The collected works of PymbleSoftware - Page 6

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... er_Updates

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recondas wrote:

PymbleSoftware wrote: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/L1_Controller_Updates

Thanks - though it would only be fair to give credit to Toby in the article, since it looks like quite a bit of work went into compiling that list of revisions/compatibilities.

in that topic in the wiki it was wrote: Nekochan forum topic about it

That links back here. If you want more direct attribution YOU edit the page. The wiki is a mess. I made over 1,000 edits over the last few days removing, resolving and redirecting about 1,000 red links, that is links in pages that go nowhere. It has gone from about 200 articles to over 400 and I don't have to be the only one doing this.

Make no mistake: I appreciate your efforts to distill things written on the board in a wiki. At the same time, upgrading an L1 is delicate business, and taking shortcuts makes this even riskier. Just read 'whiter's message about lost serial numbers when upgrading his O300; I think he needed help from SGI to get his system back online.

It is possible we now know more about serial numbers now:

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... Origin_300

No one is stopping you from updating the article.


R.

hilti wrote: newLISP, please! http://www.newlisp.org

It's an compact, fast and easy to use lisp-like scripting language.


Cheers
Hilti

I compiled this locally... and it seems to work fine. Since it was asked for in November 2009 and its now January 2011 and the requester has 3 posts, I suspect that it is no longer wanted..?
If it is still wanted I will go through and clean it up and package it, unless someone wants to help me with that.

Teams
I have about 5 or 6 things I have built that other people want(ed) and never got around to packaging...
I think it would be cool if people who can package and test put their hand up and volunteer to package stuff.
There was a forth package that I ported and "Debug" (Harry) packaged and made its way into nekoware.
Porting is not that hard for me but I don't have the time or inclination to get around to packaging.. once it works for me I am usually happy enough with it...
If we form informal teams with someone packaging/project managing and whatever else and someone coding/porting we could make more progress..

wiki
There is a packaging page at:
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... g_Software

I had to write a couple of small standard library wrapper functions to get newlisp to compile which I should write about in the wiki topic (look for TODO)...

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/MIPS_Pro


R.

pm sent.

R.

I suspect that the VAXen(*) would be far too expensive to ship to Australia, so I sent VAXMAN an email about them but I think he probably has enough of them already.

R.

* Plural form especially for Sykwriter

ozpass wrote:

PymbleSoftware wrote: I suspect that the VAXen(*) would be far too expensive to ship to Australia, so I sent VAXMAN an email about them but I think he probably has enough of them already.

R.

* Plural form especially for Sykwriter

Yeah, the 3100's are very common amongst collectors, but much rarer on the "open market" (i.e. eBay) for anyone seeking to start a collection.

I like them - a proper VAX with very little power consumption (about 85W) - they're the only boxen I run VMS on for this very reason.

I used to have VAXstations 2000s running Ultrix, and I've some Alphas capable of running OpenVMS but I've got a remote login onto a large VAX I can access anytime and I'm not paying for any power and it has all the compilers and stuff on it already and I do not have to worry about maintenance.

I'd like a VAX again but I don't have the floor space, shipping would be killer and don't have the time to play with the machines I have.

VAXMAN said a friend of his in France might be interested.

R.

iffy50 wrote: Hiya,

I managed to grab me an Octane (175Mhz / SI / 512Mb) for the kings ransom of €1! Sold as fully working, but I haven't been able to test this for the reasons below. I wonder if I could ask a few questions to hopefully get me up and running....

1) All of my screens are Apple (DVI-D only) connectors. Is it possible to get a 13w3 to connect to these, or am I going to need another screen with a VGA connector?

Not only that but a Sync on Green monitor.

iffy50 wrote: 2) When I boot the machine connected to the network, I can't see it (I have it's currently configured IP address, but it's not responding there). I'm guessing that it's not booting due to the lack of an active monitor connection (and the red LED lightbar would suggest this as well). Is the diagnosis that it's waiting for a monitor connection likely to be the case here?

