The collected works of ajw99uk - Page 3

Hi, while there a few RISCOS users here I suspect you will get a wider audience at:

usenet - comp.sys.acorn.hardware
forums - http://www.iconbar.co.uk , http://www.acornarcade.com

but note that some won't take kindly to confusing Acorn RISCOS with MIPS RISC/os!

For the SCSI card, do you have any specific requirements? ARM Linux/NetBSD-acorn32 support different cards to varying degrees. Any preference for HD50, DB25, Centronics sockets? Is speed an issue? (SCSI2 with DMA faster than older, non-DMA cards) Have a look at http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/32bit_FI.html#SCSI for a reasonably complete list.

StrongARM - most commonly 200MHz or 233MHz; the later versions (233MHz rev S and T) fixed a couple of bugs so worth looking out for those
A7000+ - ARM7500FE rather than ARM710; note also that an A7000+ can be fitted with a CD drive OR and expansion card but not both (unless you hack the case!), and you'll need a 1-slot backplane for the SCSI card - though again with some case-hackery you could fit a 2-slot or 4-slot RiscPC backplane.

You might also be interested in the Mico and Riscstation, which were sort-of A7000+ clones/replacements - ARM7500FE, 56MHz, RISCOS 4.03, faster IDE than the Acorn interface, and in the Microdigital Omega, intended as a RiscPC replacement and very rare.

Hope that helps you get what you're looking for.

hamei wrote:

smj wrote: Can anybody confirm I got the package version numbers correct, and the dependency in neko_wget?

Thanks!

I just had that happen last week. I assumed I needed to update my libidn and forgot to get back to it but just checked, I'm fresh. You are correct, something goofus in the Depends.

An old thread, but seems to be the most recent reference to wget dependencies

wget in current is at 1.11, in beta at 1.15 - the latter fails owing to absence of libpcre.so.2 (I can find only /usr/nekoware/lib/libpcre.so.1.1)

thomasrichinger wrote: Maybe there is a limitation of maximum disk-size in Irix 6.3? I have a 74 GByte harddisk in the O2, it is formatted with xfs and a block-size of 4096 without error-messages by the installer, so I thought it will work under 6.3, but who knows?

I suspect jan-jaap is more likely to be on the nail here, but just in case ...

Did you create the XFS filesystem under 6.5.29 before trying to install 6.3? Maybe an issue with "directory version" - AIUI version 2 came in with one of the minor releases of 6.5 and is not backwards compatible - so might you be trying to install 6.3, which only understands version 1, onto an XFS-with-version2-directories filesystem?

ivelegacy wrote:

vishnu wrote: could Fuel ?
- use the USB to attach any HID device like pen, draw tablet and such a things ?
- attach an USB pen drive or an USB hard drive ?

Just curious about that, has the fact Fuel has the USB.

Mass storage - no
HID - keyboard/mouse, yes; don't know about pens and tablets - have a look at the Fuel Hardware Aggregator
USB audio - some; I had a very cheap device to provide sound out (which just worked, before it died for no apparent reason) and I think some devices enable sound in (with a microphone) as well

ivelegacy wrote: about Indigo2 Extreme Graphics, i am reading that guys have combined these Silicon Graphics P/N

• 030-8106-005
• 030-8105-006
• 030-8226-002

Not about to pull mine apart to check, but as there are three boards in an Extreme set and the auction picture looks like what's in my I2, I think the error lies in describing the set as "High Impact (2-Board Set) with the additional Extreme Graphics Board". More likely it is just an Extreme set.

Hope this post appears - one the other day on "Impact ready" I2s vanished (or perhaps I hit cancel rather than submit!)

This is the Octane that uunix spotted on Ebay but could not collect, so I picked it up. Since then he seems to have found others to distract him ... so here's the hinv. I had been pessimistic as the model number suggested only a 175MHz machine, but it turned out to have been used within SGI until around 2006 and had been upgraded.




