The collected works of SAQ - Page 20

So they call out the Macintosh TV and the Macintosh Portable (???, especially for the Mac TV - whoopee - we're taking a mediocre computer and mixing it with a tuner so you can switch the screen back and forth!) , but completely ignores over the PPC transition, which was fantastically slick technically?

Another thing to do with Suns is to write the EADDR and serial number somewhere so that when the MOSTEK chip's battery goes you have it to reprogram.

Yep, for some reason they dropped the "power-on signal over NUMAlink" capability for NUMAlink-2 and newer systems.

jpstewart wrote: Nice! I've long wanted an ANS just because of how rare and obscure they are. (And they run Unix!) Since that's unlikely to ever actually happen, I enjoyed reading about yours.

If you want an Apple product that runs UNIX get A/UX (for SysV fans) or System X. The ANS is an Apple - but it runs AIX v4.1 which, while less peculiar than AIX v3, still has plenty of quirks and in the end is more IBM than Apple (I think all Apple contributed was some device drivers).

For your AIX needs get a RS/6000/pSeries/P unless you really like oddish hardware - much better support.

guardian452 wrote: I think from their point of view... Or what they want you to think... Is that it was so slick the user didn't need to know or care about it.

Which is why it beats out the Portable and the Macintosh TV by a long shot. Those machines' tradeoffs were very obvious to the users.

As I recall you have a fairly long time before the bricks start shouting out "halloas" to see what friends are in their immediate vicinity (30+ seconds depending on brick configuration). They're pretty good about quietly deciding issues of leadership as well, so don't worry about having the wars of the roses reenacted in your computer room.

Pontus wrote: Speaking of alternate setups. I read that fellow countryman bjornl has successfully connected an Origin200 with a Graphics module: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16726726

Which left me wondering, could a graphics module be hooked up to an Octane?

Physically yes, XTOWN board (with swapped compression actuator) in the Octane and a KTOWN in the Graphics Module.

I doubt if KONA support is present in the IP30 IRIX package, and having played around with the IRIX modules a little I can tell you that if support wasn't built in from SGI then there's probably some unsatisfied dependencies or other gotchas lurking somewhere in the modules. Rumor has it that were someone to get their hands on a leaked copy of the IRIX 6.5 source it doesn't have the interesting stuff like graphics and hardware support either - though I would love that to be proven wrong.

Unless SGI disabled it in IRIX you should also be able to put a XTOWN in a deskside Onyx and have a "MiniMonster Station" with multiple pipes.

Best way might be to get a KTOWN2 and connect your Graphics Module up to an Origin300. They're cheap, fast, and a more convenient size than an Octane. You also get the possibility of 4 CPUs.

mwd wrote: They're pretty small, although they are a bit bigger than most thin clients.

Much smaller than an Indy. Shame they had so many issues!

The only big issue was the heat. Sure, they're slow, but not unreasonably slow for a desktop machine of that vintage. The lack of 2.5" SCSI drives in larger capacities can't be blamed on DIGITAL.

hamei wrote:

tooR wrote: ... full work CPU R12000 in my Indigo2.

Cool !

Here's another good one for when you get bored : the Indigo2 250 mhz cpu into an Indigo (1). Voltage is wrong so that would need modification and the card is slightly too big so you'd have to mess with the case a tad but ... 250mhz Indigo, that would be great !

And it should work software-wise, the 150 mhz swap is a bolt-in.

And if it weren't for the PM3's PCB "nose" bumping into the Indigo's case it would be easy - just wire a 5V-3.3V DC/DC converter between +5V and the standoff leads on the PM3 nose. I guess you can take an X-ray of the PCB and see if there are any traces in there other than the power/ground lines and if not cut it off with a PCB saw, then wire in the converter.

If only my dad hadn't have retired and I could still use the X-ray equipment.

PM5 would be harder, since it has the extra MB of cache memory mounted on the nose. You'd probably need to cut a hole in the case. Perhaps you could disguise it with an "engine scoop"?

jan-jaap wrote: 195MHz R10000 Performance Comparison Between O2, Indigo2, Octane, Origin200, Origin2000 and Power Challenge

Hot clocking an Indigo2 is a cool hack but of course not going to win a trophy for best IRIX 6.5 performance. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a 195MHz R10K in a Power Challenge beats a 250MHz R10K Indigo2 (both running IRIX 6.2), especially if the Challenge has the 2MB L2 chips.

And of course a (deskside) Power Challenge can pack up to 12 of them. And that's quite a beastie, I can tell you . Plus the mechanical sounding, deep humming of that big blower makes it sound like it means serious business

Of course, with 12 processors on a deskside you can't have the full 6-way memory interleave, so you're trading off some memory bandwidth for additional processors.

Too bad to hear that. Glad you had a few good years in Provence.

