SGI: Hardware

Is it possible to put a XZ graphics card in a Indigo 2 Impact model?
My Solid Impact card is most likely broken (only frame buffer working) so i like to replace it.

I have a 250Mhz processor model, will the prom and IRIX 5.3 accept the XZ card?

Thanks

Yes, Impact-ready Indigo2 is downwards compatible with all previous Indigo2 options. Remember that:
1. When no cards that use the Impact power headers (white box) are installed, the blue power cable should be docked to the side of the PSU so it remains properly terminated
2. multiple GIO64 cards may need to be installed in different positions since the GIO64 slots are arranged differently on MGRAS than on FullHouse
3. You need to reinstall IRIX to get the drivers and microcode for the graphics card. The easiest way is probably to use swmgr with command-line options that explicitly install those and avoid changing anything else. (see the man pages for the "skip_rqs", -m, -X, and -Y flags)

But please note that IRIX 5.3 does not support the 250 MHz CPU (or others with 2MB L2 cache), you need to install patches before it will work.

I have a big pile of spare SolidImpact boards for I2. PM me if you're interested in one.

Thanks for the responses.
As my X window system can't start i can't use swmgr, so i have to use inst for getting the ucode?
Also do i really need to load the ucode for the X window system to start, or is there any workaround?

I have installed IRIX 5.3 All Indigo2 IMPACT on my system, the normal IRIX 5.3 install CD does indeed not boot on my system(sashARCS works but unix.IP22 hangs). So that should just be fine? Sadly i don't have IRIX 6.2, and can't find it on the web either.

Try installing patchSG0002605

I found the patch but am having trouble installing anything other than the original cd's (which don't contain the patch).
When i try to install a tardist with inst -f foor.tardist or the unpacked tardist with inst -f ./ i get errors.
What am i doing wrong?

Can you post the errors you get when installing with inst? Since i infer you don't have proper install CD's with the machine, we need to fix this.

EDIT: just crossed my mind that i have a spare Indigo2 R10000 machine with Solid Impact but without powersupply. You can swap the working powersupply into that machine, which is located in Delft. Interested?

Remember you need to be root to run inst.

I just succeeded with installing patchSG0002605, i used tftp and only 16MB was copied, the patches set i wanted to copy was 108MB so i burned it to a cd and was able to install it. What does it fix? my Impact card still gives the following error:

./gfxinit -v
mgras_init: Loading HQ3 ucode from /usr/gfx/ucode/hq3_revB.bin
Downloading HQ3 ucode from /usr/gfx/ucode/hq3_revB.bin (20480 bytes)
mgras_init: Loading GE11 ucode from /usr/gfx/ucode/ge11_revB.bin
Downloading GE11 ucode from /usr/gfx/ucode/ge11_revB.bin (712704 bytes = 59392 lines)
gfxinit: GFX_DOWNLOAD failed

I am also still not able to install tardist file from for example http://jupiterrise.com/tgcware/ as i get the following error:

Inst> install all
Reading installation history .. 100% Done.
Reading distribution .. 100% Done.
Checking dependencies .. 100% Done.
Calculating sizes .. 100% Done.

Inst> go
Pre-installation check .. 100% Done.
Installing/removing software .. 0%
Upgrading selected tgc_nedit.man subsystems
Installing/removing software .. 5%
ERROR : An error occurred while Upgrading selected tgc_nedit.man subsystems
After extracting the file /usr/tgcware/man/cat1/nedit.1.z, its contents appear
to be
incorrect according to the index in the distribution. The size is 7570 and the
checksum is 16403 (expected 7570 and 55328). The file is located at offset
0x1484 of archive ./tgc_nedit.man.

But untarring also gives a error so maybe the programs from that site need some newer versions of tar and inst?

I don't know; if I'm lucky I will have time to test this on my identical machine.