It should provide output on the console serial port if not running with monitor keyboard and mouse.
Pull the keyboard, mouse and check the serial port. 9600,8,n,1.

iffy50 wrote: 3) I got out a PC null modem connection and attached it to an old Debian laptop and serial 1 on the octane. I set up minicom for 9600 8N1 and booted the machine and I can't see anything from it. I tried again with 38400 as some pages say that this works for Octanes. Nothing there either. I've tried Serial 2. Nothing. I opened up the cable and got a pin out from this site. A bit of re-soldering and still nothing. Is there anything else that I can try to get a serial connection? What else could I be doing wrong here?

Its not 38400, that is newer machines like fuels, tezros, o3(x)0, etc... it is 9600, 8n1, by default.

iffy50 wrote: 4) Finally, somewhere in the 'hardware archive (i.e. the pile of old computer junk that I get nagged about) I have an old 13w3 to VGA connector that I used to use for Sun machines. Will this work with an SGI, as I've found info saying that Sun 13w3 and SGI 13w3 is different?

Any help that anyone could give me would be most appreciated. It's pretty frustrating having is sitting there blowing out hot air and not being able to find any way of talking to it!

Cheers,
Ian

Sun 13w3 is different..
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/13W3
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/13w3_to_VGA

I have had cables that work on both but that was an rare exception not the rule.

General stuff in the wiki..
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/Serial_Access
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/Headless



R.

iffy50 wrote: Hi R,

Thanks for the info (and your quick reply)!

So if I understand you correctly, then I should have been able to get a console connection already based on what I've tried. That leaves a couple of things (3 actually!) that could be wrong:

1) The console cable itself: The cable that I've made up is following the pin-outs given on http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... figuration

I bought the cable yesterday as a new 'null modem' cable and had no luck with it as it was. Then I opened it up and made some small changes to make sure that it exactly followed this pin out. From the pin out, these shouldn't have mattered, but I thought that I'd make sure it was right. Neither worked. Would you expect a normal null modem cable to work between a pc and an SGI?

2) The PC either has a bad serial port or there's something wrong with the software. I'll bring home another laptop from work tomorrow to see if I can eliminate this one.

3) The Octane's got some more serious problems.

On the monitor side of things, I haven't researched this sync on green thing yet, but is this something that you can get in commercially available screens these days, or am I looking for an old SGI type of screen?

Thanks again,
Ian

1. I would absolutely expect a normal standard cable to work. I have a few cables and they have always worked.

2. I suspect this is unlikely but ruling it out is a good idea.

3. If you bought it for a $1 or UKP or whatever I suspect this is more likely to be the case, but never fear there are a lot of guys here with really solid knowledge that will be able to help you. Pull it a part and clean it out...
Make sure everything sits properly. Do not touch the compression connectors. Keep asking questions and providing evidence of what state the machine is in.. You'll get there.

iffy50 wrote: One final thought before I admit defeat for the night, does anyone know if using a null modem cable with a USB to serial type of connection (on a Mac) will work? This may simplify things a bit for me for connecting to the existing hardware that I've got, but I can't quite get my head around how the pin mappings would work for that.

Cheers,
Ian

I have never tried although I sell 3 types of these USB to serial adapters. I plugged one into a Mac and it identified it as a serial port in "about this Mac" but I've never found the time to investigate beyond that. Too much time playing in Smoke 2008 sp6 or playing on a quite large VAX in Germany.

R.

Geoman wrote: Congrats! And thanks for sharing it!
Perhaps we should create some kind of vfc-Database inside nekochan-Wiki..

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/Vfc-Database

Go nuts on it...


R.

The above link is broken as geocities has been taken down and these are the icon files I found on my NAS.
And I a can not attach the file to the wiki.

R.

kshuff wrote: Guess I could do something constructive and try my hand at packaging also.

This has to be the easiest thing to do for nekoware, here is a "teaching someone to fish not giving them a fish" scenario..

Download C-Kermit ("unix complete" archive) from http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ck80.html#source

unpack it as your preferred method.

make sure you have neko_make tardist installed and MIPS Pro.

