The collected works of SAQ - Page 19

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of Mac Pro 2013 at June 12, 2013, 4:39 p.m...

R-ten-K wrote:

In any case, if any of you can find another product which can pack as much generally programmable computational density in the same volume, I'd be very interested in reading about it.

Yeah, it's a nice small case, but by the time you plug in expansion units for I/O, external drives, etc. you loose a lot of the small factor and you have cable spaghetti across your desk and power strip minefields underneath. For a rackmount machine you often have to plug together different units, but at least it goes in a case to keep it all neat.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of Origin is sick at June 23, 2013, 11:07 a.m...

My suspicion is that the downrev router is in fact a "won't work" configuration with your boards. Perhaps try pulling that router and seeing if you can get the two nodes connected to the other router up reliably. Rotate your other IP31s through those Nx slots to see if they work.

Is it only one router or are both downrev?

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5631 notes

Wrote on the subject of can anyone identify this part at June 24, 2013, 8:47 a.m...

me4twb wrote:

That seems to be it, I just had to pull the fan assembly and there is the slot for it, along with a whole lot of massive dust clumps all over the place.

I'm going to try and vacuum this thing out before re-assembling it.

Thanks Recondas, RobesPierre

The recommendation is not to vacuum computers because the vacuum hose can develop a very strong static charge. If you have access to a compressor that's good, otherwise lung power can get many of the dustbeasties out.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of VMS End of life at July 2, 2013, 4:21 p.m...

Kira wrote:

Basically, the message here is not "oh noes, HP murders its acquisitions in favor of inhouse stuffs!!!!" but rather, "everything HP touches turns to shit."

Only in the post-1996ish world of HP. They used to be really good.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of What the heck is this and how do I get it to work? at July 3, 2013, 2:52 p.m...

katzmandu wrote:

OK, a few notes.

First, the power connector is a 330B6W which is not the same as an IP44. D'oh! I ordered an IP44 off of e-bay and it didn't fit.

Secondly, I went to hardwire it; I figure for testing it shouldn't be too bad. I hooked a 120V feed to the X & Y poles and my neutral/ground to the ground pole. I threw the breaker on the front and nadda.

Then I noticed on the front there are 3 power supplies. Well, slots for 3 power supplies, but I only have two. Will this Onyx-ish rack run with only two? Given I have no drives in the disk trays, and the 2nd VME cage disconnected, It shouldn't draw too much power while I run 'hinv -t' from the PROM (that's my goal for today.) Any ideas?

Good news - 2 PSUs=1-phase. All racks have the extra slot for the third PSU to go 3-phase if you wanted. The only config to come standard with 3-phase PSUs was the 3-card-cage model.

No idea if you can run the 3rd card cage on single-phase.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5631 notes

Wrote on the subject of Operating System Options for Altix/Prism Systems at July 11, 2013, 7:50 p.m...

bluecode wrote:

Will OpenVMS run on those?

Highly unlikely. Core logic is different (NUMAflex vs whatever HP uses) as is I/O.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5631 notes

Wrote on the subject of Operating System Options for Altix/Prism Systems at July 12, 2013, 3:56 p.m...

bluecode wrote:

ClassicHasClass wrote:

Yes, my understanding is that the Altixes (Alticies?) only run the big L, though I wouldn't be surprised if there were a NetBSD port brewing somewhere. (The prerequisite for that is getting the ia64 port working and I understand that is still very experimental.)

Thanks. That's sounds like a colossal waste of time and money for whoever dreamed that one up. Is there any way they could make Itanic even less useful than it apparently already is? The mind boggles.

Altix took the Origin's huge capacity for processors in a SSI and implemented it in Itanium because SGI decided not to keep on developing their own chips. For most of the people who bought Altix it was the performance that mattered, and what it ran was secondary (as long as it worked) - and Linux was a cheap way for SGI to provide an OS.

