The collected works of Jack Luminous - Page 1

You are not alone. And for some people (me included), it is not only SGI stuff but also old cinema projectors, old industrial coffee machines, old pinball games, old swiss reel-to-reel machines, old tube amps, old Altec horn speakers etc. I wouldn't call it insanity but more of a slight mental disorder bordering on fetichism. There's an undeniable pleasure in getting out of scraps an old useless, very pricy, well-engineered, complicated and arguably beautiful mechanical/electronic thing and getting it to work as intended by researching documentation, gathering spare parts, tinkering with it endlessly etc.

jan-jaap wrote:

Jack Luminous wrote: old swiss reel-to-reel machines

Studer/Revox? Kewl. I swear, one day I'll buy a Mk II B77

Yes Revox. One C278 eight track to record and one C270 two track to mix. Great machines ! I spoke to the local Revox dealer about spare parts availability and he told me : "Yes, we have a huge spare parts stock for all models from way back to the 50s". Then I asked : "What if some special part is not in stock anymore, especially the record/play/erase heads ?" and he replied : "Don't worry, we still have all the original molds, we'll just make new ones"....

So I bought this saturday a nice 1600SW+Multi Link Adapter from Nekochan member bplaa.yai (thanks a lot for the delivery at home !). I then fiddled the whole WE to make the combo work with V12/DCD equipped Octane. Not very straightforward but it kinda worked in the end, thanks to the invaluable infos shared in here. Curiously, the various 1600x1024 vfos found in my install didn't work at all. I finally used the 1600x1024_60-1704TPPL-1056TLPF.vfo file (to be found here : http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16725775 ).

Still, there remains a minor annoyance that I couldn't solve. When the Octane boots up with the 1600SW+MLA plugged in one of the DVI slot, the above mentionned 1600x1024 vfo disappears from the list in xsetmon and some default 1280x1024 is automatically selected. At this point, there is no way to get back to 1600x1024. When I boot up the machine without any monitor connected until the graphic login screen, and then hotplug the DVI, the vfo is back in the list and I can select it properly and make it the default choice. That means : every time I reboot or start up, I need to unplug first the DVI (so that IRIX can't detect the 1600SW+MLA contraption) and plug it later to get the native 1600x1024 or else I'm back at 1280x1024.

It is workable as it is but kinda annoying. Is there's a way to avoid that ?

Geoman wrote: This is really cool!! Strange though, that Octane2+DCD+1600 SW isn't working right out of the box, since this was once upon a time a possible configuration from SGI(?)

octane2_2.jpg

I'm running 6.5.22 at the moment. Maybe I'm missing some needed patch to make the whole thing smoother ?

I use the digital input of the MLA so Sync-On-Green is not the problem...

I confirm it does work with the aforementioned vfo. I was still tinkering with the setup (looks exactly like the pic above) this morning before going to work. But I'd really like to make it work without unplugging the the DVI each and every time...

recondas wrote: In the mean time you might try connecting the DVI port of the 1600SW/MLA to another system to see if you can capture the EDID info and try for a 1600SW/MLA tailored VFO using the EDID template .

I don't have a DVI equipped computer at home apart from the Octane. Though I googled some EDID info about 1600SW+MLA and found this :

<00ffffff ffffff00 4ce90016 55a1aec6 04030103 00100a00 0e000000 00000000 00000021 0800a900 81400101 01010101 01010101 0101302a 40686000 20401030 1300a820 64000000 302a0068 50002040 c8701300 a8206400 00000000 00fc0053 4749204d 756c7469 6c696e6b 000000fd 003c463c 4619000a 20202020 202000b9>

Which translate to :



It looks like it's the same values you used for the previous vfo : Horizontal Image Size : 1704 mm Vertical Image Size : 1056 mm. But I'm not sure.

recondas wrote: Probably not the elegant workaround you were hoping for, but instead of hot-plugging the DVI cable have you tried disconnecting the MLA power supply before booting (to see if that stops the exchange of DDC/EDID info)?

I tried and apparently the EDID is read as long as the DVI cable is plugged, even when the MLA is not powered. I haven't tried to disconnect the 1600SW itself. I'll try tonight.

bplaa.yai wrote: I'm glad it found a good SGI enthusiast home, and that it's living on the edge of unsupported SGI configuration

LOL Thanks a lot for your saturday delivery !

So I had 10 minutes this morning before going to work for further testing. here are the results :

- the DVI must be physically disconnected to avoid the EDID reading. Even if both the MLA+1600SW are both shut off, the VPRO card still detects everything and reverts back to "authorized" vfos list.

- I tried with the VPro_1600x1024_60-Analog_MLA.vfo posted above and it gives the same result as the other one : it disappears from the list if the DVI is connected at startup. But it works fine with the hot-plugging scenario.

To be continued...

