The collected works of GL1zdA - Page 3

commodorejohn wrote:

GL1zdA wrote: The 164LX is a great board, but since it's ATX be careful and remember to pull the plug and press the PowerOn button before you touch it.

Hmm. Unplugging is standard practice, of course, but I've never heard of pressing the power-on button before. Does that discharge capacitors, or what?

Even if I unplug a board, if I press the power-on button the fans will spin sometimes for a moment, so I assume it discharges the capacitors.

commodorejohn wrote: Okay, so it passes its memory test and boots into AlphaBIOS setup without issue, and it gets along fine with the video card I've got in there at the moment. I'm having trouble, though, because it does not seem to want to recognize the hard disk. It's the only IDE device attached, at the moment, and it's set to master so it shouldn't be the problem I've seen with some controllers not liking cable-select, but the BIOS reports no hard disks found. Is there a trick to this that I'm not aware of?

Have you tried attaching another IDE device? Even if it works, the IDE controller is very slow (it's the Saturn I/O chip - from 1992, it was meant to be used in 486 PCs). I never managed to install NT on a drive attached to the 164LXs onboard IDE - it always crashed during setup (while copying files), I really recommend a cheap SCSI card.

commodorejohn wrote: That bad, huh? Hmm. I have a couple PCI SCSI controllers, I'm not sure if they're in the HCL though.

Mine is a simple Symbios Logic 53C875. I'm pretty sure the extremely popular Adaptec 2940 will also work. There are also NT 3.51/4.0 Alpha drivers for the Promise ULTRA33 IDE controller. If any of your PCI SCSI controllers works, please report it here.

commodorejohn wrote: Hmm. The controllers I have on hand are an Adaptec 29160N (doesn't seem to be in the HCL,) and an Adaptec 2930CU (is in there, but this specific card is from a PPC Mac - any idea if it would still work without the x86 BIOS emulation?) I may just have to nab one off eBay.

I have tried the 19160, which is similar to your 29160N and AlphaBIOS did not detect it. You can try the 2930CU - Adaptec drivers seem to work with many of their adapters since they often share chipsets.

An Audigy ES (SB0160 - first generation Audigy without FireWire) also works. It gives the same warning as the full Audigy SB0090 , but works (at least with IRIX system sound) and is reported as an "Iris Audio Processor: version EMU revision A3, number 1". Tested with IRIX 6.5.26.


Moderator Edit: Split from The Fuel (IP35) Hardware Aggregator after the appropriate content was aggregated. <recondas>

commodorejohn wrote: Got this for free at the recycle center today. Haven't gotten a chance to see what's in it yet, other than that it's 233MHz (according to the label,) and there's only one DIMM (which means that RAM's anywhere from 16-128MB) and no video card. I see that it's on the HCL for Windows NT 4.0

The one on the HCL is the 7248 43P. I tried running NT on a 7043, it didn't work: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sy ... TaewZRwEAJ

commodorejohn wrote: [*]In sourcing a video card, what restrictions are there on compatibility?

If you want to be sure, stick to the HCL. If you're adventurous a Matrox Millenium should work (I used one in my RS/6000 E30 with NT before it died).[/quote]

commodorejohn wrote: [*]I read that NT will run 286 Win16 software in emulation, and that NT 4.0 will even run 386 Enhanced Win16 software, but it sounds like PowerPC NT won't run x86 Win32 software (unlike Alpha NT.) Is there a good source for PPC Windows software on the Internet?

You should be able to run 16-bit apps (both DOS and Windows) using the built-in Insignia emulator. I don't know whether apps using DOS extenders will work. Win32 apps run on AlphaNT by using Digitals FX!32 emulator, I haven't heard about a similar thing for PPC NT.

commodorejohn wrote: The thing I'm curious about is that it reports having a "PowerPC 760" instead of the 604e the sticker on the bezel claims - though still at 233MHz with 1MB L2 cache. I'm finding a lot of conflicting information about the 760 - some people call it the "G3e," while some people say it's just a 604e...anybody know what the details are on this thing?

viewtopic.php?p=7326397#p7326397

commodorejohn wrote: Interesting so far, but I'm irritated that none of the drivers for my additional hardware seem to want to work...

What hardware are you trying to use?

jan-jaap wrote:

vishnu wrote: Here's a totally off topic question, did Visual C++ exist on AlphaNT?

Yes, up to version 4.2, IIRC

Up to 6.0 actually.

VenomousPinecone wrote: EDIT:
Did some reading on the phpbb docs and it appears we do not have the "Delete My Account" mod installed in the UCP. All it would do though is delete your name from the member list and place "deleted user" as the user name on all your old posts. Is that what you wanted to accomplish?

But please, make sure you don't delete posts when deleting users. There are already many topics, which are hard to understand, because one member's posts were deleted with his account.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Somehow missed the thread when it was posted. This Multia looks great. I'm still trying to find a stand for mine.