The Tandem still pulls well when I have it in harness, though I haven't had any requests from people to use it in a while.

Looking for pointers:

We have a good friend from Japan who has her son moving out and starting his first in-field career job. Anyone know what sort of gifts are appropriate? Don't want to be the clueless American sending a toaster or something equally silly.

nongrato wrote: yeah, all fans function ok, otherwise i 'd already had a pile of ash instead of my Octane btw, do i need to keep the door on the faceplate open when machine is running?

No, that can be open or closed. SGIs are designed to be run with the covers/skins on, so don't run them with bits removed (Indigo2 needs the 5-1/4" drive bay installed as well otherwise air won't flow properly over the CPU), but the doors can be open or closed.

I have a PC164 (different memory, slightly different I/O) running VMS. Get a ISP1040 SCSI adapter, TULIP card that identifies as TULIP (DE500) (many TULIP cards have custom PCI IDs because the manufacturers are being irritating), and either use serial or get a S3 Trio64 or Permedia2 graphics adapter. You can use other adapters, but these are generally easy to find, pretty functional, and inexpensive.

Note that you can get other adapters to work under VMS, but TULIP TULIP ones work under SRM if you need to netboot for some reason.

duck wrote: Indeed, Adaptec 2940/3940/3950 are not supported by SRM, I didn't even know AlphaBIOS supported them.

The ones I know are seen in SRM is the venerable 53c810a and reputedly some later NCR models (somehow I'm remembering 53c895, but I wouldn't bet money on that working) as well as ISP1020 and 1040 but not the 1080. (Faster SCSI boards will work if your OS supports them, though ISTR problems with using the 64-bit PCI slots, with the ISP1080 in particular)

Don't waste your time with any NCRs newer than the 810. DEC has them PROM-locked to only the DEC models, so unless you have a KZPC* version it won't work with VMS. Get the 1040 and ride easy.

I believe the current method is to send Larry a big check and grovel.

jpstewart wrote: Ugh. That brings back unpleasant memories. I briefly tried Corel WordPerfect for Linux. Never could get it running properly. And that was on Corel's own short-lived Linux distribution! (A Debian deriviative that I ditched in favour of the real deal.) Whichever WordPerfect version that was, it wasn't a native Linux application. It was the Windows version running in a heavily modified WINE environment, IIRC. The native IRIX version of WordPerfect is much easier to work with, IME, even though it's older (6.0 I think).

WP8 was native (can't recall if it was Motif or something else for the UI toolkit). WP9 was when they had the bright idea to bundle the Windows version with WINE and sell it as a "Linux application"

In the red version she was noticeably pro-BSD and anti-SysV. Seems like she liked HP-UX 9.x better than 10.x then.

Solaris back in the pre-2.6 days was pretty bad (they kept SunOS 4.1 around longer than planned because of it). It's gotten much better, at least up to v8-9, don't have as much experience with v10 and zero with v11.

Why'd they start replacing /bin/sh with BASH anyway? Sun went into depth as to why that was not a good idea (and better to have a static /bin/sh), and it's not like sh added too much bloat to the system.

duck wrote: AIUI, OS9 (and the ones before) had cooperative multitasking, and thus if an app was doin' stuff, another couldn't before the first one let it. I doubt there even was multithreading there...

There was some optional API that a few apps used to run the old "multiprocessing" apps. It must have divided up the tasks into something slightly reminiscent of a fun-house mirror representation of a thread, because I don't see how it could have done separate processes.

I don't know what they used, but I had a BOXX system at one point that had a nicely designed case. It even had a foam filter on the front air intakes to cut down on dust deposition. Unfortunately I don't know what the case maker was (1st or 2nd gen Opteron), and it's not here right now.

Some HP cases are good, some are kind of cheesy. I've had an Antec that's not bad.

Another Tenex C/ZSH fan here, too.

Trying to recall what the deal was with writing scripts running on csh. I seem to recall dire warnings of impending doom being circulated at one point, along with reminders to use !#/bin/sh.

Octane (1/2) or Indigo2. Well built, reliable, relatively speedy for its era and shows off what SGI could do when they put their mind to it.

Octane has the advantage of more memory and SCA drives.

Fuel/O2 seem to have more troubles, Indy while nice doesn't usually have the "ooh" graphics.

If you have the space an Onyx2 deskside also shows off SGI in style.

nyef wrote: Did some quick digging (google is your friend).

First, I found http://hardware.majix.org/computers/sgi.pi/keyboard.shtml , which gives instructions for wiring an adaptor for the Indigo 1 keyboard to a Personal Iris 4D/25. Not a bad start, but the link for the converter for standard PS/2 keyboards (the wrong way, no less) was dead.

