The collected works of Pontus - Page 7

I replaced my broken Fuel PSU with an ATX PSU. It works fine, except the fan. The L1 environmental controller needs to get a "correct" tachometer reading from the fan. My replacement PSU didn't produce the proper signal (I don't remember the exact details)

What I did was to take the original PSU fan and strap it on the outside of the box, just running power and tachometer cables to it. So it doesn't actually cool the computer, but it keeps L1 happy. (The new ATX PSU of course has a fan to keep things cool).

I did try with a Noctua fan, but L1 didn't get any reading from that.

I would like to find a nice 12cm fan that fits the PSU and produces a signal that satisfies L1. When time comes I'll try a fan from Scythe.

I'm certain that it'll be fine without environment monitoring. I just want the satisfaction of fixing something broken.

ivelegacy wrote: umm, I do not know the B&B Solutions guys
they did a mistake in the G130 auction: they wrote "for indigo2", but it's "for indy"

It's not for an Indy. Look at the image on the package. Compare with Ian's picture:


And here, inside an Indigo2: http://weaponsgradecode.com/2011/05/30/ ... i-indigo2/

The Indy version was G130, just as in the other auction.

DOH! You are right

Lets see, the MSC is the small thingamajiggy that goes in the front of the CPU modules. Do you mean MMSC ?

It might be a good thing to have a spare Front Panel Display but I'm all out of cash

Is the PROM environment variable "console" set to "d" ? try setting it to "g":



Under IRIX you can use the "nvram" tool:

I think it might be right up hamei's alley, unfiltered smut and gore... well to some extent at least.

Hi

I have recently aquired a Crimson VGX and a PowerSeries 4D/310 GTX.

Before I go and break something by just flipping the switch. Is there anything I should look out for?

I seem to recall that PSU:s tend to fail on these machines, perhaps a preventive recap is in order?

Edit: ooh, I get to update my sig now

Thank you jan-jaap. Excellent information as always. Is the color of the PSU visible from the back? In that case I think both machines have the silver Power One PSU, but I'll double check.

Are the board or board connectors themselves fragile. I've broken boards in other computers simply by loosening them (both retainer clips and components). I'll be careful of course, but it never hurts to ask.

@foetz: I've been looking for a crimson on and off for about eight years, then these two come from different directions within a month Sometimes you are lucky. By coincidence they come from the same university, though not the same department.

This PowerSeries is a 310, which makes it a single processor IP7 system (according to sgistuff.net). Your 440 is a quad processor IP15. The Crimson is a one processor IP15. Can the Crimson backplane handle one or more IP7 or IP15, to make it multiprocessor?

Oh, here are pictures:

Doh, I meant to write IP17. Hypothetically, could the IP17 be pulled and replaced with an IP15 ? In other words, is the backplane the same?

To the left of the Crimson is a MicroVAX II and to the right is a MicroPDP 11/73. They are unrelated to the Crimson. (I have all the plastics for them, just not mounted)

Both the Crimson and 4D is complete, some scratches and stains but nothing major.

I've been looking for documentation, the techpubs goes back to Challenge and Onyx but nothing for the PowerSeries or Crimson unfortunately. There is some information in the hardware developer handbook which is nice. But aside from looking for actual dead tree media is there any other source, like the IRIX CDs ?

I tackled the 4D tonight. I pulled out the boards and left them halfway out in the card cage. The machine is very clean inside, I only found and removed a little dust in the front air intake.

I plugged it in and I hear a fan go on, I suppose it's a 220V fan for the power supply? Flipped the switch on the front: nothing!

*sigh* ... but I didn't give up and figured it might need a bit of load to start up. I inserted the IO2, IP7 and Memory board and tried again. Nothing! blast.. thinking of giving up and start with the Crimson.

I noticed that when I pulled the plug there was a blink on the two LEDs above the power switch. So gut feeling told me to hold the reset button and after a few seconds the machine lit up!! Indicator leds on IP7 and IO2 blinked in a sensible pattern and all fans in the card cage spun up and coughed up a bit of old dust in my face. The second time I powered it up I had to do the same (hold the reset button) but now it seems to start every time I power cycle it.

Then I tried for an hour or so to hook up a serial connection. But neither my laptop with USB to Serial dongle or my trusty VT220 got anything, not even garbage :/ Not sure what to do next, perhaps the check the SGI serial port pinout or give up on serial and put the graphics back in.

Any suggestions on how to get to the serial console? Is it the port labled 1A or one of the other that is the console?

jan-jaap wrote: bla bla ESD precautions bla bla. You know the drill.