Tru64 never made it onto Itanium - it was Alpha only. Compaq/HP made some noise about moving it to Itanium, then HP was going to port the better features to HP-UX, then they dropped it completely.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5631 notes

Wrote on the subject of Operating System Options for Altix/Prism Systems at July 13, 2013, 8:30 p.m...

foetz wrote:

iirc a few of the osf features made it into hpux but i wouldn't bet on it

Motif did. But those were "base OSF/1" features (HP was a founding member of OSF), not DEC OSF/1 "enhanced features"

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of What the heck is this and how do I get it to work? at July 13, 2013, 8:33 p.m...

The Onyx/CHALLENGE power supply system takes the mains voltage and converts it to 48VDC in the OLS power supplies. From there, power boards convert it to the needed voltages (12V, 5V, 3.3V, etc.).

POKx errors have to do with these power boards.

Get the Onyx/CHALLENGE diagnostic roadmap from Ian here: http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/chalonyxdiag/ .

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5631 notes

Wrote on the subject of FS: Old Sun, Apple (PPC) equipment, first come, first serve at July 16, 2013, 7:35 p.m...

recondas wrote:

A zx6000 would be a good way to finally try out the HP-UX 11i CD set HP sent me back in '06 , but by the time coast-to-coast shipping adds the weight of it's thumb to the desirability scale I'll probably end up waiting (another seven years) for one to show up locally. :roll:

11i v1 is PA-RISC AFAIK.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of How to uninstall an Irix patch? at July 17, 2013, 6:58 a.m...

I'm pretty sure it's just "remove", unless you've purged the patch history to save space.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5631 notes

Wrote on the subject of INstalling IRIX on an IRIS Indigo at July 20, 2013, 7:06 p.m...

vishnu wrote:

Yah but he did ls from the root of the filesystem and "unix" wasn't there. In fact, almost nothing was there, all it showed was sgilabel ide and sash, I don't know that much about sash, is that a virtual filesystem and "unix" isn't there because the real filesystem hasn't been mounted yet? Because if that's the case then the fact that "unix" isn't there is likely not the problem...

sgilabel, ide and sash are on the volume header. From the sash prompt he should

Code:

ls dksc(0,1,0)

to see what is on the partition (0) that the system is trying to boot from.

Another thing that would help is a printout of the results from the PROM "printenv" command. Note that on Indigo "resetenv" does not reset all of the NVRAM variables so you can't rely on just running that.

Other important info: what version of IRIX? 6.5.___. There was a change in the filesystem to XFSv2 during the IRIX 6.5 era, and if you have a mix of tools for some reason (some base 6.5 tools, other later tools) you may have problems.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5631 notes

Wrote on the subject of INstalling IRIX on an IRIS Indigo at July 21, 2013, 6:27 a.m...

vishnu wrote:

Which lends yet more credence to the oft-repeated speculation that the SGI installer was made obtuse by design in the hopes that it would increase the revenue stream coming from field service...

I doubt it - more likely is that it was made to run on a base 4MB 4D/60 back in 1987 with only the minimum required updates since then. Kind of like the way gendist was/is still single-threaded. Ever tried to install SunOS 3.x or other older systems? None are "intuitive".

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of Updating existing IRIX install from ISOs of overlays at July 22, 2013, 6:02 p.m...

Blackwolf wrote:

I have ISO files of Irix 6.5.30 overlays, im currently running Irix 6.5.23 on my Octane, I would like to update my system to 6.5.30 and im trying to figure out how i can do this from these isos. I dont have a cdrom so i cant just burn the discs unfortunately.

Is there a way to mount the ISOs or extract the contents so they will be usable for updating to irix 6.5.30?

Thanks

Not from within IRIX, as IRIX doesn't have a loopback device driver. You can do it with Linux, BSD, MacOS X, OpenVMS, and maybe Windows and then pull the files out and move them over to IRIX.

