jhaddon wrote: I'm a complete newb, so please excuse my ignorance, but whats a PROM/EEPROM?
generally:
PROM
EEPROM
in case of sgi machines most people also use "prom" to refer to the program stored in it (press esc when booting the system). you can do basic operations from there, like choose your keyboard language or initialize an irix installation. Somehow like what bios is to the pc world.