, though I've gotten to touch one that was at my old university in Florida, it was in a storehouse alongside some DEC hardware.

I can take a picture if that's what it takes, but just look at some photos of Tezro internals .

The Tezro tower chassis has a vertical divider. One one side is the IP53 board, on the other side is the PCI/XIO backplane.

The DCD is with the V12 under a metal shroud on the PCI/XIO side of things. The nodeboard is on the other side of the divider. The height of the nodeboard is limited by the right hand side cover of the chassis, and the 1GHz nodeboard fills up all available space indeed.

The Tezro/Onyx350 rackmount is a different, more densely packed animal. If you look up the discussion threads in the archives of people (Recondas, Mopar5150) who modded a V12 into an Origin 350 you'll see that have to cut a piece of the V12 heat sink before it will fit over the shroud which covers the heat sinks of a 700 or 800MHz nodeboard.

With the even taller heat sinks of the 1GHz CPUs this mod is just not possible. But a couple of years ago there was someone else (bri3d) with a dual 1GHz O350 who installed a VPro card . He removed the shroud which covers the CPUs and to his luck the two unpopulated CPUs were where the VPro card goes. It seems Mopar5150 did this hack also .

None of these hacks are necessary in the Tezro tower. Just play and play.

EDIT : Now I get it. The wiki page you're linking is not about the DCD, but about a dual head ( twin V12 cards ) configuration. The Tezro tower takes only one V12 card, so this paragraph is about the rackmount Tezro. A rackmount Tezro comes as two nodes, so it takes up 4U rack space. One node has the V12, the second node can have a DM3.

Anyway, the limitations of V12's and 1GHz CPUs I mentioned above apply. You might be able to work around it with a quad 1GHz nodeboard in one node, and then the second node would be CPU-less and have space for the V12. But Tezros usually come with some DMedia bits and I have some doubts that a DM3 would still fit in the node with the 1GHz CPUs.

Finally, I'm pretty sure a twin V12 system would be an Onyx 350 Infinite Performance and not a Tezro, but that's a matter of badges and a bigger invoice.

jan-jaap wrote: Finally, I'm pretty sure a twin V12 system would be an Onyx 350 Infinite Performance and not a Tezro, but that's a matter of badges and a bigger invoice.

Other then bragging rights, any benefit to having a twin V12 Tezro Tower or would one need a compositor to take advantage of that? I actually have Two V12 and this has me thinking...

gijoe77 wrote: Other then bragging rights, any benefit to having a twin V12 Tezro Tower or would one need a compositor to take advantage of that? I actually have Two V12 and this has me thinking...

Queue Hamei and the IBM T221 in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ...

jan-jaap wrote: Queue Hamei and the IBM T221 in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ...

hey, there's an Eizo that takes two dvi inputs also !

Are those the only two monitors that do that ? With two dvi outputs on a lot of peecee graphics cards, I would have thought there'd be more ...

With the rackmount Tezro / O350, if you have 2p nodeboards you could have a V12 in each and a DCD on the V12 in each. The processors go on the forward end of the nodeboard, so with only two you don't have to relieve the graphics heat sink. And the DCD goes all the way at the other end of the box and on the other side of the graphics card so the problem is fitting the graphics, not the dcd.



Altho, the hot ticket would be a four-brick O350 with graphics in each. That's the most you could do without a router but if you went with dcd's, you could get four pipes and eight channels. Tezro apparently can't do that, arbitrarily limited to two bricks.

One mystery you Tezro owners could clear up : Tezro has two xio slots. You should be able to run dual heads. I have seen comments that the system won't allow this supposedly due to current requirements ? If true, that is a bundle of rubbish ! Anyone try ?

edit: added illustration

Good a Prism Thread showed up (Besides it shifted to Tezro).

The next Love machine is on the way - The Prism Deskside - I want to have them all


For linux its stated that one needs red hate 5.5 or suse linux 9.x with ProPack 4 to get in touch with X.
Is the same true if i just put in one of the graphic cards? I think the statement is only true for the dual AGP config.


