The collected works of The Keeper - Page 1

As a word to the wise, all SI/SSI TRAMs that are purchased should be thoroughly tested with OpenGL demos before considering the TRAMs to be "working". The IRIX IDE doesn't exercise them, and they have a nasty tendency to fail, presumably due to heat. I have three of them on the shelf that don't work, for one reason or another.

Look for any irregularities -- colors wrong, blockiness, etc.

So, make sure that you have at least a 3 day guarantee against DOA to verify that the TRAMs are working.

SE/SSE TRAMs are newer and possibly better designed; I haven't seen any bad SE/SSE TRAMs yet.

Chris

nam wrote: There seem to be 4 si/ssi tram in ebay, $75 each....

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=11223

Too bad I need SSE or SSI... anyway good luck.

Very interesting. Thanks for mentioning this! It's not like the bad TRAMs are worth anything, so if I damage them, they're already broken. I'll take them apart and check them out with a magnifier.

Chris

andreas@rootprompt wrote:

The Keeper wrote: and they have a nasty tendency to fail, presumably due to heat. I have three of them on the shelf that don't work, for one reason or another.

it is because of the heat. The problem is that the connectors of the RAM chips desolder due to the heat over time. I have four defective TRAMs here, all four of them are failing because of this. It's not too difficult to fix (done it on two last night, leaving me with a shiny new MXI ), but that's of course nothing for the average buyer.

Ok, I have four of those 181GB drives left. I've been holding on to them long enough, and want to get rid of the last of them.

Price reduced to $85 per drive, or $325 for the four.

Shipping:
One drive -- US is $10, international is $18 by USPS.
Two drives -- US is still $10, international is $25.
All four -- US is $15, international is $40.

PayPal would be strongly preferred. Check my profile or PM me for my address; I'd post it here, but the last thing I need is more spam.

Thanks,
Chris

(Edited: was five, but sold one to Neko.)

incognito wrote: Any SCSI -> Fibre Connector converters out there for cheap? I've got an array full of 18gb drives, would be nice to get 2x181 and overwhelm it's size

What you're referring to aren't technically converters, they're referred to as "bridges" or "routers".

As a matter of fact, by a strange coincidence, I think I'll be freeing one up this weekend... It's an ATTO FibreBridge 2200, with one 1-Gbit optic port and two SCSI ports. It's currently configured for one Ultra2 LVD port and one HVD port, but I have the other original LVD personality module around somewhere... It's a 1U rack unit. Let me know if this would be of interest, and we can discuss the price and availability.

Chris

How on earth is this dude planning on selling something that expensive with such a lousy feedback rating...?

R-ten-K wrote: Some people are interested in learning the innerworkings of non-x86 platforms.

Yeah, some people are strange. Developers, I could see. But normal users? Why bother... I'm in the process of refurbishing my MicroVAX 3300 and PDP-11/53, and will be running VMS and RSX-11M on them, respectively, and see no need to install anything else. I wouldn't install Linux on an SGI box, so why would I install a freeware BSD on a VAX?

R-ten-K wrote: Tru64 is for all intents and purposes dead, so unless the box is to be used to reminisce about the good old day, it makes sense to use a somewhat still supported OSOS or OpenVMS.

LOL, if current support is a requirement, then you'd probably have to retire your Indy's and Indigo2's. What about the PDP's? Guess I may as well put them out to the curb.

Yeah, everyone has their own take on what is the best way to go. I'm a purist, but that's just me. Heck, most of my workstation collection just sits there unused, so in that regard, it really doesn't even matter what's installed on them.

So, did everyone give up on the IO6 mod and instead fall back to buying an IO6G or IOC3?

I'm working on modding an O2k that I just bought, and would like to just solder on the PS/2 connectors. (I have neither an IO6G nor an IOC3, but I do have a shoebox, so I could hold either. If anyone has a spare of either, and might want to trade one for O2k parts or XIO options, let me know.) I see from the discussions in the past that the keyboard and mouse appear to work in the PROM monitor, so that indicates there's chip-level support, anyway.