Bit of a mixture - Xbow 1.4 and a newer m/b but Lucent PSU. The SCSI drives are two IBM 9GB units, now one a clone of the other with 128MB swap (the fx default) and the rest as a root partition. I think there should be TRAM showing for the SE board, it's there but maybe u/s - like the second processor, which PROM hinv reports but is disabled in IRIX. I have tried removing the PM to reseat it, but one stand-off seems stuck; the bolt can be loosened but the PM won't lift at that point (halfway along the side nearest the edge of the m/b). Dual-screen is nice; the "assumed 19" monitors" are a 17" CRT and a 22" LCD-TV! Pretty sure it had a CADduo card in a PCI cage at SGI but xinerama is doing the trick with a single keybd+mouse input. It does seem to "stall" at intervals, so perhaps some SGI-office-network config that needs to be cleaned out? Most services chkconfig'd off. Skins in good condition, as is one drive sled (the seller broke the other while pulling it out to show me the drive ).

foetz wrote: how do you know it was an sgi internal machine?

The seller told me he'd got the machine from a friend who had worked at SGI Reading, corroborated by some desktop-[host] config files left over from when it was on the SGI network. I suppose they could be spoofs, but why bother? No signs of any IRIX source code.

duck wrote: The Xbow doesn't matter, but IIRC the system board does, you might need the 1467 (later, octane 2) for dual R12k 400 and up. If I could be arse to, I would search the forum and find out for you. *hint*

AIUI the 0887 is OK for 300MHz R12K but not (always?) 270MHz - can't remember where I saw that asserted, but a search here for "octane 270mhz 0887" yields mixed (and informative) results for that and faster CPUs.

http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/ ... ading.html mentions a specific version of an R14K for the 0887 board, but confirms a single 300MHz should be okay on 0887.

ivelegacy wrote: about ram i was a bit shocked, see prices

• 128MB FPM SIMM , 99.00 UKP
• 128MB EDO SIMM , 79.00 UKP

the Impact here for sale has 8 SIMM modules of 128Mbyte each, so does it really mean it has a virtual value (just of the ram of) 8 x 99 UKP X______________X ? How much should i ask to sell this machine ? Unbelievable, these guys are insane about prices !

CJE Micros is a specialist in Acorn and other RISC OS gear, so serving a very small market and with no direct competition since the sad demise of APDL. The RiscPC was quite fussy about SIMMs and launched before 128MB modules were generally available (I've heard that at launch in 1994 Acorn's engineers did not actually know if the designed RAM ceiling of 256MB would ever work, because they could not get the hardware to test it!), so the price reflects CJE's assurance that they will work in a RiscPC.

Note also that they are not parity RAM, so not suitable for an SGI machine anyway. If you are looking for 128MB SIMMs for a RiscPC, see this ebay sale and make an offer! (Nothing to do with me, but that seller has consistently had one or two on sale at around GBP30 for ages).

For Indy/I2 - I got a batch of 10 32MB parity SIMMs from "1-800-4-memory" on ebay a while ago, to use as two sets of four (plus a couple spare) for my R4400 Indigo2. They seem to do 128MB sets as well, e.g. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LOT-OF-TEN-12 ... 35b3c8b198 but without specific assurance of I2 compatibility.

duck wrote:

jan-jaap wrote: I know the 270Mhz R12000 requires the 1467 main board.

This is an interesting quirk. Has anyone speculated as to why this is the case? Or should I heed my own repeated advice and use the search?

A quirk indeed. Jan-jaap mentions a difference in bus speed (or an additional speed?). Speculating only, I'd guess it might be a matter of what can be derived through sensible multipliers:
270 = 120 x 2.25 (equivalent to 225 = 100 x 2.25 on the old board)
360 = 120 x 3
but both would be awkward multiples of 100.

I'm no doubt reading too much into the multiplier, as 195MHz would be just as awkward with 100 or 120 as the clock speed and, according to this the 270 was using a 275MHz chip. This post speculates a PROM issue.

vishnu wrote: In order for a "phone home" app to work the sgi would have to either get an IP address via dhcp or the thief would have had to rework the network settings. I know there are "dhcp on Irix" threads hereabout, but are any of us really using it on our sgis?

The Wakefield Octane came with DHCP running, though it is now on static IP. So I guess SGI used it in-house and the seller carried on (while he might have set up the DHCP himself, I got the impression he had not actually used the Octane much at all).