Note that this is for a true ISO "ISO." If it's in fact an EFS CD image things get more complex. Linux will read them, or you'll be writing them out to disk.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of What the heck is this and how do I get it to work? at July 24, 2013, 8:02 p.m...

Remember the Hitchhiker's Guide: "Don't Panic"

Miniroot installs contain drivers for all the supported devices. If your machine doesn't have them they'll error out and go away quietly.

The error you need to pay attention to is the SCSI error (WD95*) The RealityEngine termination error may also be relevant, but that can be handled later.

Since it's just a board parity error start checking your SCSI cabling, sleds and termination. Firmly reseat everything from the SCSI bus adapter card on. Pull all drives/sleds that aren't vital and see what happens.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of What the heck is this and how do I get it to work? at July 25, 2013, 6:27 a.m...

katzmandu wrote:

The system came to me with 4 disk sleds; all 50 pin.

My disks are 68 pin and SCA; but they have jumpers to "force SE mode" on the disk that I've set. But that could be the issue..

Sometimes, but you've set "force SE" on a SE bus (hopefully), so that isn't the issue.

What Jan-Jaap is bringing up has to do with negotiation. SCSI can operate in 8-bit or 16-bit wide mode. Normally, devices will autonegotiate (but this doesn't always work, I have some disks that need to be forced narrow for narrow busses), but if you have a wide initiator and wide target with a narrow bit of cabling (such as a drive sled) in between that negotiation doesn't always work right, and you wind up with devices trying to send 16-bit data chunks and having the upper 8-bits stripped. If you have a wide device and a wide HBA force narrow mode or (better) get a wide sled/cable so you can get wide speed.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of Terminal Types at July 30, 2013, 8:56 p.m...

I'm pretty sure IRIX is terminfo instead of termcap.

Try grabbing files from a late-'90s Solaris if IRIX doesn't have them - though I doubt that ASR43 was a common terminal type in the '90s when these systems came out.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of Rookie O2 Question (Hard Drives..) - FIXED at July 31, 2013, 6:53 a.m...

jan-jaap wrote:

* I believe the U320 spec makes 'narrow' SCSI support optional, but I've never seen an LVD disk that had issues negotiating SE mode. The O2 is ultra-wide (SE, 40MB/s).

I think I might have come across a Fujitsu that needed to be forced with a jumper. I know I came across drives that needed to be forced narrow, so it's worth a try.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5631 notes

Wrote on the subject of Wanted: Lots of odds and ends (Onyx OLS, O2 stuff, etc.) at Aug. 9, 2013, 8:36 p.m...

"Beige" and "Granite" are not the best identifiers, as each color came in both SGI proprietary and PS/2 forms.

You might want to look at one of Chris' converter boxes as another option.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of Indigo 2 mouse issue, possibly did something stupid! at Aug. 11, 2013, 2:17 p.m...

Indigo2, Indy and newer (with the exception of Onyx1/CHALLENGE) use standard PS/2 peripherals. The only gotcha is temporary and keyboard-related - SGI doesn't use the common codepage, so some keyboards don't work if they don't support all three.

Your mouse issue is either not related or related to plugging it into the wrong port (KB and M are not symmetric).

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5631 notes

Wrote on the subject of ebay: sgi octane3 possibly at Aug. 11, 2013, 2:24 p.m...

evilquim wrote:

The octane3's are of similar size, but they have a single faceplate. I believe it was of a greenish color. The O3's were designed by Gio and his cronies immediately after Rackable bought SGI. It was a horrible system in every way.

The really sad part is that if they had waited for UV and done a SSI/ccNUMA-based deskside system it might have been worth releasing. Octane-3, in contrast, was pointless.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of 33Mhz IRIS Indigo. 16M & LG1! King of the low-end! at Aug. 12, 2013, 8:59 a.m...

R3000 Indigo isn't the king of SGI low end because it was useful at introduction (and still, if you don't put too much on it).