I also see that some people have a lot of problems even getting IO6G or IOC3 working at first, so maybe it's just a matter of figuring out which drivers need to point where.

Anyone have any comments on this?

Thanks,
Chris

Porting Linux to SGI MIPS platforms seems to be more an academic exercise than an attempt to really result in a useful computing platform.

I can easily see why the likes of Linux would make sense on, say a DEC Alpha workstation, where the original operating system really doesn't bring much to the party. Tru64 is a platform to get work done, but it doesn't really give you much in the way of eye candy or even basic management. And the graphics cards in those systems are COS anyway. I don't know a lot about the more current Sun boxes, but from what I remember, there wasn't much to Solaris, either.

SGI MIPS platforms, however, are a completely different beast. SGI put a lot of effort into IRIX in making it useful, and the graphics subsystems are not trivial to reverse-engineer to write drivers for.

There might be certain things that you can't easily do on an IRIX box, but I can't see how those limitations of IRIX would justify the Linux development effort.

If nothing else, the fact that DEC, Sun, SGI, etc., have all been around for about the same amount of time, and the fact that Linux on SGI MIPS is in such early development, whereas the other platforms are relatively stable, is a testament to IRIX's usefulness. I'd like to think that's the case, anyway.

pentium wrote: Oh dear, this is getting a bit out of hand.
I just assumed that so long as I stuck to the ethernet protocol while using fiber I would be fine.
I was wrong...very wrong.

Heh, it's not like we didn't try to warn you.

If you're still going to try to pursue the vain attempt to install a FDDI network to replace some of your Ethernet infrastructure, be prepared to invest a bit of money, and, more to the point, potentially hundreds of hours.

I see all of the suggestions made so far are about Cisco gear. I know nothing about Cisco FDDI gear whatsoever, but I'm sure it will be a little less impossible to scare up the management software for the Cisco stuff.

The FDDI network that I set up was all Digital Equipment Corporation gear, from end-to-end. DEChub 900 backplane, four power supplies, FDDI DECconcentrator 900MX, CDDI DECconcentrator 900TH, and a couple 32-port Ethernet DECrepeater 900TMs.

None of it had anything to do with Cisco, though, so I can't really comment on any of its use.

Chris

Oh, and I forgot the DECbridge 900MX to do the bridging between CDDI/FDDI and Ethernet.

Even then, the software wasn't generally available. I had to pull strings to get a CD and demo license key, back in a day. I don't even know if the software is available at all at this point.

It worked pretty well. There's a reason why it worked -- the original acronym for Ethernet was "DIX", with Digital being the first letter. Digital was a leader in networking.

But 1U 10/100 switches are a lot smaller, a lot quieter, a lot less expensive to feed, don't need a babysitter, and are practically free at this point. Speed is on the same order of magnitude. GigE is one order of magnitude faster, and not a whole lot more expensive than the shipping cost on the FDDI beasts.


If you really want to get into fiber, and want to do something useful with it, forget FDDI and start looking at Fibre Channel. It's a lot easier to work with than FDDI, and you can learn something from it that's very applicable in today's technology market. 1-Gbit is cheap, and drivers are readily available.


Chris

jan-jaap wrote:

The Keeper wrote: If you really want to get into fiber, and want to do something useful with it, forget FDDI and start looking at Fibre Channel.

Apples and oranges. Or maybe steam engines and diesel

Yes, steam engine and diesel engine is a very appropriate analogy. Fibre Channel is basically the next generation of FDDI technology.

Both engines use roughly the same infrastructure.

However, with steam engines, you can't get the parts, there is no support from the original manufacturers, and there are very few people that you can turn to for help.

Diesel engines are still in use today. Older ones are easy to come by, are inexpensive, and they are still compatible with the models of diesels that are manufactured today.

The question that has to be asked at this point is -- what was the original intent? I think the original intent was to have orange wire running around the room. If that's what it was about, then FDDI or FC would be equally viable.

jan-jaap wrote: Later generations of SGI's might take fibre channel, but isn't it true that only the Prisa adapters for Onyx do tcp/ip over fibre channel (which was the whole aim in this case)?