I'd have left it dynamic but for not wanting more than the bare minimum of assignable addresses (for devices that regularly change location and don't seem happy with a static address or are a pain to switch from one network to another).

uunix wrote: What I don't get, unless I'm being silly, 8 Slots of 256Mb should equate to 2GB? Which what I have installed.

Eight 256MB DIMMs or four 256MB kits? The labelling on DIMMs sold as part of two-DIMM kits often (usually?) shows the kit size. Once bought what I thought would be four 32MB SIMMs for the I2 which turned out to be 32MB in total because the seller had been caught out by that label "convention" (immediate refund, so sure it was an innocent mistake).

foetz wrote:

mattst88 wrote: It's 10 GHz since it's only an R1600.

ah yeah thanks, indeed that makes sense

Maybe it's the one they developed from uunix's 3000MHz R12000?

ivelegacy wrote: thank you =)
a guy has proposed me a very pretty exchange: his Acorn RiscPC/Arm-610 machine for my "strange" 68K linux pizza box, and i am really thinking it would be a very nice exchange. His machine is missing the lan, but it's not a problem, i can find one.

... on which you can then run ARM Linux! though it will cope much better with RISC OS.

I've just brought mine up to Debian 4.0 after several "false starts" over the years. There is a 2.2 install image on the net that did the trick; upgrading from there via 3.0 to 3.1 ran into a keymap problem, but that seems to have gone away in 4.0. But note that I have a Kinetic StrongARM and plenty of RAM - with an ARM610 you might want to start with the 2.0.36/Redhat installation

uunix wrote: What I don't get, unless I'm being silly, 8 Slots of 256Mb should equate to 2GB? Which what I have installed.

ajw99uk wrote: Eight 256MB DIMMs or four 256MB kits?

uunix wrote: good point, label says 256 on each stick from Kingston, so maybe you're right. Oh well.. better than original 600 odd MB

KSG-OCT/256 is definitely a kit part number - is that what you've got? - but 60% more RAM is better than 60% less!
Time to update the thread heading?

ivelegacy wrote: i am a gentoo guy, not a debian guy, and not a red hat guy (see my smile ) , so, if there is a linux kernel work Acorn RiscPC, then i will put a stage1-4 on catalyst/arm (under qemu/arm) in order to have the specific rootfs. It will be easier than the work i did for the LC475 gentoo/m68k.

Aside from the compiled kernels 2.6.18-4 and 2.6.18-6 in the Debian etch distribution archive, you might find something useful at slackware/arm or the ARMLinux site - there is more in the FTP side than appears from the web pages.

ivelegacy wrote: The real problem is … that dude has a RiscPC/700 equipped with a StrongArm @ 200Mhz CPU but only 32+2Mbyte of ram, so It looks to me like the profile i have with my this LC475 machine, and in this case … it's a problem about natively emerging things from the gentoo's portage because emerge eats a lot of ram. Acorn ram are very expensive, i was asked about 30-35UKP on ebay, and 99UKP by dealers, for just one 128Mbyte module, plus shipping and VAT

Look out for non-parity, non-ECC, 32bit, 60ns "generic" SIMMs - none standing out on ebay just now but they do come up at reasonable cost from time to time, from printers or Amiga boards. Check the part number on the motherboard - "1280" means a later revision that could well be tolerant of EDO as well as FPM SIMMs - I have an EDO SIMM on an old m/b, so they are worth trying anyway. Full technical specs from Acorn at http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org ... AN/259.pdf insisting on FPM will give you the key parameters.

mopar5150 wrote: Keep your eyes open on ebay as often these are listed as "drive arrays" when in fact they are O200s.

such as
this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-SILICON-GRA ... 1349823528
or this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SILICON-GRAPH ... 1273675837
or (not an 0200 - but PCI/XIO brick rather than drive array?) this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Silicon-Graph ... 1091628002

duck wrote: The kitchen vent--which is an entirely separate vertical shaft--sucks out, with MUCH more force than the one in the closet. If I put an A4 paper on that one, it'll stay in place. No such reaction in the closet.

Plan Z - move the computer to the kitchen and a kitchen appliance to the closet?

julesr wrote: Thanks - yeah, it is... I think I may have some larger-capacity RAM for it, but to be honest what with the graphics option and additional drive it's probably just about at the limit cooling-wise already - and 384 should be enough to play with!

