SGI: Hardware

SGI PCI USB (Linux)

hi guys
i has hacking my Octane2 (IP30) in order to have xio-pci + pci-usb, in order to plug an usb-harddisk, which was successfully achieved using a NEC uPD72010x chip from a common PCI-usb board (i have payed 9 euro, from a local PC parts reseller)

i am quite fine, even if i am still having issues, and i do not have any really working OHCI (1), btw i have a full working EHCI, that is pretty good for bulk-only driven storage devices


btw, i have seen SGI has an USB PCI card, SGI part number 9210286
NEC chipset - Slotted for 3.3 and 5V PCI applications. SGI equipped Onyx 350 InfiniteReality and InfinitePerformance systems with this card as an attachment point for USB keyboards and mice.

There are some references on TechPubs indicating Orange Micro as the OEM, while "UP205-0525" screened on the PCB returns Adaptec references. It appears in an hinv with a PCI vendor ID of 0x1033 (NEC) PCI device numbers 0x0035(Dual OHCI controllers plus Single EHCI controller) and 0x00e0(USB 2.0 Host Controller)


which seems to be a product pretty compatible with SGI machines. I do not know if Octane2 has ever had it, and if Irix has ever supported that. Any knows and feedback is welcome

thank you


(1) it's working with FTDI-usb-uart cable, everything else seems to have strange behavior, i still have to check and understand what is wrong
ivelegacy wrote: hi guys
btw, i have seen SGI has an USB PCI card, SGI part number 9210286
NEC chipset - Slotted for 3.3 and 5V PCI applications. SGI equipped Onyx 350 InfiniteReality and InfinitePerformance systems with this card as an attachment point for USB keyboards and mice.

There are some references on TechPubs indicating Orange Micro as the OEM, while "UP205-0525" screened on the PCB returns Adaptec references. It appears in an hinv with a PCI vendor ID of 0x1033 (NEC) PCI device numbers 0x0035(Dual OHCI controllers plus Single EHCI controller) and 0x00e0(USB 2.0 Host Controller)


which seems to be a product pretty compatible with SGI machines. I do not know if Octane2 has ever had it, and if Irix has ever supported that. Any knows and feedback is welcome


AIUI this card (and others with the same chipset - see the Fuel wiki page ) are supported on IP35 machines by virtue of what is provided in the "sysgen" tree, rather than on SGI machines generically. So it may be possible to "transplant" relevant code into an IP30 tree or I may be talking nonsense (or making false inference from Firewire to USB support)!

Having seen your post in the Linux/BSD about getting 20MB, what chance of deriving something from that to support USB mass storage under IRIX? One can dream ... :)
Fuel ; Indigo2 ; RiscPC Kinetic-StrongARM/448MB/RISCOS4.39 or Debian-etch; EspressoPC ViaC3/900MHz/256MB/Debian-testing; RPi B RISCOS5.21 or Raspbian-jessie; A5000/33MHz/FPA11/8MB/RISCOS3.11; A540/25MHz/FPA10/16MB/RISCOS3.11 or RISCiX1.21; R140/35MHz/4MB/RISCOS3.11 or RISCiX1.21
we do not have any sources about the Irix kernel, so .. personally i am not able to write a driver for the USB
also, i am still having troubles about these kind of experimental hacks, linux is not exactly working as expected, for example adding the XIO-PCI and then attaching the PCI-USB cause unexpected issues if you have more than 1.5Gbyte of ram

i had 2Gbyte installed, and i needed to remove a few of them in order to have the usb working, also other issues with the V6 and Impact/Pro, so … it's not as easy as expected with linux, and finally … do not expect to have a recent kernel working, everything above 2.6.17 is simply dead/broken and needs a lot of work to be fixed
ivelegacy wrote: i had 2Gbyte installed, and i needed to remove a few of them in order to have the usb working, also other issues with the V6 and Impact/Pro, so … it's not as easy as expected with linux, and finally … do not expect to have a recent kernel working, everything above 2.6.17 is simply dead/broken and needs a lot of work to be fixed

Minor correction (for the Google Spider), everything between 2.6.17 and 3.13 is/was dead/broken in many varied and fantastical ways. Starting with 3.14, I got Octane to boot Linux again, and sans things like SMP support, it runs fine now for command-line stuff. Still a lot more work to be done, but it's in good enough shape that I can start cutting the patches up in a few months and see about getting them into mainline where it'll get greater exposure (and maybe fixes).
:Onyx2: 4x R14000 :Tezro: 4x R16000 :Octane: 2x R14000 :O2+: RM7000 :O2: R10000 :O2: RM5200 :Indigo2IMP: R10000 :Indigo2: R8000 :O3x0: 4x R14000 :Indy: R5000