First post from Octane2 freshly configured with Firefox3 installed this morning ! YEAH ! Thanks to everyone who contributed to make this work ! I'm gonna post some hinv next !

Sorry, no pics yet, I was too busy making the damn thing work.... Will add later !

vishnu wrote: Very nice machine! Quite like mine. I've always thought it odd that gfxinfo doesn't post the graphics board number for the V series. Presumably your DCD works? Mine doesn't work for crap, may I ask what monitors you're using?

Yes the DCD works with a single monitor. I'm using a 1600SW+Multilink Adapter. Not easy to make it work but it worked in the end. See viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16728430&start=15 for the gory details involving butchering a poor DVI-D cable.

mia wrote: now that's a nice machine, doesn't get much better than this.

I want to put 8 gigs in it. But it' too costly for now. Anyway FF3 is working much better than I expected. Quite fast and no crash yet.

Updated with dual channel SGI fibre XIO card + Discreet D9 Stone

Thanks ! Luckily, it has been pretty painless to set up until now. One of my goals with it is to buy some used bigger FC hdds from ebay and create a big and fast file server with the thing. I still need to buy a cheap PCI gigabit ethernet card to put in the PCI cage (already have the cage but it is not plugged in yet).

The only drawback of the whole system is the noise of the D9 Stone... Crazy !!! I didn't fire it up in 3 years or so and totally forgot the madness. When I pushed the on button this morning after set up, it felt like an airplane taking off in my basement. Can't even hear the Octane next to it !

I don't understand why it needs so much cooling... I'm gonna try to replace the fans with modern ones and slow them down with resistors... Pics coming in the next few days...

recondas wrote: If you don't mind pin-plucking another DVI cable (and just happen to have a second 1600SW/MLA) you can always try for a 2@ monitor set up.

I wouldn't mind pin-plucking another DVI cable and would love to try a 2@ monitor set-up. It also happens that I have a second 1600SW to go with my O2 but I only have one MLA so it will have to wait for some more SGI play-money availability. I already got past the intended budget in the last month to get everything up and running as I wanted.

jan-jaap wrote: The D9 stone is the cube shaped metal box, right? Those go back to the 1st generations of 10K disks etc, and they ran *hot*. Put a dozen together in a shoebox and you need a lot of airflow.

Modern disks run much cooler, so you can reduce cooling as well. I have one of these which was modded with an ATX PSU -- probably because the original PSU died. Then the ATX PSU died as well

Yes it's the cube shaped industrial metal looking thing. What hdd would you advise to use ? I see a lot of cheap used 300gb FC hdd on the bay or even 600gb sometimes...

Yes, it's in a basement, under metallic stairs. And I'm not much of a photographer LOL

So, has someone successfully run Premiere on a VPro equipped Octane ? Is there some known trick or should I let it go already ?

LOL thanks for your straight-to-the-point reply.

Grandmaster Flash - The Message

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4o8TeqKhgY

Afrika Bambaataa - Looking For The Perfect Beat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RJlYzBhLg4

Kurtis Blow - The Breaks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZDUEilS5M4

Either a maxed out O2 with R12K 400 and 1 gig ram. It's a really small, nice and comfy little workstation. You can already do a lot of things with it. I really like mine. Or if you want more power, a bigger Octane with dual cpu is really faster and more responsive. I have one with dual 600mHz, V12+DCD and 2 gigs ram. It's my go-to machine.

Here's my own collection :

No.

Yes the missing gateway ip address is likely the problem. You must fill it with your cable modem ip address for the Octane to reach the net. I think you can set it using the toolchest network tool.

Wow what a relief ! I was scared, alone in the dark with my SGI toys LOL

Can we have it back please ?

Wow thanks ! I'm a total noob concerning phpbb etc. I was really annoyed that something I clicked thousands of times had suddenly disappeared from my life LOL

recondas wrote: Without picking out anyone in particular (I've had my share of WTF moments too), the idea that simple forum interface overwhelmed guys who routinely master obscure operating systems and hardware (in a number of flavors) brought a smile to my face.

LOL I must say I realized I really was a simpleton when I read the first reply to my topic LOL

Doesn't matter. Maybe 25 years of computer coding must have taken its toll on my braincells. Or maybe alzheimer first signs LOL

So I'm using this old D9 Stone with 8 FC-AL 300gb HDDs to store various bits and blobs (family pics, mp3, home recordings etc.). One problem I have is that the HDDs mount in slightly different order every time I reboot. I cannot figure out why. Is there a simple way to get the HDDs to mount the same way every time so it doesn't wreck havoc in my symbolic links ?

No Fiber Channel or IRIX automount expert around here ?? Someone must have encountered this problem before...

Thanks for your reply. The disks have no jumper whatsoever. Is there a software way to control disk spin-up ?