Correct, but only as long as you don't use a Silkworm switch. For some reason, the Brocade switches don't like to work with the Prisa. Assuming you can find a Prisa for less than the price of a used car. They're rare as hen's teeth at this point.

There was also an Indigo2 variant with the GIO interface.

jan-jaap wrote: If you want to improve your resume, everything is better than FDDI, which is just another niche technology that went out of fashion a decade ago.

Not just improve your resume, but also perform a general purpose task. FDDI is not capable of being anything more than just another 100Mbit IP-like network transport.

Fibre Channel has been supported on all major workstation and PC platforms for the past 15 years, including SGI (I have many), Sun (Ultra 10), HP (C240), IBM (43p), DEC (PC164LX-based), Mac (PPC Mac and G4), and PC (I have many), and continues to be supported today.

With my Fibre Channel SAN, I share a 200-CD jukebox, DVD-ROM drive, CD-RW burner, 60-tape/6-drive DLT library, and a fast FC disk drive for occasional PC backups using Norton Ghost, to every workstation/PC in the house.


I guess that's enough FC evangelizing for now.

I'm not trying to say that getting into FDDI at this stage of the game is stupid. I've just been trying to make sure that anyone that wants to start playing with FDDI now, knows what they're getting into.

Just as the "wanted Origin 2000 or Onyx2 to start a business thread for under $250" played out, this thread is similarly playing out. The poster of that thread wants a purple fridge, and the poster of this thread wants to use orange wire. Sometimes more thought has to be given to enterprise-level technology than just colors, and the question "what do you want to do with it" has to be answered.


Chris

deBug wrote: I guess I was lucky then cause I just bought a couple of them on eBay in December.
Paid 30$ for them.

Guess so!

deBug wrote: Only one of the boards has the optical adapter.

What you'd be looking for to complete the rest would either be called a "GLM", or Gigabit Loadable Module, or more likely at this point, Emulex LP6000 or LP7000 PCI cards with GLMs attached to them. Just yank the GLM off the LPx000 and drop it onto your cards. If you need more ports, that is.

deBug wrote: But are you saying I can use it as a network card as well ???
I thought fibre channel was only a storage protocol.
So there are Fibre switches that can convert it to Giga bit Ethernet then ?
And IRIX supports running the Prisa as a NIC?

Fibre Channel is a transport protocol, and whatever you layer on top of it is your choice. You can do SCSI-FCP or IP-FCP, as examples.

There are no switches that convert from FC to Ethernet. If your drivers support a Fibre Channel HBA as a network device, then you can talk to other Fibre Channel HBAs that also act as network devices, but you would need to set up a pc/workstation to route between the two.

Chris

Interestingly, I just found a bag with a few GLMs in it. If you can't find any LP6000 or LP7000 cards in Europe, let me know. I'd be willing to sell you the lot for $20 including shipping.

Chris

What is "Fiber Over Ethernet"?

If you're referencing "Fibre Channel over Ethernet", which is iSCSI, then the picture's a little confused, insofaras you'd have the Fibre Channel link connected to your server, replacing the yellow lines with more orange, and the server would then expose iSCSI target(s) to the other hosts in the SAN via Ethernet. Unless those three rectangles that convert from orange to yellow are iSCSI target servers, in which case, knowing this is a home network, is seriously overkill. One server would be plenty for anything smaller than a medium-sized corporate LAN.

If you're referencing "10Base-FL"/"100Base-FL"/"1000Base-FL" or some other variation on that theme, where it's a standard Ethernet stack that just happens to be using a fiber optic transport, then it's more accurate to say "Ethernet Over Fiber". That's relatively straightforward to set up, since most hubs/switches that expose fibre optic ethernet links also have copper ethernet links to connect to the rest of the network.