R4000PC XL-8 Indy with 8MB is the king of low end. Practically unusable from day one without upgrades.

"Brakes??? What Brakes???"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of Indigo 2 mouse issue, possibly did something stupid! at Aug. 13, 2013, 8:13 p.m...

urbancamo wrote:

Has anyone attempted to hack together a franken-power supply using a commodity PC power supply? I have done this in the past with other vintage computers and quite frankly don't miss the lottery every time you hit the power switch one little bit!

Is there anything about the Indigo 2 power supply specification that would make this a non-starter? In the meantime I'm going to do the PSU capacitor replacement, as detailed here: http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/i2psu.html

+3.3V on the IMPACT models is probably significantly more oomphy than most modern PC PSUs (where +12V is used with local VRMs to supply lower voltages).

Most of the time it's dried-out caps. Try going through and replacing them. I think there's even a thread on here about the most likely candidates.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Indy: Upgrade from XL8 to XZ, Irix 5.3 at Aug. 13, 2013, 9:10 p.m...

Code: Select all


keep *


install hardware


go

(from inst) will refresh the packages for the current hardware. Make sure your version of IRIX CDs supports the hardware!

Express (XZ) and Newport (XL) are two different graphics families. While the system can install "Newpress" for double-head operation it only does so if both graphics types are physically present at install (or you force it).

"Brakes??? What Brakes???"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of 33Mhz IRIS Indigo. 16M & LG1! King of the low-end! at Aug. 15, 2013, 8:04 p.m...

bluecode wrote:

If spying on innocent people didn't require so much storage and processing we'd probably all be working on 30MHz workstations with 16M of RAM and liking it. Instead we find 3x2 GHz CPUs and 2G of RAM is an absolute minimum for a functional desktop even under Linux.

Naw - back when computer development was heavily federally subsidized the driving forces were cracking Russian codes and modeling the big bangs (the terrestrial human-initiated ones). Now the driving force is gamers, people buying faster computers because their machine is too "slow" (perhaps something to do with the 15 toolbars and 6 "security" programs installed), ridiculously overdesigned webpages, and shoddy coding with unneded glitz.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of 33Mhz IRIS Indigo. 16M & LG1! King of the low-end! at Aug. 16, 2013, 6:11 a.m...

guardian452 wrote:

So the company gifted me with an old laptop to use and unfortunately it came equipped with a pirated (unregistered) and useless (especially w/ 1gb ram) installation of Windows 7. After trying to find something suitable to run on it I have to ask the question: Why does OSX run so much better and faster on a 7-year-old dell d820 than ubuntu and just as zipp-ily as the ancient windows XP? The only caveat is the docking station is not supported

Do you remember the part from Dante's Inferno where the people were doomed to run forever after a red flag being blown by the wind? That, unfortunately, seems to be a good illustration for much of modern-day F/OSS software development. Unless there's a very strong head figure (Torvalds/Stallman/...) they run back and forth and try to support so much that the end result is kind of messy many times. Still love it and use it often, but I do notice the downsides.

While I'm stuck on older versions of OS X (not willing to give up Rosetta yet), it seems that Apple hasn't quite bought into the dynamic visual effects quite as much as some other systems (big offender - Compiz on Linux. Ugh). Useless visual geegaws eat up a lot of computing power. Also, Mac has many fewer add-ins/system tray junk it seems.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of octane randomly freezes at Aug. 21, 2013, 5:54 a.m...

vishnu wrote:

Does it respond to pings? If so, telnet in and try to identify (and kill) the offending process.

this can also mean that the graphics are freezing/crashing.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5631 notes

Wrote on the subject of Soldering stations (pencil/hot air/both?) at Aug. 26, 2013, 2:55 p.m...

I think there is, but you're talking very high-end.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Finally fired up the Indy.. in failure... at Aug. 31, 2013, 9:24 p.m...