"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic
Kumba wrote: Minor correction (for the Google Spider), everything between 2.6.17 and 3.13


you mean "between 2.6.19 and 3.13", sure everything in the middle is dead
while at the lower border the 2.6.17-rc4 is pretty working with a few issues about XIO_PCI and IOC3
2.6.18 is … untested, and personally i have never tested anything in the the 3.* line

about 3.14, what about the SMP ? is it really working ? what about the XIO_PCI ?

any detailed description about what you have tested, what is working, and what is not ?
i have filled an ewiki page with a precise description about everything i am doing on 2.6.17

actually i have no time and no working hardware to do tests.
i am waiting for a new IP30 has my machine is unfortunately dead.
ivelegacy wrote: you mean "between 2.6.19 and 3.13", sure everything in the middle is dead
while at the lower border the 2.6.17-rc4 is pretty working with a few issues about XIO_PCI and IOC3
2.6.18 is … untested, and personally i have never tested anything in the the 3.* line

about 3.14, what about the SMP ? is it really working ? what about the XIO_PCI ?

any detailed description about what you have tested, what is working, and what is not ?
i have filled an ewiki page with a precise description about everything i am doing on 2.6.17

actually i have no time and no working hardware to do tests.
i am waiting for a new IP30 has my machine is unfortunately dead.


I've been following your conversations here and on Gentoo's various lists - why are you so hung up on 2.6.17 IveLegacy? Kumba is working hard on the newer kernels getting them working - he has a seriously good point that anything 2.6.x is ancient and not worth messing with.

In any case if I was in Italy I am going to be selling an Octane2 for a friend in a few months - it would be a perfect replacement for you, but alas, its too far to ship the system to the EU and still arrive with your finances intact.
SGI:
:A3502L: Dual Itanium [email protected] 4GB Marisa
:Octane2: Dual R14000A@600MHz 2GB V12 Sakuya
Non-SGI:
HP C8000
HP EliteBook 8560p [email protected] 16GB Youmu FreeBSD 10.1/Windows 8.1
IBM IntelliStation 265 Dual POWER3-II@450MHz Jigoku-Karasu ( Hell Raven )

Incoming/On bench for repair/not in service:
2x :O3x0: Origin 300

For Sale: O2 DIMMS, Octane and O2 caddies.
TeamBlackFox wrote: I've been following your conversations here and on Gentoo's various lists - why are you so hung up on 2.6.17 IveLegacy? Kumba is working hard on the newer kernels getting them working - he has a seriously good point that anything 2.6.x is ancient and not worth messing with.


because i do not find useful to follow new kernels just because they are "the last dish of the day". No sense for me, as i have no resources to do that. I had time when i was student, now i have to work and i have a lot of more interesting things to do (e.g. my debug processor) , also I have spent a lot of time and resources on 2.6.17 and it's well documented, debugged, and well working. It has a few issues that i could fix, but hey ? I am really fine and i could spent my time developing PCI_FPGA in the XIO_PCI cadge. That is my purpose, i do not want to spend time porting kernel or converting the IP30 into a workstation, that because Irix does it better with a lot of Application (e.g. Pro/E, Catia, etc) which makes sense about using this Iron box.

What i want is to use the USB to attach a disk, this because SCSI disks are more expensive! And i worked to achieve this purpose!
Now i am able to attach an USB disk, i am pretty fine.

I got an other solution: using a PCI-SCSI controller to interface my home made SCSI-to_pATA adapter, I have seen interesting things in the "IP30 Hw aggregator" thread (here, on this neko forum), the ACARD AEC-7722 ATAPI/IDE device on LVD (80MB/sec) SCSI bus is very very good, even if … a bit expensive.

Cerberus is a NFS+sshFS NAS, it has been designed to be THE storage using the net. It's a multi node PowerPC embedded system. I used gentoo to realize uclibc ram rootfs. It's good, it works good, Irix can't use it yet.

2x6 Disks of 250Gbyte, sATA-II, soft mirrored by 3 nodes internally connected by 100Mbit/sec lan (too poor, buy, hey ? i do no thane 1000Mbit/sec built in lan in Walnut-DHT-nodes)

total storage: 3x250Gbyte (mirroring 2:1) accessed in NFS + sshFS ( i have to add Samba) = enough for everything !

TeamBlackFox wrote: In any case if I was in Italy I am going to be selling an Octane2 for a friend in a few months


thank you, but i think i am fine, i mean I am dealing a new IP30 with a dude, it's scheduled for the end of the month.
I hope that dude will not change his idea (finger crossed, i really do not have more budget)