Do you have 12x 32MB SIMMs? Swapping to 8x 64MB (ideally single sided) or 4x 128MB (if you can find them!) could give you more RAM for less power/heat? I don't stretch the 384MB in my I2 but that's "only" an R4K so I tend to avoid multi-multi-tasking!

Nice machine - wish I'd "gone purple" when jumping into SGI ownership. Don't think I'd get away with adding a second I2 (having since acquired a Fuel and - lurking away under the table until uunix decides what to do with another one - an Octane, and see my .sig for the non-IRIX set-up).

For CDROMs, my I2 has happily read from / burned to a Yamaha 8824S (but not sure if you could boot from it). A CDROM sled is working its way up the list of desiderata.

Welcome to nekochan

bushnrvn wrote: I've attached a screen cap of the boot messages. The services you've indicated are on. I am only able to check them in single user mode. Am I supposed to be able to interact with the machine at the System is ready message? It seems like the machine is lying in wait for some outside communication.

How long have you been willing to wait at that stage? Is there any sound of disk activity while you wait? If this machine had been set up as a headless system it may also be looking for network mounts and take a while to time-out. What can you see in /etc/fstab?

If it was running headless it might be worth poking around to see whether a desktop was being exported rather than set up for local display (maybe /var/X11/xdm/Xservers and other files in that directory for clues).

What does "hinv -v" tell you? (the fact that you get as far as single user shows the hardware is largely OK but the H/W config might jog someone's memory of a similar problem).

mapesdhs wrote: Recently some guy on a tomshardware forum who looked at my site asked with amazement how come my site loads
on his phone so 'goddam fast'.

Ian, that reminds me to let you know that a few times over the last couple of months I've had trouble fetching some of your pages - some arrivie swiftly but the other day, for example, I could not get the spares/parts page (though the Octane page had been fetched/rendered fine). No real diagnostics, sorry, just a normal timeout message from the browser.

pentium wrote:

calvin wrote: Have you tried exactly what it says on the tin: run it from DOS? (actual DOS, not a DOS session in OS/2 or within DOS running in Windows)

Under OS/2 I'm not entirely sure yet how to start just a DOS session and even if I do, a problem I find to be globally applying is that the CD-driver is not loaded at boot, hence you can't read the disc.

If you can find a W95 or W98 boot/install floppy, they usually have a range of CDROM drivers that are extracted to a RAM disk. Takes a while, but you should get a MSDOS 7.xx environment and CDROM support. If you have esoteric hardware, you may need to play with config.sys/autoexec.bat files and include your own driver.

Or, as you mention W9x, hit F8 during boot-up to get the menu - from vague memory, there's a DOS-prompt-with-network-support option which I'd imagine would also load CDROM drivers. Perhaps something equivalent is available under OS/2?

zagnut wrote: I guess my real question is, what should be installed after Win7...OSX or Linux? I've triple booted before, but that was Win2k, XP, and Ubuntu.

I'd be inclined (no more than that, not being a user of OSX at all) to do Linux last, regardless of the other OSes being installed, on the premise that with Linux you'll install a bootloader and that's easier if the things it is going to load are already in place.

Trippynet wrote: Do note, not all SCA drives will work with older SGI machines. I have found a number of drives that work fine in my O2 and Fuel, but which won't work in the Indigo 2. Hence, if you're thinking of getting one, best to check the model number first.

AIUI this is a U320 issue rather than a SCA issue - backwards compatibility with a narrow bus having been dropped from the spec after U160, though some U320 drives may retain it (and some even have a "force narrow" jumper, though maybe not on the SCA variants - my U320 drives are all 68pin).

jpstewart wrote:

Trippynet wrote: Now the model number definitely matches the 146GB drive (it wasn't a mistake), but it also has an IBM sticker on it with 36GB listed as the capacity. Maybe the IBM sticker is wrong, I'll have to test it. If it's actually a super-quiet 146GB drive then I'm not complaining!

There used to be a guide on Seagate's website explaining how to decode their model numbers. I can't find it anymore, and only remember parts of it. The first digit was a code for physical size, and the rest of the digits represented capacity. Maybe the last digit was the generation.