I even wore a wrist strap!

I haven't search my drawers for serial cables and adapters just yet.

But I read on sgistuff and noticed the backplane layout. Slot 1-5 is VME, 6-7 is CPU and 8 is MEM. My system has memory in slot 7. Which is correct?

I sincerely hope that this hasn't destroyed anything :/

Welcome back. Have your inventory grown or shrunk during your "sleep"?

I had just connected another adapter between my vt220 terminal and the 4D. It might have been connected for a minute at the most.

The area close to the fuse is squeky clean. No blown caps, charred IC or burnt PCB. No smell or smoke when i happened.

I'm at the limits of my electronics knowledge so I'm not going to take any chances or connect anything before getting some more help. I'll see if I can get som help locally.

I think that a goto with the address of a label/symbol as "argument" is specific to gcc though.

I only know that it is a GCC specific thing because I once used it to optimize a virtual machine for an interpreted language.

Instead of using a big switch/case statement we modified the byte code to contain the address of the label interpreting a given instruction and used goto to jump directly there. It increased memory usage and I can't recall how much extra performance it gave, not much.

I looked at the pinout of the combination of serial adapters that I used. The chain was IRIS 4D <-> D-sub 9 gender changer <-> D sub 9 to MMJ adapter <-> MMJ DECconnect cable <-> MMJ adapter to D sub 25 <-> D-sub 25 gender changer <-> VT220.

The pin connections are as follows: (left is the computer, right is the terminal)

• TD 2 <-> 3 RD
• RD 3 <-> 2 TD
• CTS 5 <-> 6 DSR, 8 CARRIER DETECT
• NC/GND 6 <-> 20 Data Terminal Ready
• GND 7 <-> 7 GND

I looked at the PCB where the serial port is connected and saw that pin 6 which is not used in the SGI pinout is connect to ground while the VT220 gives about 5 Volts out (I just measured).

I'm thinking/hoping/wishing that this could have caused the fuse to blow somehow, but I suspect that only shows my limited knowledge :/

Hi knezzen

Nice to see you here as well Love your avatar.

Knezzen wrote: Thanks man! Can you see who it is in the avatar?

Of course, it's that Runar guy

Good bye Hamei! It was fun.

We were just talking multiprocessor PDP-10 computers in the cctalk mailing list. One system that got mentioned was a 5 (!) processor PDP-10 (unknown model) that ran at Oak Ridge. Do you recall such a system?

In a micro you can loose a screw. In a mini you can loose a screwdriver. In a real computer you can loose a service engineer.

I brought out my Indigo yesterday which I previously swapped the battery on. Aaand the "new" battery was dead. I had of course used the more expensive "proper" part for the job... quite a bit of wasted cash since I haven't used the machine much. Today I'm buying a CR2032 holder and battery

Luckily I didn't solder the new battery in place.

Thanks jan-jaap for info and detailed photos.

Hi

I don't have much to add, but... I brought my old Indigo back to life today with a new TOD battery (I've replaced it before with a Tadiran cell, which also ran out and now I have a CR2032 in there).

Anyway. I have several sleds and drives and while trying to find a bootable system I started the machine without disk and got the same symptoms. I do recall starting the machine diskless before without problems. A terminator on the external port doesn’t make a difference.

Here is the full error message for future reference:


I've copied it by hand since I don't have a serial connection handy.

Ok, now I have something to add.

I tried moving memory arround to no avail. I have a space CPU board with a bad TOD clock battery so I swapped CPU modules, no change.

Then it dawned on me, I have a funky little SCSI floppy drive in the top slot which I put in the machine some time ago but never tested.. Removing the floppy drive "cured" the problem. The only conclusion I can draw is that, at least in my case, there is something funny going on with the SCSI bus when the floppy drive is alone in the SCSI-chain. I'm looking at the hinv now and both the drive and floppy is identified.

Last weekend I spend a few hours with my friend Mattis and with his help (well... I mostly watched and posed tons of questions) we could conclude that at least two components are not operating properly. The power MOSFET "BUK456-1000B" and the switching controller "UC3844N".

I've ordered replacement parts and I hope to get them before Christmas. OH CRUD!! I forgot to add the fuse to the order... where is the facepalm smiley when you need it :/

Anyway debugging wasn't all that difficult, mostly thanks to Mattis experience and Jan-Jaaps invaluable help but also thanks the the modular nature of the PSU. It was just a few screws to get the backplane out and we could apply a small voltage to drive the circuit on the bench and watch the switching wave form on an oscilloscope or rather the lack of a waveform since the circuit didn't work.