Then, I came across http://www.sgistuff.net/mirrors/4dfaq/ , which has some basic information about the 4D series machines, including keyboard pinouts and basic protocol information. Looks like it's a fairly straightforward 12v UART hookup. An Arduino, some 12v<->5v level converters (MAX232 or similar, maybe), and a bit of hacking, and you could be in business.

Hope this helps.

Yes, you could build a converter to go from an Indigo/Onyx1/Personal IRIS keyboard to a PS/2 (and thence USB should you need it), but if you have an extra Indigo keyboard you could also sell or trade it for much more than a PS/2 version of the SGI keyboard, which (in the large slab version) has almost identical characteristics. I'm a bit of a keyboard snob, and very much like the SGI granite big slab (along with the IBM Model M and the earlier Apple Extended keyboards). In short, I guess I'm saying don't spend the money to buy a reverse converter, as there are much cheaper ways to get the same effect.

IRIX isn't going open-source. It's not so much that SGI thinks they're going to get money out of it, but that it would take a whole lot of work to remove all IP licensed from other sources or get their permission to post, and in the end SGI gets nothing out of it.

The other thing you'll want is a good firewall and a lot of care. Last patch set for 6.2 was 2001/2002 era, and the newest browser is likewise pretty old - porting newer browsers over is nontrivial, even with the POSIX compatibility patches.

While I don't envision hordes of script kiddies looking for IRIX boxes, you might want to channel remote access through another box, use TGCware SSH, or VPN to cut your risks.

nongrato wrote:

duck wrote: You can always grab one off Ian

75 what? The pricing is absurd.

Ian stores the parts in good condition, has most parts, knows what he's doing and provides excellent support and service. He's expensive, but for a reason.

The eBay types who expect to get near that for beat-up stuff that they don't know what it is and won't test - yeah, that's absurd.

bushnrvn wrote: Thanks everyone. A couple points.

I'm new to IRIX but not Unix. The idiosyncrasies have been greater than I anticipated. Is there any official literature available on IRIX?

Techpubs is everything official and is great, but I'd also recommend the "UNIX Rosetta Stone." Downloadable PDF, points you towards the command to do N in X dialect of Unix.

jan-jaap wrote:

noth wrote: Linux should be able to mount those XFS partitions and then you can aim john the ripper at the passwd file in last recourse. OS X can't mount XFS partitions.

Not necessarily.

Linux only understands the XFS v2 'on disk' format, the default since ~ IRIX 6.5.14. If these systems shipped from the factory with something older they will have the older on-disk format and Linux will not mount it, even if the Octanes currently run a more recent version of IRIX.

Bingo. Linux also does not properly recognize the IRIX logical volume managers if one of those are in use. Keep in mind that though XFSv2 was the big bump there have also been changes in 5.3+XFS->6.2 and 6.2->6.5, I've never used 6.3 or 6.4, but it wouldn't surprise me if they updated XFS a bit in each release, or at least 6.2 -> 6.(3,4) -> 6.5. XFSv2 was unusual in that it was the first big "intra-major-release" XFS update.

Regarding the comment about one being the "master" - it probably means that there are NFS, floating licenses or NIS services on it. It looks like licensing might have been touched on, but check out /etc/exports to see if there are exported NFS filesystems being served to the other boxes (Network Filesystem).

I have multiples.

chicaneuk wrote: Great success. Now if I could just find IRIX 6.2... hmmm....

Really wish SGI (or whatever is left of them) would just make old versions of IRIX available to download, or sanction something like Nekochan hosting copies of them. Seriously it's of no interest to anyone but hobbyists like us.

... and those who licensed code to SGI to put in IRIX and who would be more than happy to sue them and pick up some easy money.
In most cases it's not as easy as saying "gee, we're not selling this anymore - let's give it away."

momoaz wrote: I have a couple Indizone games I would like to install on a O2 I bought recently. I know the release of Indizone 1 and 2 were around the IRIX 5.3 Indy R4600 days but I was wondering if anyone has sucessfully installed Tranquility and Pods on a newer system like the O2 running IRIX 6.3. I only have the tar packages no tardist which is the only way I knew how to install them. Any advice or experience?

Chances are very good it will run. The big breaks in compatibility were:
- Introduction of 4D series, moving from MC68k to MIPS (~1986/87)
- Introduction of IRIX 4D1-4.x, removal of NeWS window system
- Introduction of IRIX 6.2, removal of ECOFF binary support (used for IRIX 4 and earlier binaries)

Some software wigs out if it sees a graphics subsystem it wasn't designed around, but this is rare (some Discreet apps don't like ODYSSEY, many apps that expect a Z-buffer barf when given XS (without Z)).

hamei wrote:

robespierre wrote: this is for your own good.

Yeah, I know. I'm sure it hurts them more than it does me, too.

I'm kinda sick of people protecting me from myself.