Try this and see what happens:

When the "Welcome to Indy Silicon Graphics Computer Systems" splash screen comes up press escape to stop for maintenance.

From the screen type "5" to get to the PROM monitor.

From here you can run "hinv" to see what all you have installed (as long as the firmware recognizes it). You can leave it on this screen for a few minutes and see if it goes black. If it goes black here then things are bad.

If it's still up try typing "single". This will boot IRIX single-user mode and won't (ideally) load any (or as many) things that may be dependent on the network. It also won't start X, instead it drops you to a root shell on the textport (the SGI version of a glass console).

Post whether or not this works. You may have to wait for many minutes if it's trying to mount something NFS.

Question: do you have access to an IRIX CD to get a miniroot?

Third thing: From the PROM monitor you can also type "ide" to start up the SGI Integrated Diagnostic Environment. It will run some self tests and can sometimes be instructive.

"Brakes??? What Brakes???"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of Sun Blade ram compatibility at Sept. 2, 2013, 7:55 a.m...

Flourinert percolator tubes coming off the processors/Leo board!

I remember seeing one where there were some midsize fans mounted horizontally on top of slots cut into the case top.

If originality is a concern I'd go with a external funneled airbox running some high volume fans. Maybe even remove the internal fans to give a more open airflow. Completely removable.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Finally fired up the Indy.. in failure... at Sept. 2, 2013, 8:51 a.m...

Yep, there's a good chance it's hardware, but let's go around any potentially twisted software issues with "single" or a miniroot first.

"Brakes??? What Brakes???"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
Who joined July 19, 2006, 7:37 a.m.
and authored 5632 notes

Wrote on the subject of Sun Blade ram compatibility at Sept. 3, 2013, 3:15 p.m...

2xSM91-2 + Leo will burn the Aurora chassis down.

4xHyperSPARC 200 +ZX probably will as well.

Anyway, I'd go with a wood/Masonite/metal/plastic/whatever box with a plate the SS20 sits on and a bank of high-volume fans on it to move the air. Perhaps pull the floppy drive cover to increase airflow. Make sure the external fans and the internal fans match in direction so they aren't fighting against each other.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Successors to Inventor? at Oct. 23, 2013, 8:18 a.m...

vishnu wrote:

cybercow wrote: I think at the time i was researching there was invenor-like Coin 3D.

Coin3D was released under the BSD license in March of this year: https://bitbucket.org/Coin3D/coin/wiki/Home

From TFM:

The development of Coin was in the beginning primarily done on Linux and IRIX systems, but is now mostly developed under Linux, Windows with Cygwin, and Mac OS X systems.

How many times has that story been played out over the years...

It's harder to get the drive to write something for an operating system whose last minor-non-patchfix update was almost 7 years ago and last major update was 15 years ago. Due to the progression of other OSes, new OpenGL versions, etc. you also wind up having to have a lot of "just for IRIX" stuff.

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Living proof that you can't keep a blithering idiot down.

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Multia Nostalgia at Nov. 12, 2013, 5:57 p.m...

One thing to keep in mind:

If your NVRAM battery dies with the VMS SRM/PALcode installed the framebuffer will be zombied until you replace the battery, blind-flash the Multia SRM/PALcode on it with a rescue disk, then re-flash your VMS firmware. Be careful and keep your NVRAM battery alive if you don't want to go through that.

"Brakes??? What Brakes???"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Single CPU SGI with easiest to fool RAM limit? at Nov. 13, 2013, 8:07 p.m...

miod wrote:

cess wrote: And now... do you think IRIX would be able to use 8GB RAM on a Crimson or Indigo2 if you had such a modified board?

It will likely require changes to be aware of the chip changes as well.

