Hardware For Sale/Trade

LINUX Inside!

Preinstalled with Debian Linux.

http://cgi.ebay.com/SGI-O2-Workstation- ... dZViewItem

Of course you could install it yourself, but this O2 comes with it already working, and a plea for new recruits to the Linux cause on SGI hardware.

Shouldn't this belong in the for sale section?

Though to me, IRIX is half the fun of playing with SGI stuff. If I want to use linux I have plenty of much faster pc's to run it on.

BrentDMartin wrote: LINUX Inside!

Preinstalled with Debian Linux.

**Yawn** **big deal** **who cares** **ruined the O2**

Porting Linux to SGI MIPS platforms seems to be more an academic exercise than an attempt to really result in a useful computing platform.

I can easily see why the likes of Linux would make sense on, say a DEC Alpha workstation, where the original operating system really doesn't bring much to the party. Tru64 is a platform to get work done, but it doesn't really give you much in the way of eye candy or even basic management. And the graphics cards in those systems are COS anyway. I don't know a lot about the more current Sun boxes, but from what I remember, there wasn't much to Solaris, either.

SGI MIPS platforms, however, are a completely different beast. SGI put a lot of effort into IRIX in making it useful, and the graphics subsystems are not trivial to reverse-engineer to write drivers for.

There might be certain things that you can't easily do on an IRIX box, but I can't see how those limitations of IRIX would justify the Linux development effort.

If nothing else, the fact that DEC, Sun, SGI, etc., have all been around for about the same amount of time, and the fact that Linux on SGI MIPS is in such early development, whereas the other platforms are relatively stable, is a testament to IRIX's usefulness. I'd like to think that's the case, anyway.

The Keeper wrote: If nothing else, the fact that DEC, Sun, SGI, etc., have all been around for about the same amount of time, and the fact that Linux on SGI MIPS is in such early development, whereas the other platforms are relatively stable, is a testament to IRIX's usefulness. I'd like to think that's the case, anyway.

There is a big difference though. DEC's policy was that their Alpha systems were part of a hardware business, and they wanted as many OSes as possible running on that hardware. Hardware documentation is available for just about everything. They also placed no restrictions on modification/use/redistribution of the PALcode/monitor example source that ships with their early eval boards, meaning Linux didn't have to start from scratch wrt PALcode (would have been a lot of very low level work). Also, DEC themselves did a lot of the early work on the port.

Initially Sun were like SGI, with a mixed feeling about opensource. They even went as far as taking back a loaned multiprocessor machine once they found out it was being used for Linux development. They wouldn't release hardware documentation, so some reverse engineering had to be done. But even so, things like SPARC, SBus and OpenFirmware are all well documented open specifications. And vendors like Tadpole did release hardware documentation, which helped for Suns SPARC sun4m systems. Gradually Sun's attitude changed, and by the time of the Ultra series, they were releasing hardware documentation.

SGI released hardware documentation for the Indy, and the initial port of Linux to Indy was done at SGI by an intern.
But only parts of the hardware documentation were released, and it isn't like a normal hardware spec (e.g. in one place, the interrupt controller doc says something like "contact someone from the VINO team to find out the exact addresses used"). So a basic Indy with Newport graphics is documented, but most other SGI configurations are not. Combine that with the fact that almost everthing in an SGI MIPS is very proprietary, and you have a very difficult porting job for everything but the standard Indy. On top of this you have little information about the hardware workarounds needed for things like R10k speculation or the alleged PCI bus issues on O2 that make PCI card support troublesome.

Would be nice to see if those pci ATI X1550 work in the O2. Too bad there's only one pci slot.

Anybody try a newer ATIon the O2 with X.org > 7.1? I got my legacy IO API working, and X.org sees the card, but still pukes. I haven't had time to play around with newer X.org builds, but have been constantly told they're re-arranging their PCI subsystem.