Open a Winterm change to the directory and type:


It will create an executable called wermit, set this up in the nekoware packaging as /usr/nekoware/bin/kermit

Read and follow the instructions for packaging software in the wiki: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... g_Software

Test the package....

Submit the package to incoming and wait for someone to test it.

Anything you are not sure of, ask for help in #devel on iric.nekochan.net or post questions on the forums.


R.

Disclaimer: I sell AmigaOS 4, and Sam440 boards as a registered ACube distributor for Australia.
The fasterest I sell at the moment is 733MHz PowerPC and Quake III is just barely playable.
I did sell one to a huge defence contractor and they are using it on a Navy project running Linux on it.

The O/S had some fun points like you could extend apps by adding extensions to the intuition layer.
Mostly it is mystique and its not the same ol' WinTel...

It was fun and had a games demo-scene hackerfest culture around it and it is not entirely lame yet.
Some aspects of coding for it is fun but mostly its just sooo not work related.


R.

SLS distribution of Linux was 50 floppies, if i recall... and I never recall SLS for 68k.

R.

I think that is not in keeping with the spirit or intent of the agreement, in any case, nekoware is not a comercial operation and there is an email address for someone to resolve any ambiguity about the terms of the agreement/rights/etc..

I've built 23 out of 27 of the simh simulators, pretty much a no brainer to build even with MIPS Pro, someone else can go looking for legal clauses or whatever and finish it off, I suddenly can't be bothered.

R.

ratfink wrote: In their early day, the cool thing was the hardware. With the Amiga custom chipset, they had impressive graphics. They had the ability to genlock to an external video source from day one (even the Amiga 1000 had an available genlock device that would over lay computer graphics on live video. Newtek used that and the new "video" slot on the a2000 to create the toaster, and bring video editing and 3d to budget users.

... and they ware still around with LightWave on the PC.

ratfink wrote: Unfortunately the performance of the hardware was eclipsed pretty quickly, and what was left was an OS that had preemptive multitasking from day one, and was very extensible, and very light weight (no memory protection.). Once you got to OS3.1 it was pretty nice, and the user/developer community was very self sufficient, which was pretty cool--Commodore went belly-up in the early 90's (I'm remembering 1992, but I could be off) but you can still get new Amiga stuff--someone recently implemented the entire amiga chipsets in FPGA, and built a 2" square a500 compatible device.

Early to mid 1990s I think it died and was resuscitated a few times so the pedantic can argue about calilng time of death of the company.

The FPGA is called a minimig and I sell those too.

ratfink wrote: Mostly, these days, the only people that will find the new Amiga stuff interesting is ex-amiga cultists like me.

When I have held stalls at computer fairs all the old cultists come out of the woodwork to tell me about how cool the 500 was back in the day.

R.

jan-jaap wrote:

PymbleSoftware wrote: Submit the package to incoming

Better not: Redistribution of kermit binaries is not allowed .

Code: Select all

Conditions for REDISTRIBUTION are as follows:

(A) The C-Kermit software, in source and/or binary form, may be
included WITHOUT EXPLICIT LICENSE in distributions of OPERATING
SYSTEMS that have OSI (Open Source Initiative, www.opensource.org)
approved licenses, [...]

(B) Inclusion of C-Kermit software in whole or in part, in any form, in
or with any product not covered by Clause (A), or its distribution
by any commercial enterprise to its actual or potential customers
or clients except as in Clause (A), requires a license from the
Kermit Project, Columbia University; contact [email protected].


Otherwise probably a good exercise.

Sending an email to the address in your post returned...

in an email someone wrote: from Frank da Cruz <fdc (at) columbia.edu>
to XXXXXXXXXXX <[email protected]>
date Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 2:50 AM
subject Re: Debate about kermit license on forum.
mailed-by columbia.edu
hide details 2:50 AM (5 hours ago)
> There is a debate about the license at:
> viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4348&start=630
>
A pretty mild debate compared to some I've seen!