If you're not referring to either of these, then you need to clarify your terminology a bit further. Fiber optic cables are just a transport. They don't dictate a protocol in and of themselves. Fiber optic cables can transport many different protocols (albeit typically not simultaneously, unless the base protocol can encapsulate other protocols, such as what you get when you layer an IP network stack on a Prisa FC card; Emulex and QLogic used to do that in the 1-Gbit FC space, but it was a pain for them to maintain, and not many people used it, so everyone has since dropped support for IP over FC), whether it's ATM, FDDI, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, etc. Just like using a particular piece of copper doesn't necessarily dictate a protocol -- RJ45-based cables are also used in ATM, FDDI, and Ethernet, albeit with different pinouts for each, from what I can remember.

Chris

I see the word "directory" in one of the error messages. You might want to consider yanking the directory RAM to see if that helps.

I'm a fan of the "Standard"->"Premium" upgrade myself, and probably a quarter of my memory banks are "Premium" in my 16p, even though it doesn't make any difference, but in this case, it looks like the directory memory is causing problems.

Chris

zahal wrote: Hey, did you manage to reset the passwords on those Silkworms?
I'm holding off a purchase of some 2800's til I can figure out how to reset the password.

The only way I could figure out how to do it was to hang a serial cable off the 2x5 header on the 2800 mainboard, feed it through the gap between the mainboard and chassis, and catch the VxWorks prompt before the Brocade firmware starts booting. You can reassign the MAC address that way, too, to clone a Brocade 2x00 switch.

Chris

Very cool, thanks for the report!

Strange as it may seem, I've never had a QLogic 1-Gbit dual-port card in-house. I've had Emulex 1-Gbit duals, and plenty of 2-Gbit and 4-Gbit duals, but no QLA2212's, so I've never tried.

I guess this means a QLA2312 would work in an O2 as well... It doesn't play nice in Octanes, and the bridge chip was suspected of being the primary culprit. This pretty much confirms it.

Chris

Yes, as a matter of fact, the current price of QLA2342's is noteworthy... And I agree with you on the convenience of a generic IRIX driver -- the dual-channel 2-Gbit FC card that I have in my Origin 2000 isn't technically a QLA2342 (basically the same card, but the PCI info is for a different vendor), but IRIX treats it like a QLA2342 anyway.

Glad the 2212 didn't go to waste!

(Shameless plug -- if anyone wants to get into some crazy fast data rates with FC using these 2-Gbit interfaces, let me know... Any system newer than an O2/Octane/Origin2 can make good use of 2-Gbit FC...)

Chris

I've seen weird stuff with IBM-branded drives in the past as well. Something to do with the customized firmware. The only thing you might be able to try is to have SeaTools reset the drive to its defaults.

If you post the Seagate model number, I'll check to see if I can set you up with the equivalent NetApp firmware, which will still leave you with an OEM drive, but at least it'll work under IRIX.

Chris

Sorry, looks like I only have firmware for Seagate 10k SCSI drives, not 15k SCSI drives. There's not much more I can offer, except to say that I've run into this problem before as well, and just used a different drive... Fortunately, SCSI drives of that capacity are rather cheap, so you should be able to find something else that will work.

Chris

TeeTylerToe wrote: Thanks a lot, I'll try getting the firmware through seagate. knowing that it's the firmware that's the problem saved me from a lot of fruitless troubleshooting.

That won't work, actually. The drive you have is loaded with OEM firmware, and you can't load generic firmware on top of an OEM drive.

Upon further examination, it appears that I don't actually have many firmware files for Seagate SCSI drives after all. Only the 5th generation 10k drives, such as the ST336605LC and the 73GB variant. I've got a bunch of files for various FC drives in the 10k and 15k space, but NetApp didn't do much with SCSI drives.

Chris

JacquesT wrote: edit: Forgot the one movie that had me in tears!!! Grave of the Fireflies...

Yeah, no kidding, literally on that one.

A perfect example of "just because it's animated doesn't mean it's for kids"... Not unless you enjoy playing the role of a mental therapist for a month afterward, anyway...


Chris