The collected works of Bubba

Greetings to all,

recently, I acquired two Origins 200 in working condition. One is dual R10k 180MHz while the other has only one R10k 180MHz. I have several questions:

- can I acquire IRIX legally for free, since machines were used for academic purposes on Faculty of Science at University of Zagreb (Physics) (got no answer from them, naturally )? What version would be most suitable for those machines? How about other (scientific) software for IRIX (compilers, etc.), how can that be acquired?

- does any other OS (Linux, presumably) supports all features that Origin 200 offers? I am particularly interested in Craylink support?

- regarding Craylink, I found some older posts that claimed it is possible to use Craylink on machines that are not similarly equipped regarding CPU's? Is that true? How about memory, I suppose there shouldn't be any problems as well?

- it seems that memory for Origin 200 is somewhat easily obtainable (since it is compatible with Origin 2000 and Onix2). However, how about PIMM's - had no particular luck on Ebay, especially for R12k or dual CPU PIMM's of higher frequency than 180MHz I currently have. Are there any other interesting expansion cards for Origins that could have use in scientific calculations? However, I am really not keen on giving several hundred $ for PIMM's...

- PROM versions on machines seem to be discrepant. I had no luck in finding official procedure for PROM/firmware update method from SGI; is there any (I suppose there is, perhaps the correct question would be - where can I find one)?

TIA!

That was actually aim of my question; does all SGI machines (or to be exact, my Origins 200) come with bundled IRIX licence. I will try to get hold on IRIX media; just to make sure, what is registration/activation procedure for IRIX, if any (CD key, serial number, online activation, etc.)?

Great!

Thanks for the heads up. Do you believe that problem would occur if I would only try to replace single R10k board with dual R10k board with same speed?

Is there any official procedure or should I just humbly ask here in case I get lucky and get my hands on advanced CPU modules?

I thought so...

I think IRIX will be fine, I asked about other OSes since due to their open source nature they should be more easily obtainable.

Thx.

Thank you for the nice and informative welcome. BTW, I'm not sure if I'm missing it, but is there no multi-quote option on this phpBB version? Just curious...

Not quite. Nor I resemble to any stereotypical bearer of that name, though I did drive a pick-up on a dirt road with a shotgun next to me...

By free, as I mentioned in post above, I really meant "without any additional charge since I own SGI hardware". I am fully aware that vendors like SGI have virtually nothing for - free.

My dear friend from Physics gave machines to me to hold them, tender them and be nice to them (as I did with the ones here -> http://web.studenti.math.hr/~bubba/hardware.html ; SUN SPARCstation 10, Ultra 1 and several other machines are in queue, but due to the lack of my time during academic year, I only tend to reserve few days during summer break for such errands), but was uncertain about legal nature of IRIX story.

I got several inputs to stick to the IRIX, but I'd certainly like to try OBSD to see how it goes...

Thx.

Greetings,

since my questions regarding SGI were promptly answered with great accuracy and usefulness , perhaps someone might have some insights regarding Sun box I'd like to deal with next month; so, I'd like to upgrade my SPARCStation 10, equipped with single SM71 (501-2925; SuperSPARC-II 2.4.5 with MXCC 4.5 cache controller and 1MB cache).

Naturally, I'd like to add another CPU, but failing to find that exact module, I came across this:

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/SPARC-HOWTO.html
http://faqaboss.sunhelp.org/

...

And, as stated earlier, CPU modules in SparcStations 10 and can run a different clock speeds, the following ones __SHOULD__ work:

* SM71, SM81

...

That is the combination I am aiming at, since I could obtain 501-3033 (SM81, SuperSPARC-II 2.4.5 with MXCC 4.4). Although MXCC versions seem to be discrepant, they are both STP1091 chips so I hope there should not be any problems regarding that.

Can anyone comment or verify this one? Is there any other info about SS10 I can submit in order to increase chances this really works? What about CPU speed, does it decreases to the speed of slower CPU or is slower one overclocked? Or do they work asymmetrically?

Best regards and TIA!