I never heard of Nikoware before but if they're not selling
it, they're perfectly welcome to include C-Kermit. Furthermore
I'd encourage them to check the latest version:

http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ck90.html

since I haven't had access to IRIX for quite some time. And
if any changes are needed, to send them back to me so I can
incorporate them in the new release.

- Frank

I take that as approval for non-commercial binary distribution and request to feedback changes.

R.

josehill wrote:

fu wrote: to be honest editing the wiki ain't easier than editing a phpbb thread. to me at least). i think it'll look better on the wiki though.

It's true that learning/relearning how to edit wikis can be a bit of a barrier, particularly for "one-time" or casual users. It's not difficult, but it is a little arcane. That's why I think it should be okay to put candidate items for wiki inclusion here on the thread. I'd rather have the information shared somewhere so that it can be incorporated later, rather than not having it shared at all because someone didn't want to sign up for a wiki account and learn a little wiki syntax just to add a one line item.

I'm happy to pitch in with the converting/editing. I'd like to hear a little more feedback about organizing the content (single page vs multiple pages within a wiki category) before spending time on it, though.

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... ochan_Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_edit

If you get stuck, you can also ask someone who has worked on the wiki to post something for you.
There are about 20 people active:
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... ctiveUsers

The O2 page links back here anyway: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... er_Reading

R.

josehill wrote: Next comes organization.

Yes, please . I personally have no real personal bias to how it is structured so long as it is structured. Always put a [[Category:____]] at the bottom of a topic if you create a topic... I spent two weeks several hours each day structuring the wiki by putting everything into categories. And topics can belong to multiple categories.

How exactly it is structured I consider a matter for personal taste. Josehill's suggested layout is as good as any I would come up with.

I also spent a couple of weeks removing most of the "red links" (links to topics that don't exist) by resolving them to existing topics, creating empty topics, putting in redirects or removing them from the page. I got this from well over 1000 to about 100.

In general, please keep it structured and don't make make a mess. Probably add "play nice" when editing a page someone else has worked on. Anything else goes. But mostly keep it structured.

josehill wrote: What do you guys think? (Regan, since you, along with SMJ and a couple of others are the local wiki gurus, please do chime in!)

These are just my $0.02...

Dave wrote: Having said that, the formal presentation style of the wiki doesn't readily foster the level of social interaction that's found in the laid-back atmosphere of the forums - which might partially explain why the wiki has been slower to gain acceptance with some of the regulars.

You can "discuss" a page... go to the "discussion" tab
Here is a not so good example of a discuss on our wiki.. Click the page tab to view the actual page.
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... arget_mode
Keep it civil in the discussion tab.

You know what I think a successful topic is...? I started a page on something I didn't know a lot about, I started it with some headings about things I wanted to know but otherwise blank, someone else came along and took a couple of bits out of wikipedia, Linux/MIPS wiki, techpubs and elsewhere mashed them up into something entirely new and added a lot of their own personal experience, into something indistinguishable from where it started.. I still go back to that and the links to external sites as a starting point into something I am still learning about. I wrote nothing but a couple of headings and gained a lot. Another page I started someone came through and converted data to a table... which was a big improvement on readability...

One point to make from the previous paragraph, don't worry about wiki syntax, and take no offense if someone messes with your topics reformatting and correcting spelling, it is usually evolves and improves over time.. It doesn't have to be finished, others can help with the polishing. If it becomes uncivil then pages can be locked, if not by the wiki admin then by the site owner and nekonoko is usually fair and reasonable arbitrator. Changes and spam can be rolled back and forgive my edits.. I reserve the right to put anything I find uncategorized into a category or remove or resolve broken links. Spelling and grammar is something I rarely have an issue with.

GeneratriX wrote: I think ideally, any kind of well stablished and highly mature forum as Nekochan is, should include some kind of bots army running in background to condensate/summarize the permanent and/or stable contents into some Wiki variant.

People are best at this.


