The collected works of Megatron-UK

Interesting! I'm just looking at the fans in my Indigo 2 right now and the Octane hdd and cpu fans are identical to the psu/gio and cpu fans in the I2!

I found this fan http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-011-SY&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=820 , which matches the 56CFM maximum of the Panaflo but is a couple of dBa quieter.

Have you found anything specific for the cpu fan yet? I've found it hard to get specs for reasonable 60x60x10mm fans - though there are lots of 60x60x25mm models out there. Also, you can use a 3 pin fan but just don't connect the yellow wire - it's just used to read the fan speed that's all.
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Hi all,

Although I love my I2, I've got an urge to pick up a newer SGI now that they're so affordable... but I'm concerned over the potential noise level. Is an Octane 2 (say mid spec; single r12k 400, V10, 15krpm cheetah) or a Fuel (500 or 600, V10, 15krpm cheetah) louder or quieter than my existing system? (it has the higher rated Impact PSU, if its any difference).
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Yep, the disk in there is a brand new 15k4 Seagate Cheetah... a *lot* quieter than the full height 9Gb unit that came out ;)
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Interesting; one vote for the Fuel as quieter, another for the Octane/Octane2.

I wonder if some of the different viewpoints come from the environment in which the systems are used? - my I2 is on feet, under my desk on a carpeted floor so it's reasonably ok - I don't think I could put up with it in a desktop configuration or on solid flooring though.
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
recondas wrote: The usefulness of an unmodified SGI system as a general use desktop is directly proportional to the increase in background noise, and inversely proportional its ability to remain unnoticed.


:lol:

32 processor rack system it is then! ;)
Actually, I wouldn't mind an Onyx2 + IR2/3 deskside, but I think that's something I'll look at later.

I just use the Indigo2 to play with - old demos, the odd game of bzflag, and some cross platform linux/irix programming just for kicks.. I've plenty of modern stuff for desktop use. It's sounding more and more like the Octane is similar to the I2, with relatively constant sound, rather than the multiple different sized fans generating a whole symphony of sound in the Fuel.
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
....or turn it off via chkconfig.
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Why can't I find SGI kit as cheap as that, here in the UK? :(
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
How about using ffmpeg with the "-ao copy" and "-vo copy" options, but selecting a different container format that the Mac is happy with?

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
wolflord wrote: I'd be interested in a V10 pending a price....still would be a solid upgrade from my V6.


Ditto
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Sorry, out of my budget.
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Darkstar wrote:
...i But the shops I found only sell used consoles and games, which is great too (I'm thinking of getting a PC-FX...


So you like FMV games and digital comic books then ;)

Can't go wrong with a Neo Geo though (any of them; AES/MVS/NGP/NGPC/HNG64...)

I guess you're looking for an X68000? ... I wouldn't mind one of those myself, or an MSX Turbo R.....

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
15KHz screen modes should work on most european TV's made in the last 20+ years, as long as you have RGB+CSync signals and a SCART socket.

For non-fighting games on the Neo I can heartily reccomend Pulstar and Blazing Star - two awesome horizontal shooters. And you can't forget about the Metal Slug series!

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
BTW, this is my current collection....

http://targetearth.dyndns.org/vgdb_vg_games

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Awesome... I've got the home version of Rip Off for the Vectrex , so I'll have to try this out!

(although I'm pretty poor at this particular Vectrex game... much prefer Fortress of Narzod)
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Output from my work machine (dual core Athlon X2 5600 + Nvidia Quadro 3450):

Code:
./ten light texture zbuffer area=850
running on xxxxx (Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI/PCI/SSE2) Mon Jan 11 13:11:03 2010
visual: 0x29
850 pixel triangles, 39 triangles/strip, 1 strips
vertex data: n3s t2s v3f
flat shading, zbuffer on, light on, texture on
window size: 848 x 848
test time: 1.947 secs.
time per frame: 0.196 msecs.
geometry rate: 1594743 triangles/sec
fill rate: 1355.532 Mpixels/sec

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Talking of saving money on electricity bills, I just rebuilt my home server from dual AMD Athlon MP 2800+'s that I've had for years, to a single high-efficiency Athlon X3 400e (unlocked from 3 to 4-cores; detects and works correctly as an X4 6400e). The MP's are 65w TDP each , and the X3 is 45w TDP, total . I also swapped from 8 x 7200rpm 500GB and 4 x 7200rpm 320GB SATA drives to 5 new Samsung Eco 1.5TB drives.

I run the server from a 700VA APC ups... previously it ran from two 650w power supplies (one for the board and 4x320GB drives, the other for the 8x500GB drives) it would light up all 5 of it's power-useage-level led's on boot-up of the server, and settle at 3-4 led's during running. The same ups now momentarily flashes a single led on power up, and shows no led's during normal running! I'm amazed at the power requirements of the new setup and how much cooler the whole thing runs (I've been able to turn off the majority of cooling fans and run the rest of them at 5-7v, instead of 12v).