Here is Mattis in action:

Thanks everyone that has chipped in on this thread. I have not abandoned it. Real life came crashing down on me though.. so...

But I have replaced the MOSFET and controller and the backplane is seemingly behaving on the bench now. I've decided to replace the caps on the backplane as well as the machine behaved a bit weird with respect to the front panel power button before the fuse blew. I might as well.

I will try the Crimson before that though. I hope it works a little better since I want to display it on a local computer expo in a week.

If we are straying outside SGI territory, then this is quite cringy to:

Hi

I'm trying to install 6.5.22 from scratch on my trusty old Indigo (it has been running 5.3). And I'm following Ian's guide: http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/6.5inst.html

I'm using the following CDs that I read in before typing "go"

IRIX 6.5.22 Overlays [1 of 3] November 2003 <-- I'm booting the install from this one
IRIX 6.5 Foundation 1
IRIX 6.5 Foundation 2
IRIX 6.5 Applications November 2003
IRIX 6.5.22 Overlays [2 of 3] November 2003
IRIX 6.5.22 Overlays [3 of 3] November 2003

I get conflicts with inventor_dev.sw.base, it requires some development library. And I get a conflict with java plugin for mozilla.

Not sure what the best way to resolve the conflicts are or which CDs I need for the requirements of those packages.

What am I doing "wrong"?


If it helps. I chose to install a feature stream.

I'm now trying to follow this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsfDH3yM6nw

which suggest:

keep java2_plugin.sw32.mozilla_freeware
keep inventor_dev.sw.base
keep inventor_dev.sw.lib

But have a sneaking suspicion that I'm just ducking for future problems.

Thank you. I gave up last night. For some reason, fx decided 50MB was enough for /root Easy to fix but I went to bed instead.

From what I've read here and in other sources, "conflicts 1a 2a" is the way to go and fix any issues later.

One question remains though, which Applications CD(s) to use?

Most seem to suggest that you use the "Applications CD" that matches the version you install, in my case "November 2003". But the demos are on the original "June 1998". Can I read in both? And should I read in "Supplementary Applications" ?

The Expo went great!

The Crimson gave me scare when it decided to turn itself off after 30 minutes. I decided to play wild west and restarted it and it ran fine for the rest of the show, about 7 hours or so. It was great fun and I got quite a lot of interest.



I will not turn it on again until I've recapped the PSU.

There is also a video, in Swedish, with me talking about it, at 10 minutes 20 seconds in, I get to talk for about 7 minutes.

Thank you

GanjaTron wrote: Great to see it got the attention it deserved; too bad the PSU decided to cave just then, infact the very instant the guy touches it!
The disk is in the external enclosure, right? Nice combo with the Indigo, btw. Congrats!

Yes, The original full height drive is saved for later

Would you consider shipping rack parts? I'm missing a side for instance.

I'll investigate. The length is a problem, even though it's light and flat it might be to bulky for many freight companies.

No chance of a ferry vacation to stockholm any time soon?

Where in southern Finland do you live? If I'm lucky I can enlist the help of some friends.

mmk wrote: I'm in Vantaa so basically the capital area. Not going to Sweden anytime soon, sorry

Which parts exactly are you after? I've got all the skins etc except for the cable runner behind which the router cards are -- someone threw that away in some previous move of the box.

One side, it's a plastic inset between the front and rear rackpost. You just bend it slightly and it comes right out. If I get one I might also get the other since my friend is lacking a side for his rack as well.

I would like a front panel for a CPU module in the purple Onyx2 colour, with matching cable cover. Since I only have a the blue Origin2k coloured one.

Finally, the aluminium cover door is pretty scratched up on mine so it would be nice to have. But that would increase the size of the already big package.

Sorry for not getting back sooner, I've been quite busy. Are you in a hurry to get rid of it?

It seems that http://techpubs.sgi.com is no more, or at least are moving to a new platform. If I type that URL in, I get redirected to: https://support1-sgi.custhelp.com/ with no obvious sign of the legacy manuals.

Luckily archive seems to have a rather complete mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20160207095657/http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi-bin/init.cgi

Are there any other mirrors?

How bad is the chassi/skins?

I recognize myself quite a lot in his experience. I have fairly good story when I salvaged an 11/750, an Eclipse and a PDP-11/34 from a house with a collapsed floor