R.

fu wrote: being able to type/edit/preview would rock, as i won't have to worry about braking anything that's already there

Don't worry too much about that... You can not really break anything too much.. You can click edit an article (edit tab once logged in) changes can be reverted and there is a "preview" button right next to the submit button.. You can edit text, hit prview, edit, preview as many times as you like and then hit cancel or submit when you are done.

90% of my wiki editing is plain old changing text, on the very very rare occasions I add a table or something then I look for another page in the wiki that already has something similar and copy the wiki code to a text editor locally and then use that as a reference, fiddle with it for a bit then hit preview. Adding images, look for a page with an image in the style that you want, paste the wiki code into a new topic and change the file name. That will give you a red-link, open the red link in a new window or new tab and that will give you an option to upload a file. Once that is done, hit preview on the topic once more and the image should appear. A bit more fiddling and previews and it should be good to submit.

If you want to do something that has not appeared on the wiki before and involves templates or something advanced then ask someone for help. I find it no more difficult than phpBB code most of the time.

There are several ways to create a new page, create a link within another page..
eg:

Save the change, click the red link, and it will say something like topic not found want to create it.

The other is to go to a topic remove the topic name in the URL in the browser and replace it with a new topic.
eg:
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/13W3

delete the 13W3

type newtopic at the end of the index.php/
for it to become:
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/newtopic

and it will say not found, want to create it....?

I hit preview about a dozen times writing this post and didn't need an external editor


... and also with the formatting, I started pages with really really plain text and someone came along after and fixed the formatting for me. You can't really break it and don't worry too much about wikicode and formatting.

R.

fu wrote: (i think) i just created the relevant category O2 Compatible Hardware . i'll start working on articles (drives, monitors, etc) later

Indeed you have. I marked your changes as "patrolled" which means that they will not be rolled back without at least a warning.

fu wrote: something else i just noticed (dave is right: wiki looks serious, threads are funky):

... and can get more serious over time... Something to look back on what you have cleaned up and edited with pride.. At least in my opinion.

fu wrote: the aggregators include non sgi-made, community-contributed pieces of hardware (some require hacks, other are kinda sorta working). O2 Compatible Hardware sounds more formal (and may also include sgi-made hardware?)

we might want to think about that and tag each piece of hardware with some sort of disclaimer (dear user, please don't search for official drivers but take a look @ this hack) or select only the ones that work 100% hack-free

magellan, your idea sounds sleek, i guess with decent content ready, it'll take just some good (hyper)linking à la wiki.

I think that works... I think nothing of moving stuff between machines.. The DAT drive on my Origin 300s came with an Origin 200 bracket. I move U160/U320 SCA hard drives between machines without hesitation. And you can include parts of articles inside other articles and go nuts with the linking, if you so choose.


R.

jsloan wrote: I just purchased:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0508982645

and the seller has the specs as dual-v12-DCD, including the special card carrier that is required for that.

Can anyone look at the rear-facing pic he has there and confirm that for me ? I've never seen that config in real life...

I see two DVI ports at the top of the V12 and two at the bottom, this should confirm the specification.

$1550 is a fair chunk of change to drop on something like that...but then I should look at what I've spent...

Enjoy it.

R.

Dr Wife doesn't like me in the kitchen to start with, between this and the the dishwasher trick I may never be allowed back in..



R.

magellan wrote: Brilliant Recondas,

I suggest we had this to the wiki with due credits as soon as the hardware aggregators pages are in place.

Thanks.

I only have a DDS-2 and a 21Gb S-VHS Tape back up .. So not speaking from experience but I am consolidating what I read:
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/LTO

R.

I'd like the front fascia of the CPU module if it ends up getting dumpstered.

I also have a graphic module that I don't need and a graphics module front plate fascia.

R.

smj wrote: When somebody has shipped viable machines running Red Flag Linux (or whatever) outside of China, maybe people will start paying attention.

I've seen brand new laptops with RedFlag Linux (x86) pre-installed in Malaysia. The sales clerk then said "of course you'll want Vista.." before I walked away, it probably would not have fit where I was about to stick that laptop and Vista and he sure as hell wouldn't have appreciated it.

kshuff wrote:

chancehooper wrote: I wonder how much it would take to port IRIX to that architecture?