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
dc_v01 wrote:
reid wrote:
Zerolapse wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong...but I thought I just read a post that said Deep Space Cables was dead?

-Jesse


I thought they were too. Hopefully the aren't....because I sent them $30!


I would email them and see if you get a response in a couple of days. If you do, great, you'll probably get it. If not, be prepared to wait a bit longer and get ready to escalate whichever dispute mechanism you use...PayPal or CC. I assume you didn't mail them anything!


They're dead. I paid for two adapters in December and hadn't received them by February. They didn't respond to Paypal communication either by me or Paypal themselves - so Paypal refunded me.

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Work-wise...

sixteen or so dual-cpu Opteron V20z's w/4GB ram, running web application stacks (Python, Java and Ruby)... gradually getting retired!
six 2-processor dual-core Opteron X4100's w4-8GB ram, running various web services, a couple with StorEdge 3120 JBOD used as light directory or database systems etc.
three 2-processor quad-core Opteron X4240's w/32GB ram each, running our main Citrix Xen virtualisation pool
a single-processor quad-core Xeon X4140 w/16GB ram providing shared storage for Xen
and an ancient Netra T1 running as one of our mail relays

In terms of hardware, there's nothing much to distinguish between the x64 Sun kit and anyone else, really.... where it scores highly for me is the built-in, standard LOM and monitoring facilities which, IMO, wipes the floor with similar Dell and HP equipment.
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
skywriter wrote:
stuffy british accents!


It makes me cringe when I hear accents like that and realise that's what most people outside the British isles think we all sound like.....

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
mapesdhs wrote:
(EDIT: I'd assumed any chat would be in the hw section, my goof!)

A friend informed me SGI's announced the Origin400 , a blade server clearly from the Rackable camp.
I doubt the name will please many here, but then being able to make use of the IP in this way is no
doubt partly why Rackable bought SGI. If it works and helps the development of other stuff, then good.
Only time will tell I suppose.

SGI's also announced support for all relevant products of the new 6-core XEON 5600 (Nehalem).
I assume this at least means the shared-memory UV system can now use the 6-core chip, which
when paired with Quadro FX cards should make for a pretty hefty beast by modern standards. But
where are the benchmarks, SGI? Enquiring minds wish to know...

Ian.


News on TheRegister.com this week also hints of AMD's tier 1 customers (HP, Dell, IBM, Oracle) getting their hands on the new 12-core Opteron shortly.... that's going to mean a huge amount of processing power in a single 2 or 4 socket server. That and the 6-core Xeon's must be going at least some way to negate the argument for the traditional big, shared image systems.

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
If you're Python oriented, you could try Zope and/or Plone - they're both through-the-web editing systems (Plone basically drops a ready-made CMS on top of the Zope application server). I maintain well over 100 Zope apps at work and they're not bad - some nice advanced features such as a neat client/server architecture that seperates your app server from the data/code it serves (and thus scales horizontally quite well), rollback of edits, overall - quite a decent architecture.

There's also Wordpress and MoveableType, if you want something more 'bloggy'. Though I can't stand Wordpress - it's really fragile.

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Where's the best place to find a cheap copy of OS X 10.5? I've just bought a 1.42GHz G4 Emac to replace an even older G3 Imac I have set up in the corner of my kitchen to browse while cooking :)
It's coming with 10.4 installed (no media), but I'd rather have an up to date legit version as I plan to reinstall and partition it with Debian PPC as well.

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
SAQ wrote:
Megatron-UK wrote:

Makes me cringe when I hear accents like that and realise that's what most people outside the British isles think we all sound like.....


Nah - there's always the circa-1908 Cockney and absurdly heavy Scottish dialects that everyone thinks of :D .

Oh, and lest I forget, the rugby players from Monty Python.
....


... and of course, the number one culprit; Dick Van Dyke :lol:

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Can you symlink libc.so.54.0 to libc.so.53.1? It looks like the packages are linked against a specific version, rather than just libc.so

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
I found with both of my machines (I2 & Octane2) that the cpu fan makes negligible noise compared to the power supply & chassis (I2) or disk bay (Octane) fans - you might want to consider those aspects before looking at watercooling.

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
I wonder if you can set which display is primary in the BIOS?

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
After finding myself with a bit of time this weekend I'm finally getting around to rebuilding the Octane 2 I've been putting together over the past year or so.

I've just bought a new 15krpm Cheetah and am trying to follow the same DINA network install procedures that I used to rebuild my Indigo2. However, I'm not getting any network connectivity in the PROM on this machine; netaddr has been reset to an unused address and I've tried the syntax for booting both sash and fx from the DINA appliance.... but the prom keeps coming back that it cannot connect to the host. I've no problems from my linux machines connecting to the appliance (which is happily sitting updating via nekosync).

ping via the prom also doesn't appear to work to any of my other machines.