You're talking machines from the mid '90s, when 32MB was considered pretty big (and 64MB was in the way-out-there-expensive workstation level stuff). IP28 was, let's face it, a hack job to get R10k onto the desktop fast (just as Crimson was a hack job to get R4k into production fast). The followup archs (Indigo2, Everest for R4k, Octane, Origin for R10k) made pretty much full use of the chip capabilities at the time. O2 was kind of a hybrid animal, originally built to use the R5k and later hacked for R10k.

To answer your question: Like Jan-Jaap said, Octane for R10k desktop. If a Crimson fits your definition, get a Reality Station or iStation (single processor Onyx with R4k/Reality or R10k/IR). Remember, when these were built the memory densities just weren't there to get huge memory on the desktop - Everest had 16 or 64MB SIMMS (but up to 6 or 8-way interleave), and Origin200/2000 maxed out at 256MB per DIMM. During most of the 90s you just couldn't fit enough memory in a desktop case to make large memory support necessary.

"Brakes??? What Brakes???"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of RESOLVED tardist and decompression. at Nov. 15, 2013, 4:28 p.m...

When you're installing a bunch of files it is noticeably faster to untar them from the command line (as the OP did) rather than trying to open them individually in swmgr or inst - while either of those will untar them to a temp directory, it's slow.
OP - assuming that you were trying something along the lines of "tar -xvf *" you've just run headlong into the "who expands the wildcards" debate that is still raging among some computer types. In UNIX the shell usually expands the wildcards, so you were shipping tar a list of all the files in the directory, and tar went through the first file in the list and searched that archive for all the other files.

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Living proof that you can't keep a blithering idiot down.

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of 2.5" SCSI hard drives -- anyone ever tried? seen? at Dec. 8, 2013, 12:01 p.m...

I have some too - look nice, but you need to get a reasonably precise adapter plate to use them in SCA systems. The converter option would open up a homemade alternative without needing a metal brake, but I think your average desktop Fast/Narrow system would be a bit wasted on a Seagate Savvio.

"Brakes??? What Brakes???"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of indigo2 cpu module overclock questions (please check it out) at Jan. 7, 2014, 8:23 p.m...

What are you doing to compensate for the different voltages? Your PMT5 is giving the R10k 3.3V, and as you noticed the >200MHz R10ks use a 2.6 V supply. Not sure about what the logic output levels are and if they're different.

Also note that the cache is driven off a programmed divider - you might (probably will) need to change that divider or change the cache chips so the BCache can keep up with the new processor.

"Brakes??? What Brakes???"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of indigo2 cpu module overclock questions (please check it out) at Jan. 9, 2014, 6:57 p.m...

tooR wrote: Hello

Need to put max. 3.0 volt in vcc r10000sc 250mhz work fine this voltage ,support max 3.0 V, test couple day render 3d, and not crash.

Change one Ic, one resistor smd and the smd oscillator.

Multiplicator 4X60mhz = 240mhz but the ic u12 need to hack.

I test yesterday overclock the R10000sc 250mhz to 300mhz and work but after 5 minute crash the prom, possible the r10000sc overthermal problem. Put off the indigo2 wait 5 minute and work to 300mhz.

When i finish all test i post all.

Later i test R120000.

Thanks

Sorry for my english but i'm Italien.

It's not worth the risk of taking apart the PMT5 again. R12k requires PROM upgrades over R10k, and they're not present in Indigo2.

"Brakes??? What Brakes???"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)

SAQ
From Renton, WA
Who joined July 19, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of no graphique destop on my O2 after install 6.5 at Jan. 12, 2014, 11:16 p.m...

hamei wrote:

jmjsgi wrote: I'll reinstall with the basic options.

I think that's what you've got now Better double-check this because it's been a long time, but I'm pretty sure that the desktop stuff is on Complementary Applications. You should be able to add that from a single-user inst, or maybe even over the network ...

It should be on "Applications" - Complementary Applications includes stuff like CDE, OpenOffice and the install-by-default PrintPro.

"Brakes??? What Brakes???"

:Indigo:

(single-CM)