Is there any non obvious way to deal with F25 Unsupported DIMM detected on an RS/6000 7024-E30? The machine was disassembled and reassembled years ago, after what it wouldn't post - nothing could be seen on the LCD. Since it's big and I have to downsize my collection I decided today to try to revive it one last time. I reseated the CPU module, the DIMMs and launched it. It fails with "Unsupported DIMM", but these were the modules this machine came with and it ran with them (2 DIMMs, 64 MB each, in the first 2 slots). Any hints what could be wrong?

Well, I'm not sure, but there's no physical damage on the DIMMs or the sockets. It seems these are 5V DIMMs and I don't have another computer to test them. I've installed them in DIMM 0 and DIMM 1 - does the RS/6000 have any requirement on how to install the modules? Do I have to have installed both?

pentium wrote: Vancouver's SkyTrain system has been upgraded at least twice in almost 30 years but at last check it was running on three IBM Industrial Computers and OS/2.

In Poland there was one train station still running an Odra in 2010 (over 30 years in service).

jan-jaap wrote:

bigD wrote: The cost doesn't matter if the quality justifies it.

Lian-Li then.

They are nice, but be prepared to be extremely careful with them - they are easily scratched. And the interior design isn't very thoughtful. They are always a step or two behind others when it comes to functionality and if they get creative, it usually doesn't end up very well (poor air circulation). I have a PC-A71F and it looks cool and there's plenty of space inside.

Dennis Nedry wrote: Lian Li or Abee ( http://abee.co.jp/Store/CASE.html ).

Wow, never heard of them, but their cases look awesome. Unfortunately no one is selling them in Poland.

The UV family has a new member: the SGI UV 300H.

The UV 300H is the UV for SAP HANA . This server uses 4 socket nodes connected via NUMAlink 7. Sockets are populated with Xeon E7 v2 (Ivy Bridge-EX, Socket LGA2011-1) CPUs with up to 15 cores each. The 300H is designed to scale to 32 sockets (480 cores) and 24 TB of RAM.

Yeah, I know, terribly exciting, but hey, it has a next-gen NUMAlink interconnect!

It's a nice system if you want to run Windows NT or 2000. Linux support seems to be lacking (I don't think there's accelerated X for Cobalt).

hamei wrote: Of all the Windowses, 2000 is the nicest (imo)

My vote too.

Geoman wrote: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/SGI_Visual_Workstation#Installing_Windows_2000

Never thought it will be useful the same day I've added it to the wiki.

hamei wrote: If you move the box six inches, the memory will need to be reseated. Maybe because the sticks are so short ? They don't seem very stable at all, physically.

My 540 arrived the day before yesterday from Germany and the DIMMs work OK, so I think they are stable

nongrato wrote: There are 12 memory modules with a total amount of 1024 megs. How on earth 1024 divides by 12?!

Because you install them in threes - these are basically common DIMMs broken in three pieces. 1 GB means a maxed out 320, so you don't have to worry about finding the right modules.

nongrato wrote: Does that Cobalt chip support any version of DirectX? Does anyone have any experience running games that require graphics acceleration?

Don't know about DirectX. Carmack used it (along with an Intergraph GT1) to develop Quake III and he got 10-15 FPS at 1600x1024 . I'll install Quake III on my 540 (graphics is the same, but it has 2 Pentium III Xeons at 500 MHz with 2 MB cache) today, do some benchmarks and report back.

hamei wrote: There was an excellent VW320 website around that went into great detail. It might be archived somewhere ?

There are links on our wiki to these sites.

Just benchmarked it. GLQuake gave a steady 60 FPS at 640x480 with 15 bitdepth, but it was 20 FPS at 1600x1200 with 32 bitdepth. Quake III Arena was between 15-30 FPS @1600x1200x32, 30-50 FPS @1024x768x32.

nongrato wrote:

Pontus wrote: I look at it as a generic PC and run Ubuntu on it.

Indeed, because 550 IS a generic PC, probably just a rebadged Intergraph, while 320 is based on unique architecture and I don't think you can run Ubuntu on it.

The zx10 was the rebadged Intergraph, the 550 is a PC based on an Acer motherboard . A Rambus monster with the 840 chipset. Should do Quake III fast: The RDRAM Avenger - Intel's i840 Chipset

nongrato wrote: yes, that was a suprpise how big this thing actually is.

You have to see a VW540. It's even bigger.

nongrato wrote:

jpstewart wrote: 16M x 48 parts, 768 Mbits 96 MBytes ECC 288 bits, 256 bit wide 32 of them

Well, it's pretty standard - 1 bit of parity for each 8 bits of data. 256 bit /8 = 32 bit. But I think the chips are more like 64M x 12 than 16M x 48- the biggest module has 12 chips (6 memory chips stacked in two, on each side).