I do not use the Stone+Wire Discreet driver as the Stone comes from another system. I only use it with as a standard storage array with the standard Irix driver. I clicked "OK" when Irix proposed me to automount the drives at startup. I haven't seen any option anywhere to delay the spindle of the drives individually or anything else for that matter. Hence the situation...

hamei wrote: Disclaimer : I don't know anything about fiber channel. But I have a couple of sata disks that do something similar to what you describe ..

Does each disk show up individually ? /dev/dksc/dsk3d2s7 etc etc ? If so, I am guessing you have your links interlaced ? Because on my system, there's a mount point for each disk on the boot filesystem. There's no problem with this setup, it doesn't care when each disk comes online. The boot disk comes up first, then the subdisks can mount in any order.

Yes, each disk show up individually. Yes my links are all mixed up. Precisely, I devised a small website for my own usage with data stored on the arrray and symbolic links pointing to paths within the array are all mixed up everytime I reboot the system.

Basically, my question is :

How do you maintain correct and stable symbolic links from the root to the content of the FC array thoughout several reboots of the whole system ??? There must be a simple way as it seems to me a really basic functionality. I'm no Unix specialist, although I used Irix, SunOs and Aix in various dev environment from 1994 to 2002. But I was a software developer, not a sysadmin. I have no idea how such common problem is handled in a standard environment.

hamei wrote: I'm not sure they would ever have done what you are talking about because in a big installation, what if disk #3 with mountpoints for disks 4 and 5 failed ? Then everything dependant on it would also fail ...

What you're describing is an entirely different problem concerning mountpoints. For example, in a SCSI array, each disk has a fixed SCSI id and show up every time in the same device in the filesystem (usually with a naming scheme related to the SCSI id), regardless of spindle time or any other consideration.

uunix wrote: What about using XVM and making a raided drive?

Doesn't XVM require some kind of license ? I do not trust RAID arrangements for my own small tasks anyway. I prefer having the simplest possible scheme (JBOD wthout interleaving of the data across the disks, much too risky).

robespierre wrote: You can use XLV to create stripes and concatenated volumes without a license, it only requires one for plexes (mirroring). Not sure if the situation is the same with XVM, but perusing techpubs it seems to be the same.

I don't want to create stripes or concatenation as it weakens the integrity of the data greatly. I just want to use my disks in the simplest way.

robespierre wrote: From your symptoms it seems like you're using automounting/mediad. If you just turn that off, and add entries to fstab manually, I don't think you will still see things breaking.

I guess this is what I'm using. I'll look into fstab and report the result. Thanks for you help !

Thanks everyone for your insights. I guess the only solution left for me is to write some kind of script that will mount the drives in some temp mountpoints and then identify each of them by checking the existence of a id file in them and then remount them at the right locations based on that. Ugly solution I hoped to avoid !

Yes, the ids are slightly different every time. Not totally jumbled, but the 1 and 2 are swapped etc. Just slightly different every time. The 7th never becomes the first but it might become the 6th, you get the picture. I never tried to let the stone powered on since it burns about 150 watt/h (the octane burns about 250 watt/h) so for the time being I only power them when I feel like toying with old computers. The long term plan is to let them powered up 24h but I still don't have an upload rate worhty enough of it (my street is only DSL, not optical fiber so the rate is really low).

hamei wrote:

jan-jaap wrote: Queue Hamei and the IBM T221 in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ...

hey, there's an Eizo that takes two dvi inputs also !

Which Eizo model would that be ? Can't seem to find it on the Eizo site...

Thanks for the infos, Hamei ! When I got the V12/DCD in my Octane, I looked for a monitor with two DVI inputs to display sided-by-side but couldn't find any at the time (about two years ago).

The Keeper wrote: Knowing that they show up differently in the hinv every time, then it sounds like whichever drive is spinning up first is assigned an FC-AL address first. I think there may have been an "auto" mode in FC-AL where if there isn't a drive position specified, one is assigned automatically, but those details are a bit fuzzy.

They don't show up differently in the hinv, they appear identical every time :



The disks ids are always sequential starting from 0 but they are not assigned to the same physical disk in the enclosure, which seems totally strange and illogical to me.

For example, when I list the content, what was previously mounted on /stor0 at last power-up is now mounted on /stor1 and conversely (I mounted the 8 disks on /stor0 - /stor7 folders). Just as if I swapped the disks in the enclosure.

The Keeper wrote: Does the DS9 have any switches on it anywhere? If so, that might configure the "auto" mode. And also, has the DS9 always misbehave this way, or did it just recently start misbehaving?

Chris

There's no visible switches or jumpers anywhere on the D9 enclosure. I'll have to dismantle it completely and check the innards. Even if I find random jumpers inside, I'd be wary of changing anything beause I have no documentation about the D9 Stone hardware and couldn't find any on the net. I guess it always behaved that way but I just didn't see it before because at first, I didn't use all the disks and also, I hadn't set up a website with symbolic links pointing to data on several disks. Thanks for your help in any case !