The network *does* work once in IRIX.

Any suggestions?

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Ah found the problem - dhcpd was broken on the DINA box. Fixed the config and the Octane has started picking up an address when it makes bootp requests.

Now to partition the disk and figure out how to install IRIX with VPro support using a base 6.5 release and 6.5.29 overlays; fun, fun fun!

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Yep, all sorted now.

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Have just finished rebuilding my Octane 2 with a fresh instance of 6.5.0 with the 6.5.29 overlay set on a brand new 15krpm disk - it's all nice and lovely now.

I've also added a few bits and pieces from a just nekosync-ed nekoware repository... this included xscreensaver and rss-glx for thepretty .

Trying to start xscreensaver-command -prefs throws up a whole load of cairo / pango / gdkpixbuf errors in the console and the preference window shows square characters instead of text - clicking on the left preference pane (the one which would list the actual screensavers) causes the application to crash.

Any ideas? I don't have a dump of the error at the moment but will attempt to do so this evening.
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
I have a fully populated board of 8 x 256MB modules, probably not good in terms of heat and power - and also a couple of ECC errors keep cropping up in the system log for a couple of the modules.
I'd like to replace them with (ideally) 1GB modules instead. Anyone in the UK got some that they would be willing to sell for a reasonable price?

Also after a good condition (blue) front flap/door as mine was destroyed when the machine was delivered :(

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Ok, image of the font/image problem here:

Image

The actual output in the terminal is:

Code: Select all

[Sulfur]:~ $ xscreensaver-command -prefs
Error reading Pango modules file

(xscreensaver-demo:2813): Pango-WARNING **: No builtin or dynamically
loaded modules were found. Pango will not work correctly.
This probably means there was an error in the creation of:
'/usr/nekoware/etc/pango/pango.modules'
You should create this file by running pango-querymodules.

(xscreensaver-demo:2813): Pango-WARNING **: pango_shape called with bad font, expect ugly output

(xscreensaver-demo:2813): Pango-WARNING **: pango_font_get_glyph_extents called with bad font, expect ugly output

(xscreensaver-demo:2813): Pango-WARNING **: pango_font_get_metrics called with bad font, expect ugly output

(xscreensaver-demo:2813): Pango-WARNING **: pango_font_get_font_map called with bad font, expect ugly output

(xscreensaver-demo:2813): Pango-CRITICAL **: file pangocairo-fontmap.c: line 196: assertion `PANGO_IS_CAIRO_FONT_MAP (fontmap)' failed

(xscreensaver-demo:2813): Pango-WARNING **: _pango_cairo_font_install called with bad font, expect ugly output

(xscreensaver-demo:2813): Pango-CRITICAL **: file pangocairo-fontmap.c: line 196: assertion `PANGO_IS_CAIRO_FONT_MAP (fontmap)' failed

(xscreensaver-demo:2813): Pango-CRITICAL **: file pangocairo-fontmap.c: line 196: assertion `PANGO_IS_CAIRO_FONT_MAP (fontmap)' failed

.....
.....
.....


the file /usr/nekoware/etc/pango/pango.modules was indeed blank after the install in swmgr (and I had errors about missing gdkpixbuf modules), but I added a modules line to the file to point to where the pango .so modules are located... now no more gdkpixbuf errors and the xpm images show.

The final issue is that when you click on the left hand pane (which would normally show the list of available screensavers, the program terminates and spits out the following debug info in the terminal:

Code: Select all

(xscreensaver-demo:2813): Pango-CRITICAL **: file pangocairo-fontmap.c: line 196: assertion `PANGO_IS_CAIRO_FONT_MAP (fontmap)' failed
Error: Cairo does not yet support the requested image format:
Depth: 32
Alpha mask: 0x00000000
Red   mask: 0x000003ff
Green mask: 0x000ffc00
Blue  mask: 0x3ff00000
Please file an enhacement request (quoting the above) at:
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=cairo
Assertion failed: NOT_REACHED, file cairo-image-surface.c, line 155, pid 2813
Abort


Is this a known issue on VPro hardware? If not, then what have I broken and how do I fix it! :D
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Check out the sets of "The IT Crowd" in every single episode. A gamer/computer geeks dream.

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:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
I'm already in depth 24 unfortunately :(
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]
Tried later versions of cairo, fontconfig, freetype and gtk as in nekoware beta, no luck; got segfaults on launching xscreensaver and fc-cache.

Removed those versions and reinstalled the versions from nekoware current and I now have fonts showing in xscreensaver and the preference pane no longer crashes the program.

Bizarre, but it's working now!
:Indigo2IMP: [ R10k-195/MaxImpact +TRAMs/896Mb/73Gb-15krpm/G160/6.5.22 ]
:Octane2: [ Dual R12k-400/V8/2Gb/73Gb-15krpm/6.5.29 ]