First digit, size in inches
3 = 3.5 diameter, 1 high
1 = 3.5 diameter, 1.6 high (HH)
9 = 2.5 diameter
5 = 3.5 diameter, 0.8 high (shorter than standard too, I think intended for use in games console / other non-computer)
2 / 4 = 5.25, can't recall which was HH and which FH

Then capacity, which once accounted for the whole of the rest of the number and gave capacity in megabytes, but for SCSI drives at least has been truncated to 3-4 digits; once you get to the 36/73/146GB models (and probably some 18GB of the same series), the penultimate digit is/was speed (0=10K, 5=15K) and last digit is/was generation ('was' at the time the drives in which we tend to be interested were current products).

Then one or two letters for interface/connection, e.g.
N = narrow, 50pin
LW = LVD wide, 68pin
LC = LVD wide, 80pin
A = ATA/IDE

I presume other manufacturers' model numbers contain similar data, but Seagate's is on the only "code" for which I've seen the codebook.

uunix wrote:

jpstewart wrote: Octane2, V12, 2x400MHz, 512MB RAM, 18GB 10K HDD, 21" monitor, DMedia options for $71,445 MSRP.

512MB.. !!

And still 512MB on the dual-600/V12 machine in the clearance stock list.

Makes me suspect RAM was one of the "out there"-priced accessories!

ivelegacy wrote: but ... what is your secret against vamp femme fatale, buddies ?
How can you collect workstations avoiding to be engaged into a bloody war against the girl/woman you live with, under the same roof ?

Rule 1 - say yes to pretty much everything except "will you PLEASE get rid of those d----d computers?!?"
Rule 2 - obey the "one in / one out" rule (or at least don't break it with anything big)
Rule 3 - do not try to impose a similar rule on boots / hats / whatever your significant other collects
Rule 4 - be patient; having shared a study for several years, I now have it to myself for 'putering (with more/better shelving and a second table/desk)
Rule 5 - don't mess up your significant other's computer (learned the hard way, after inadvertently leaving a laptop unbootable due to an incomplete GRUB installation)

To give my wife credit, she put up with another room being stacked half full with various computing equipment for far longer than had been anticipated when we offered some temporary storage for a small part of the TNMOC collection. Managed to hand that back shortly before our daughter arrived. But occasionally I come unstuck - the arrival of the Fuel (my second SGI box) about six weeks later did not go down well, so I had to try to sell the Indigo2 (no offers, shucks .

I keep within reasonable limits by going for smaller stuff - a Saintsong EspressoPC in place of a large Compaq desktop, and two Raspberry Pis - and making judicious use of KVM and VNC to do as much as possible from one monitor (or occasionally two), or from a laptop in the sitting room. Last year the girls were away for a few days so I had a chance to set up the old Acorn RISCiX boxes on the dining table for a session, and early this year an Octane snuck in on the premise that it was for someone else who then found two elsewhere .

Rhodamine wrote: Just wanted to introduce myself, I've been lurking on the Nekochan boards for a while and finally got around to joining.

I'm based in the UK and have been interested in Silicon Graphics / SGI since 1993, when I sat in front of an INDIGO at university and was won over by their sheer style and power. Since 2002 I've been collecting, reaching about 11 machines as one point. Space constraints have forced me to rationalise to 6 machines and following a recent house move I'm slowly bringing all my machines back up.

Nice to meet you all, Adam

Welcome!

My first experience of SGIs was also while at university about the same time, or maybe a bit later (1994/5?): a couple of days at Biosym Inc seeing visualisations of various chemical structures on a Personal Iris and a teal Indigo2, such a huge step up from wire-frame on an emulated Tek terminal! (the computer doing the emulation was an Archimedes with something like 786x288 resolution). Tried to stretch the IT budget to get an Indy or I2 but could barely get beyond the lowest spec, which was not adequate to run the visualisation software. So hopes of SGI ownership rapidly faded ...

But it did make an I2 the obvious starting point for getting a "real Unix" box in 2011, though I wish I had known to go for a purple one! I'm up to ten machines at the moment - two RPis, four Acorns, three SGIs and an unusual x86, though only the RPis, Fuel and one of the Acorns are now regularly used (the second RPi having more or less superseded the x86 for Linux).

sornywrx wrote:

jan-jaap wrote:

sornywrx wrote: I just couldn't wait to join the forum and also needed to research and see if my SCSI HD will work with the Fuel.