Remember when you could nuke your disklabel with the SunOS install tools if you weren't careful? I think it was the 3.5/4.0 days, but might have extended further. Haven't had to reinstall 4.1.1 in a while.

It would be nice if they'd actually document stuff like that. Though the older UNIX companies look great next to most of the FOSS projects.

If I were getting a first SGI, I'd go Indigo2 IMPACT 10k or Octane. Both are ruggedly constructed, significantly faster than R4400, and run IRIX 6.5 (yes, R4k Indigo2 and Indigo will as well, but 10k is faster and has higher potential memory capacity). Indy isn't bad, but has a lower max memory. O2 and Fuel are smaller and faster (respectively), but seem to be more troublesome. Indigo 1 is older and has a cult following so it is harder to find/more expensive. The older you get in IRIX the less of a "standard UNIX" it is and the more oddities pop up.

If you offer to pay some and are able to pick up or pay packing/shipping at a "drop off and go" place you'll likely get more interest here. Packing to ship can be trouble for the current owner.

Vladio wrote: Well, I just spent 48 minutes on hold and was told that if I goto their website and select my product then select to online chat that they'll give me the activation code. It sounds too easy but I'll try.

If that works I'll be pleasantly surprised. I suspected they'd offer you a year of "Creative Cloud" instead.

If they won't help I've heard rumors of people who have put jump instructions in via a hex editor...

I'd look at the power supply. Base check - try to get a second sled and look at voltage levels with a drive and boards in place. Better check - look at it with a scope to see if there's funny waveforms riding on there that shouldn't be there.

Officially all SGIs should have a terminator on the external SCSI port per SCSI specs. Unofficially they usually work just fine without one, especially if it's a single disk (the inside end of the bus is terminated).

uunix wrote: She now has a wedding to plan, which we talk about, but she already has it sorted, so I throw in comments and suggestions (that I know are not going to fit) and I'm greeted with a "that's a good idea, maybe.. but [THAT'S NEVER HAPPENING]" responses.

Lucky. My wife and her helpers just gave me looks - I'm sure you know the type of looks.

-aus come equipped for Tru64/OpenVMS. In addition to putting SRM on them you'll also need to make sure that the hardware is OVMS/Tru64 compatible. Usually this just means SCSI controller (ISP1040) and graphics (easy to find options are Trio64 or Permedia2).

The PWS were a good model, but if I were playing with the kind of budget that can afford a dual 600 Octane I'd go for a 21264 or better. There were some good improvements and they'll run some Radeons. Downside is that memory may be harder to come by, depending on model.
For any Alpha go ahead and set it up dual-boot Tru64 and OVMS, and mentally prepare yourself for getting the second one to have a cluster. Yeah, it's mostly pointless for a single-user hobbyist situation but... so cool because it's really done right.

Do keep in mind XFS versions. Linux XFS is built around XFSv2, from the later IRIX 6.5 releases (about .12 and up), but probably will mount IRIX 6.5 XFSv1 releases. IRIX 6.2 XFS is slightly different, as is IRIX 5.3+XFS XFS (this one is pretty much guaranteed not to work). My guess is that 6.3 and 6.4 have a different version of XFS as well.

pentium wrote: There was an external VideoCreator on ebay about three years ago I still regret not buying because it was heavy and the lid was missing. Curious if there's still any hanging about now that I'm in a financially more secure situation and I have a VTR suitable with the frame-by-frame recording mode.

The other is if there's still an Iris File hanging about. I seem to recall asking about this once before about ten years ago and there was two available from a member down in the Tacoma area but I passed them up and I've forgotten who was selling them, if he still has them.

Lastly my second 4D/20 doesn't have it's drive door (the top one with SILICON GRAPHICS and PERSONAL IRIS on it). Everything else is there except that.

I'm going to have to look around. I just junked a set of PI skins, but I think I kept the door and the sticker from the back (4D/2x style door without the model marking).

uunix wrote: Check the power supply from the other system to rule it out?

I suppose you could swap them, however keep in mind that every time you take the machine apart you run the risk of something happening. I was thinking plug a meter in a spare sled and check the +5V (especially) and +12V while you have boards and disk in the machine. The fact that several drives have not spun up is suspicious, and if there isn't enough power on the +5V rail to run the logic strange things can happen on the SCSI bus. Try the disks that don't work in the other Indigo and see if they come up there. (note- some disks wait for a spin-up command, and if it never gets there the drive won't come on, so check the jumpers and make sure it isn't set that way). Some wide disks don't autonegotiate narrow mode properly with SGIs either, so go ahead and force it single-ended/narrow just to make sure (assuming it's a 80-pin SCA drive, which is probably the best type to use as they're usually much newer).

I have had failing disks give that error, and it could be worthwhile to re-seat the IP20/HP2 board and include a few well placed taps with a rubber/plastic mallet (that has fixed several odd bus errors on VME Suns that I've come across).