Nobody left at SGI that knows anything about IRIX anymore

Not only that, but they act like they hate MIPS and IRIX.... Or at least the local (Australian) office seems find it an offensive topic to bring up.

SAQ wrote: To bad Hamei's gone - it would be nice to see the inside scoop. I don't think he was ever able to track down one of the Godson things, was he?

Hamei did come back briefly under a different name, made a few posts, and was run off again..

SAQ wrote: SGI was the major former MIPS maker. The association would be natural.

Not only that but they owned MIPS for a time. The modern era SGI is a completely different animal, with as much in common with the old SGI as say Disney, Mattel or Dairy Queen.

R.

I suspect there was far more many single CPU SGIs made which made their way into hobbyists hands.
Anyone have quantities of production runs?

Edit: Sorry for mucking this up and reseting the votes by adding another option.

R.

The local fleabay and other auction sites often have Indys and O2s, very rarely anything more interesting or with more CPUs, therefore there seems to be liquidity in the low end market which means high-end stuff is more successfully hoarded or they simply made and sold a lot more of the lower end machines. For every Tezro or o300 that turns up there seems to be at least 5 to 6 Indys, maybe that is my bias.

R.

Meh.

R.

The wiki blasts through 500 articles recently. Hurrah. \o/
Thanks to all those contributors.


R.

SAQ wrote: Here's a good one on RealityEngine:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/do ... 1&type=pdf

I've got a good one on the design decisions behind the Origin3000, but I'll need to drag out the reference.

I downloaded the PDF and tried to upload it to the wiki but PDF is not an accepted file type (unless nekonoko wants to allow PDF) so I added a link to the Reality Engine page in the wiki:

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/Reality_Engine

I might put the others in the see also sections in other parts of the wiki as well... or someone else could do it.

R.

nekonoko wrote:

PymbleSoftware wrote: I downloaded the PDF and tried to upload it to the wiki but PDF is not an accepted file type (unless nekonoko wants to allow PDF) so I added a link to the Reality Engine page in the wik

Looks like that is straightened out now - PDFs and other popular document types can now be uploaded to the wiki.

Thanks for all your endeavours.

R.

vishnu wrote:

Hamei did come back briefly under a different name, made a few posts, and was run off again..

So you're saying bluebird on a branch was Hamei? I had no idea...

Walks like Hamei, talks like Hamei, does the west-coast-hippie burning-man chants in a repressed regime like Hamei... No, I really don't have any evidence other than the lyrics to that song in b-o-b's posts... the kinda thing only he would wax lyrical.... If you really knew Hamei, you'd recognize his style.

R.

I think, I am oer Stallman and his ideas too.

Still I wish there was any choice other than WIntel or MacTel(?).


R.

SAQ wrote: Surprised it took this long to make the forums.

I had thought about posting it within two hours of it happening.. The Australian government sponsored national TV network immediately dropped all regular programming and went to a direct feed of NHK/English..

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/12_01.html?play
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/

From the coverage within an hour of the quake I knew two Australian members of parlement on a junket were stuck on a bullet train.

385 dead was the last report I saw.

They ware worried about nuclear power plants now
http://www.news.com.au/world/magnitude- ... 6019903430


R.

Geoman wrote: f***!! it is exploded

Apparently they don't use heavy water reactors , so it is not as bad as a Chernobyl type event... Still pretty worrying. But then just going on what I am reading about it...


R.

nekonoko wrote:

duck wrote: So does the front bezel really double as a viable cupholder?

No, it isn't very strong plastic - if you put anything weighty on it you'd likely break the hinges

I think that was jealousy or tongue in cheek.

What is worse is typing eject in a winterm and looking over a seeing the front panel still closed. I know why Tezros often have bad DVD drives.

I'd love another Tezro as a non Smoke/Flame Tezro or a MacPro as a nice Shake machine.

R.