I think that disk will work. But does the system come with the SCSI cable? The cable used in the Fuel has an unusual connector on the mainboard side.

I'm not 100% sure but I'm hopeful it does. The same looks to be there in the pics so unless they pulled it it should be there. I had read that the cable is odd and expensive so I'm hoping it's in there. I've got a regular ol' 68 pin SCSI cable from the server this drive came out of but it sounds like I better get one with the Fuel.

I'd be 99% confident about the drive, given that my Fuel came with a 73GB Seagate inside, and a 146GB version of the model you have has been fine as well.
Can you post a link to the auction page - we might be able to glean some useful hints on spec etc from the pics while you wait for the real thing.

As you've found, CMN017 just means "it's a Fuel" - Octanes and earlier had longer model numbers showing CPU type and speed (e.g. "ANF195" was R10K at 195MHz) so once you can check the label on the back you may find a suffix that shows at least what CPU was inside when it left SGI, before you get to hinv.

Welcome to the forum, btw!

hamei wrote: May as well use DOS. i also think 16:9 sucks, especially with that dumb taskbar wasting an inch off the bottom.

So move it to the side, leaving the remainder of the screen closer to a 16:10 ratio, maybe better if you use a large taskbar.

Currently by colour for my machines, for the most part, with the IP address running alphabetically:

a5000 = Acorn A5000 (it's cream so would clash with clearbox) = .101
bluebox = Indigo2 (which may become tealbox if I set up the Octane permanently) = .102
clearbox = Pi in a clear acrylic case = .103
486elvis = PC-on-a-Eurocard inside the A5000 ("elvis" was the maker's codename for the board) = .104
epc = EspressoPC (should be "silverbox" but "epc" is shorter!) = .105
greybox = Acorn RiscPC = .107
pccard = 486DX co-processor in the RiscPC (whose NIC has a virtual second interface with IP .116)
redbox = Fuel = .118
whitepi = Pi2 in a white case = .123

Others have "unconventional" names (e.g. wife's laptop is "mine", i.e. hers rather than ours , entirely prosaic names ("lenovo" for my work laptop) or ones driven by finding a suitable gap in the alpahbetic IP scheme (e.g. "xarm" and .124 for the cream A540 that runs RISCiX, as "a" and "c" were already allocated).

When I mostly had Acorns the scheme was model number (a5000, r140, a540, riscpc) for the name and year of manufacture (19xx) for the IP address (93, 89, 91 and 94, then 95 for a Compaq Deskpro XL5/133 whose name I forget).

The description says it gets as far as looking for the boot drive from which to load sash, which shows that all the diagnostics must be passed. Sounds very promising that the lack of HD is the only reason why it's "parts or spares".

From the pics:
- internal SCSI cable is there
- you get a PCI-X dual-channel SCSI card as well (QLogic QLA12160 perhaps?)
- the DIMMs don't look fully "packed" with RAM ICs (compared to 1GB DIMMs) so I'd suspect 256MB each, but they might be 512MB
- good external condition, which hopefully means it's been generally looked after
- the label on the back is "copyright 2002", year of launch; of course that label may never have changed so (c)2002 might appear on all Fuels but if I'm right about the RAM I'd tend to assume an earlier rather than later model, so more likely to be 500 or 600MHz
- BUT the bolt that secures the drive cage to the cross-bar is missing! the horror! :-O

Shipping is always a gamble, but at least a Fuel's case is metal on 5 out of 6 faces. More plastic to get broken on an Octane or O2.

Enjoy!

Regulars at TNMoC used to have a standing joke about a rack and an angle-grinder, whenever a problem of moving/fitting object X into space Y came up. Dunno if that was an SGI rack or another won't-disassemble-into-readily-movable-parts type.

armanox wrote:

commodorejohn wrote: Yeah, and throwing the entire screen off-balance because (AFAIK) neither Windows nor OSX allow you to have a corresponding bar on the other side of the screen to make the space symmetrical?

Oddly enough this used to be doable (I had it in Windows 98), but by Windows 7 the way I used to do it seems to no longer work.