Can someone confirm that?

gijoe77 wrote: Other then bragging rights, any benefit to having a twin V12 Tezro Tower or would one need a compositor to take advantage of that? I actually have Two V12 and this has me thinking...

A Compositor concentrates multiple VPro graphics pipes into a single display. A very interesting concept, but apparently doesn't work transparently with every application. Not to say multiple pipes can't be applied to every day use, whatever your target application(s) is/are. For me the primary advantage is more monitors / desktop real estate. With the assistance of SGI's (freely available) OpenGL MultiPipe, you can transparently span your work space (and applications) across multiple monitors. While you can do something similar with Cinerama, only the primary pipe will be able to display OpenGL / 3D graphics. OpenGL MultiPipe removes the primary-pipie-only restriction on OpenGL/3D visuals. With two V12s and two DCDs, you could easily run a 3200x1200 desktop that allows corner to corner display of OGL/3D visuals: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16722294&&start=15#p7359110

BTW, it's been mentioned, but a Tezro Tower definitely wouldn't be my first choice for a dual V12 platform. The Tezro Tower has two XIO slots, but the second was intended for XIO peripherals other than Graphics boards, and apparently doesn't provide the power traces needed to enable VPro graphics boards. Spoonified unsuccessfully tried adding a second VPro in his Tezro Tower , and discovered the L1 controller wouldn't allow the system to power up. Pierocks did something similar with the not-intended for graphics XIO slot in an X-Brick attached to his O3200, his solution was to provide 24v power to some of the traces in the XIO slot so the VPro could be successfully powered up. Don't know if more-power is the solution for the non-graphics slot in a Tezro Tower, but that might the next step for any damn-the-torpedoes-who-knows-if-it'll-work pioneers.

Thanks to all for replies, I have a lot to learn.
I used to be some what a follower.
I still have questions I want to ask but I am about ready to go to work.
A question I could ask is, how is gen-locking with sgi machines?
I would like to use ntsc composite/s-video and do some chroma keying.
Also, I saw a SGI Iris Indigo for sale, how well do you like this machine?
Cheers.

Indigo machines are nice but much older, nice to own but I don't think you will get any video work done with one

Trekiej wrote: Thanks to all for replies, I have a lot to learn.
I used to be some what a follower.
I still have questions I want to ask but I am about ready to go to work.
A question I could ask is, how is gen-locking with sgi machines?
I would like to use ntsc composite/s-video and do some chroma keying.
Also, I saw a SGI Iris Indigo for sale, how well do you like this machine?
Cheers.

SGIs are better than Amigas at genlocking. An Iris Indigo is about the same age as an Amiga 4000, and the R3000 model is roughly as powerful as an '060 A4000, with more RAM and a magnitude better GPU, but still not enough to handle modern video. For SD video, you need at least a good Indy or O2.

Alright then, I will keep this in mind.
Are gen-locks common in sgi machines?
Also, are they hard to acquire?
Cheers.

Some machines its more common, but most, if not all, models had genlock cards available.

Cool, thanks for the excellent help.

TeamBlackFox wrote:

Trekiej wrote: Thanks to all for replies, I have a lot to learn.
I used to be some what a follower.
I still have questions I want to ask but I am about ready to go to work.
A question I could ask is, how is gen-locking with sgi machines?
I would like to use ntsc composite/s-video and do some chroma keying.
Also, I saw a SGI Iris Indigo for sale, how well do you like this machine?
Cheers.

SGIs are better than Amigas at genlocking. An Iris Indigo is about the same age as an Amiga 4000, and the R3000 model is roughly as powerful as an '060 A4000, with more RAM and a magnitude better GPU, but still not enough to handle modern video. For SD video, you need at least a good Indy or O2.

Pedantic point: the original Indigo came out July 1991, while the original A4000/040 emerged in October 1992, so not exactly the same generation (but benchmarks generally agree with your comparison; see, among others, http://www.netlib.org/performance/html/ ... .col0.html ).

Awesome collection Classic'.

How are the scuzzy ssd's these days?

Lots of NOS ones on eBay. Most released post 1995 have no issues with the 68-pin or 80-pin UW/U160/U320 disks.

Maybe I should have asked about scsi to sata or sas.