If anybody has some low-level graphics or even x86 and MIPS assembly (I'm seriously lacking on the x86 side) programming experience, I'd love for them to take a look at the Int10 + ATI + Legacy IO path, its very possible that the Int10 routine needs some MIPS/ O2 specific code. Int10 converts x86 video BIOS to platform assembly to POST the card which is a non-trivial task. However, I ported the underlying kernel API that lets X.org see it as a video card (find registers, pull the BIOS rom, etc.). See: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13680&start=60

Note, with a 600 Mhz processor compiled with the proper RM7K optimizations, the O2 makes a half-decent desktop even without 2D acceleration. With it, It would be on par with a high end PIII, maybe better with ICE patches and X and KDE compiled with optimizations.

Also, from the Linux-MIPS mailing list, somebody just got a patch to get intelligent PCI extenders working on the O2. I.e. you plug one of those into the single PCI slot and it provides the necessary bridges to get 3 PCI slots. A little hacking with one of those, a video card, and a small USB PCI could give you all the IO you'd need.

BTW, What's the R12ka optimized port status? Can you dualboot from the same drive (R12ka o2 only has room for one internal drive)? Just remembered the o2's power supply outputs 170 watts, would it be able to handle a 'big' pci card like the 6200 or a x1550 + 2 15k scsi drives+USB/Firewire chains?? The BFG 6200 OC says it requires at least a 250 watt power supply -the reason I've put on hold my project to stick one of those inside the qube3.

You could "cheat" and use an external PS just for the card if you really wanted to, my friend did that with his hard drive setup before 200W+ became common, although routing the cables inside might be a bit of trouble, but you could take off the bracket if need be, if you're not moving the computer you don't really need it.

zahal wrote: BTW, What's the R12ka optimized port status?

As far as I know Linux will run, but crash after 5min-hour because of the R10K cache issues. Octanes have hardware to prevent corruption and BSD uses a whole other set of DMA routines which is really what prevents Linux from being stable. NetBSD and OpenBSD should have R10K and R12K O2 ports, but the work done for those OSes don't directly apply to Linux. The best info. on the subject is here: http://www.total-knowledge.com/progs/mi ... ssue.shtml The same site has some patches, but work is slow...

As far as Linux/ Irix on a single drive, that's a walk in the park. You just need to use arcload (or the more complex arcboot) and supply the right partion numbers and kernel names. Tell it to boot one by default and if you want another OS, interrupt the boot sequence and type boot Linux or boot Irix (or whatever you name them). I do this all the time to control what kernel I load and whether to load my Debian or Gentoo partitions. I actually haven't tried Linux/ Irix dual boot since I have an R12K O2 that runs Irix and I use my 600 Mhz one purely for Linux, however, I know its possible. You may need a larger hard drive (or to resize your volume header since its advantageous to put both kernels, arcload, and config files there) to do this. I'd highly suggest trying the Gentoo SGI Live CD first though.

If you want to try with arcload, I can help. Arcboot is a whole other issue. Gentoo uses this instead (by default), and it doesn't seem to properly overwrite the OSLoadPartition PROM setting so you either need to change PROM variables before booting (annoying) or do some major trickery to get Irix to load. See this (rather confusing) thread: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-54 ... +boot.html

As far as power, I'm okay since my 600 Mhz processor draws < 3 Watts (it probably could run without a heat sink). Trying to add a modern video card on an R12K probably isn't the best idea, but for heat issues rather than power. Open the case of your running R12K and feel the giant heatsink after 30 minutes, rather warm is an understatement.

The fastest PCI ATI card you can get (at this time) is an X1650 and still only draws around 30 Watts full load, which is the max a standards compliant PCI slot can provide. I know the BFG PCI says 250 Watt, but I think this is more of a cya number since most power supplies inflate their wattage. Also, the PCI board doesn't have a power connector so it must be under 30 watt, like the X1650. As far as the numbers on the box go, I've run P4s off high quality 150 Watt power supplies when the box said 300 minimum (and drew a ton of flak for that) but using a Kill-A-Watt measured the real peak load of that system to be closer to 135 Watts. Since an O2 can also accept a secondary video card and video capture board, I'm fairly sure power supply isn't an issue unless you really overdue it. Your PCI extender may need to tap into the power supply directly if you plan on using multiple bus-powered USB devices, but I'm sure its doable, even on an R12K.