Perhaps because so few people regarded left/right screen symmetry as a big deal. Might be useful on a very wide screen to have the contents of the taskbar duplicated each side (so as not to move the mouse so far), but the same might be said for top/bottom movement when we did have 4:3 or 5:4 screens (or at any time for portrait screens).
I suspect there are add-ons available providing a "panel" of buttons/notifications that one can configure to balance out a left (or right) side taskbar - the "you will do things THIS way" approach of the OS can only go so far! - if asymmetry is bugbear but not I've investigated as it doesn't bother me so much.

Being able to have the taskbar in the middle of a dual-screen display (i.e. sitting on RHS of left screen or LHS of right) would be useful sometimes.

Gut feel first was, take the PCI SCSI card out and try again (then if that works to get you to installed IRIX, pop the SCSI card back in and see what happens). But re-reading the error, it is device 1 on the internal controller (0) being referenced.

Have you been able to check the partitioning by re-running "fx -x" and using the "label" menu (from memory - it's reasonably intuitive)?

I was going to point you to this one but the auction finished earlier today (and probably more than
http://offer.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... 7675.l2565

BUT there's also this one ... http://offer.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... 7675.l2565

Does it have to be a 5x86? I think you'd mentioned having a 486DX4/100, and the performance difference is not that great (unless you find a 5x86 with 512KB cache rather than 128KB, but even then things like having a StrongARM rather than ARM710 make a bigger difference).

I suggest you try comp.sys.acorn.hardware - probably a few people with unused PC cards, though I suspect mostly 486s.

One other thing to check - PROM "printenv" show?

Given the message about checking nvram, there may be a "funny" among the variables (paying special attention to the different ways PROM and IRIX refer to partitions!), in which case resetting those might get you further.

ivelegacy wrote:

ajw99uk wrote: I was going to point you to this one but the auction finished earlier today

yeap, too late, there is an other auction but that dude asks too much

This one? Yes silly price (it's only 100MHz/128KB cache, CJE has 133MHz/512KB with fan for GBP60!), but you could make him an offer.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Acorn-Risc-PC ... 3f5265b67a

Your post coincided exactly with my edit to add another ebay link, currently around EUR20 plus another 10 for P&P. If that goes for a reasonable price a similarly reasonable offer on the other one would be a "market price" (in a very small market!

Agreed that the step from an SX to a 5x86 would be nice to have. I think some people has success swapping a socketed 486 on a GeminiII card for one of these, though of course you would need a GeminiII card of some kind (DX2/66, DX2/80, DX4/100; I don't think there were SX versions) to upgrade.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/252051911099? ... EBIDX%3AIT
I'm a little tempted to make an offer there myself.

ivelegacy wrote: I wonder what happens if I replace the 486 with a Pentium1 OverDrive : will it work ?

It might, though as far as I know the recommended "best" upgrade is a 5x86, given the 32 bit bus limitation you mentioned - see for example http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~theo ... ardug.html (which starts with an SX CPU, which is what you now have?).
At the CPU level, what works on a full 486 motherboard would generally work, subject to voltage regulation and some higgles around cache configuration. But I'd worry about power requirements/heat output from a Pentium, and the Overdrive has had some pretty bad reviews. Something like the Evergreen 486->586 upgrades would be a better bet for a less DIY approach.

Think it's just the dual-CPU module for sale here, not a full machine.

sornywrx wrote: The Fuel DOES have that 2nd SCSI card in it so I might try putting the HD on that other card to rule out the onboard SCSI as having issues but I'd think the onboard SCSI would be the least likely problem.

I didn't think you can boot from PCI-card SCSI, only from the onboard controller, though if the card is a QLA12160 (i.e. same as the onboard one) it might work - given that PROM hinv has recognised it - with dksc(2,1,x) or dksc(3,1,x), depending on which channel you use, for the PROM system/OSLoad partition variables in lieu of dksc(0,1,x).

EDIT: glad to see you've sorted it out; for others' reference this post viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16070&p=135729#p135729 indicates that you could not boot from a drive connected via a PCI-card controller, because the PROM variable will not accept 2 or 3 as the controller number, even if the controller is a QLA12160.