SGI: Hardware

So I got a second O300. Plugged it in and tried to serial into it from the port marked CONSOLE ( I can do this fine on the other O300 I own ). I got the connected message from tip, but L1 isn't responding. Front LCD says L1 running while plugged in.

Hit the power button, and the red light flashes.

I'm kinda stumped as the user guide doesn't seem to have a troubleshooting section - what could be the problem before I start going in and ripping things out?

You didn't mention it, so I'll ask. Have you tried a combined "Control T" key press to switch from console to L1 mode?

Without user intervention, L1 mode is transient - it will automatically return to console mode after you run the first L1 command - unless the first command at the L1 prompt is l1 (that's a lower case L and the numeral one). When you want to return to the console a combined "Control D" key press will put you back in console mode.

Depending on your choice of serial terminal, the process should look something like this (I've inserted characters to illustrate the normally invisible Control D key press):


Might also be worth mentioning if you have the new O300 NUMAlinked to the old when all this is occurring.

Been a while since I had an O300 but I think it's also possible to change the persistent terminal settings. One reason to do this is if you have a bunch of different equipment, a standard speed is more convenient than trying to remember what each piece uses. Since it's new to you, it could be set to 9600 or something other than 38-4. From Teraterm you can just reset the serial port while it's active, no need to reboot reboot reboot or anything.

I don't own a NUMALink cable so that's probably not the case. I'm using a FreeBSD host with tip as the serial line, I have it setup correctly in /etc/remote but I'll also try the 9600 baud rate to see if that makes a difference, if ^t doesnt.

I'm not in deep into this system ( was a junkyard find ) so if its a dud I'm not out much at all.

When the red light flashed you should also get a more descriptive error scroll across the l1 display, is there nothing else showing at all?

Sometimes I've had the cable that go's from the L1 controller to the IO8 board come loose and you get the illumination but not the right signals, you could try reseating that cable and the whole IO8 board if you haven't done so already. I've often plugged those in and found they haven't been 100% seated at power on and you get some odd results...

tjsgifan's suggestion sounds promising, especially if you haven't already checked all the connections inside.

It's probably easier to wait for your NUMAlink cable and poke at the problem brick from the working brick. But... You could grab the L3 software ( Use the Search, Luke ! - there are multiple forum threads that cover it) and use it to see if you can talk to the problem brick over its L1 USB connection from a PC or VM.

I could. I'll be working with it tomorrow. I don't use Windows or Linux so using the L3 controller is not really an option - I'm not willing to install Polkit which is needed by VirtualBox to grab a USB port - motherfucking Oracle! It didn't used to be that way, you know?

L2 controller dies make life easier for a number of tasks if you cannot run the L3 software, there are some with ac power in ebay I think.

Update guys:

She's alive, the L1 LCD panel says it doesn't have a system s/n assigned. I'll wait for my NUMALink cable to come in the mail then and I'll tap into it from Sanae. If this is a quad 600 MHz system, the the quad 500MHz model I have will probably be up for sale!.

> L2 controller dies make life easier for a number of tasks if you cannot run the L3 software, there are some with ac power in ebay I think.

Please point it out to me if you don't mind... I'm no good at those. If it can talk to Altices, then its worth the investment.

There are several on eBay, the only one I spotted with the AC power supply is $305 http://www.ebay.com/itm/371204017044

The cheapest L2 I spotted on eBay w/o the AC power supply is $89 http://www.ebay.com/itm/131447471590

dhjj/Harry has an L2 listing in the nekochan For Sale forum, He's asking $50: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16729375

Harry isn't including the AC adapter, but it isn't very hard to make your own: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16724207&p=7344195&#p7344195

Eh, I'll probably pass for now. Kind of expensive.

TeamBlackFox wrote: was a junkyard find

what kind of junk yards do you have?

Very fun ones to search through. Too bad they overprice the Alpha stuff or I could have sold thousands worth online here.

When I hooked the two together and then ran > serial clear from my working brick, the other started up with no issues, but I'm still not getting anything from the serial port. Just for the hell of it, gonna try getting this old P3 in the corner to run this L3 crap.

At least... progress. At the worst, I have a bum IO8.