Finally. you won't think this from the monster heatsink and how hot it gets, but the R12K @ 400 Mhz is only a 20 Watt processor (according to wikipedia). However, I'm fairly sure about this number since Hennessy and Patterson mention the R14K @ 600 is 17 Watt and that number is also in the Wikipedia chart. That means 150 watts for all the other components in an O2.

Anyway... sorry for being long.

The Keeper wrote: whereas the other platforms are relatively stable, is a testament to IRIX's usefulness. I'd like to think that's the case, anyway.

I think the word you were looking for is "proprietary-ad-ness"

tillin9 wrote:
Anyway... sorry for being long.

Quite informative, thanks for taking the time. Yes, I could use the r12k o2's heatsink to grill tofu...I thought it ate up more power but based on your info there seems to be some juice left on the PS for a decent video card after all. I'm about to get a larger drive (146gb) for my main o2, but since the R1xK bug wasn't ironed out in the o2 board(and Linux hasn't come up with a patch for it) it seems I'll have to use the rm5200 for testing...
Got a bunch of IBM USB keyboards with built-in fingerprint reader...would be nice if they worked with the o2...what kinda not so common usb hardware have you tried on your o2?

tillin9 wrote: If you want to try with arcload, I can help. Arcboot is a whole other issue. Gentoo uses this instead (by default), and it doesn't seem to properly overwrite the OSLoadPartition PROM setting so you either need to change PROM variables before booting (annoying) or do some major trickery to get Irix to load. See this (rather confusing) thread: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-54 ... +boot.html

why rather confusing ? that guy explained an hack that makes possible to have dual boot on indy, and it works great as I am able to switch between nebBSD and gentoo, choosing what to boot.

arcload was hacked but it still needs manually env setup

Why bump a nearly 8 year old thread?!

just because i was searching for such a informations and i have already find them useful: Arcboot is pretty working in dual boot !

(also may be i will have 2 indy-s for sale, both linux and netBSD already powered in dual boot. In case … i will open a specific thread, let me ask if this guy wants to sell them, i am playing like a "broker", now )

chicaneuk wrote: Why bump a nearly 8 year old thread?!

You're asking this on a board that focuses on 9+ year old hardware? It happens all the time around here.

to be honest i haven't seen it is a thread in the bazaar area, i was searching for { linux,USB,arcload } and i found this thread, so i wanted to point out that the information in quote is useful as i am able to do dual boot with arcload as the gentoo's guy has explained in his thread.

I'm a little curious why someone would want to run Linux on an SGI when between IRIX, OpenBSD and NetBSD its pretty much got the full array covered. And now, I'm not judging those that want to, just gotta say, seems like there are easier MIPS systems to run Linux on, especially with the way the better systems are documented ( read, not at all )

TeamBlackFox wrote: run Linux on an SGI when between IRIX, OpenBSD and NetBSD its pretty much got the full array covered

why everyone always asks my why-that? why-this?
there is no real why, it's simply happens that i am a linux kernel developer and i like this way
that's all, folks

For all my real UnixBox needs, i will never use an SGI box, i will put FreeBSD on a x86 machine (i5 at least), plus gentoo/linux to simplify my development purposes.

TeamBlackFox wrote: I
there are easier MIPS systems to run Linux on

hey man, i am still supporting my Atheros AR7161 rev2 router
that is MIPS32@800Mhz, so probably you are talking to the wrong guy

so don't say me "CI20", i got such a dev-board and i am still fixing its BSP
it's 2xMIPS32core@1Ghz, supporting linux and Android (btw closed sources GPU)




and don't say me "mips/router"



'cause i have supported all of these:


FON2100A (hacked SPI), FON2200, FON2202 (built-in USB): Atheros5, MIPS32

Relax ivelegacy I'm not disrespecting you or Kumba, you two are fantastic developers, if for a kernel I'm not keen on using myself.

I am just questioning the feasibility of porting and running Linux on them. No worries as you defended your usage quite sufficiently.