The collected works of akimmet

With hatred against Linux aside, Silicon Graphics hardware is also built much more reliably. To get new PC hardware almost as durable and stable will cost you at least as much as a new Fuel.

Back to Linux, Linux is much better than many other unix and unix like operating systems out there (I don't consider it *that* badly programmed but it dose have design flaws, just like ALL operating systems), but IRIX, Solaris, NEXTSTEP, and etc are much better than Linux in most ways.

Depending on the distribution of linux, it isn't that bad to work with. Just stay away from Redhat or one of its clones, it's configuration system is hell... My favorite is slackware, simple and doesn’t mind you editing your startup scripts.

Gcc is bad, very bad. How is a compiler going to work well, when it's own source is a jumbled mess.

The GPL was designed to give the most freedom possible to everyone, while making sure it always stays under the control of the license. Sure it sounds good, but ends up getting in the way with its confusing legalese. It dose make sense to use the GPL for some things, just not everything.

If you decide you want to try out SGI hardware, it can be both an inexpensive and an expensive hobby.

You can get started with a cheap Indy, which can be had for very cheap (I got 2 r5k Indys for $30 recently) expect to pay around $60 for a good looking model. There have been new in box r4400 200MHz Indys on ebay for around $200 if you want one in perfect condition (with factory Irix install, camera, mouse, and keyboard). But you will need atleast Irix media and a monitor. Irix will be hard to find, unless you want to go looking on ebay, where Irix 6.2 (fine for this machine) will be had for about $35-80 depending on extras. A monitor will probably need a special adaptor, and will need to be Sync on Green (you can get around that, but can cause more problems than nessicary). You can then use standard PS/2 keyboards and mice.

However, if you are doing more than experimenting or 2d graphics. you will want a more expensive machine which can easily eat your whole paycheck. I would reccomend an Octane for 3d or an O2 for video if you are very serious and willing to part with $300-13000.

I have lots o-stuff in the basement, but the main machines I happen to have out are:

NeXTStation - unfortunatly not getting as much use now that I have a decent Indy
r5k 180 Indy - My main machine
r4400 200 Indy - there to run IRIX 5.3
Ultra 1 200E - Runs headless even though it has a Creator3d...
r5k 150SC ChallengeS - just because
300MHz P2 - Generic Linux machine
350MHz P2 - Generic Windoze box (for all that x86 windows only stuff)

orionpi wrote:

akimmet wrote: ...

As for the CPU in the socket they are the same and can be freely exchanged between modules of the same CPU type. This sometimes applies to CPUs of the same pinout too. I’ve heard of people successfully putting an r4700 in their r4600 module for example.
...
If you would happen to have a serial EEPROM programmer it could be easily possible to make a 300+MHz r5k Indy by buying a fast r5k (a r5000a might work too) CPU then modifying the contents of the 8pin serial EPROM to change the multiplier to an appropriate value. This technique also applies to at least all other Indy modules too just keep the replacement in the same CPU family.

R4700???

I belive the R5000a had a differnt physical package, but if you want to fab a PCB a R5500 might work too.

I thought the r5000a was just a newer revision, I guess i'll have to look that one up.

And reading my post again I forgot to mention you will also need to pay attention to the CPU voltage when replacing the CPU also.

Satoru wrote: Given the voltage problem, maybe I can try to put the 200MHz I2 CPU in the 175MHz module swapping the oscillator instead of using the 150MHz...
The bad point is that the 100MHz oscillator in the I2 module is larger than the one on the Indy, so I may need to buy a new oscillator.
Do I need to do anything to the serial eprom in this case?
Anyone can point me to a link that may help me understand the voltage of the R4400 CPU from the CPU marking?

Thanks
Marco/Sat

You will not need to update the eprom unless you want to use the existing oscillator. I don't think there is a way to tell other than this quote from Greg Douglas (or some intensive digging on google):

The 4x00 series CPUs are 5V devices, and get very hot. The R4x00 CPUs will have a huge "porcupine" heat sink on the CPU chip itself, for heat dissipation. The MIPS R4600 CPU was redesigned using a smaller geometry, and a 3.3 V process, which means much less heat dissipation. The 4400-175, and 200 MHz. also use the 3.3V process, but still have a porcupine heatsink. The R4600 CPUs have a much smaller heat sink, no bigger than the ceramic PGA package, and about .3" tall. The R5000 CPU family also is a 3.3V process. SGI produced some modules with just a heatsink on the CPU itself, and other modules with a fan/heatsink combination. Also, some R5000 modules had a 5V / 3.3V DC-DC converter on the CPU module, and some did not. Not sure of the details on this yet.

Althought I have found there ARE some r4600 cpus out there (I have one) with the huge heatsink.

orionpi wrote:

akimmet wrote: ...

Althought I have found there ARE some r4600 cpus out there (I have one) with the huge heatsink.

The larger heatsink is not a sure sign of the CPU being 5v. My Indy R4400-175SC says 3.3v on the PCB but has the larger heatsink, I'm assuming that my R4600-100PC is 3.3v even though it has the larger heatsink.

I still can't figure out the voltage requlators on the R5k Indys, mine doesn't have one but I can see where one could be soldered on, maybe it was only needed in early models. To my knowledge all R5000's are 3.3v, the R5000a is the lower voltage model.

I have a r5k 180SC with the regulator and two 150SC modules without, which is quite odd considering all three have the exact same board revision.

assyrix wrote: IIRC you modded the new chips onto the old CPU-boards. I would imagine that the changed clock frequency could do some serious damage to any electrolytic capacitors (elca) on those boards and probably on the motherboards as well. Usually the manufacturer uses elcas suited to the environment. If you use a faster processor which also generates more heat (and most elcas sit very close to the CPU for efficiency reasons, causing them to receive a lot of heat) you will probably shorten the lifespan of those elcas considerately.

More info (including a cop-and-robbers-story on faked elcas):
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/re ... /ncap.html
http://www.ttiinc.com/MarketEye/Aluminum_Cap_Issue.asp

The problem with faulty Aluminum Electrolytic capacitors extends beyond faulty manufacturing to incorrect engineering practice as well. This is not a new problem at all, however the combo of bad engineering and manufacturing has made this a huge problem in the computer industry. Read up on wax paper capacitors to really learn about unreliable components.

First of all electrolytic capacitors are the most unreliable components currently made (the all time winner being wax paper capacitors), and only have a lifespan of about 10000 hours with proper usage. Proper usage means staying well below the rated max temperature and never leaving them sit more than a few months unused. This means that even properly manufactured electrolytic capacitors won't survive near that long in the real world. In my experience you should never let anything that has been sitting for more than 2-3 years unused (of if it is over 15 years old, sit unused for about a year) without significant inspection of the capacitors otherwise you will have a good chance of the electrolytic capacitors drying out which will cause them to either become leaky, open, or shorted (which will give you an impressive explosion when powered).

The way many motherboard manufactures cut corners by not following common engineering techniques like only using electrolytic capacitors rated 200% to 250% higher in voltage than what will be used in the circuit (going outside this could under or over-use the capacitor and them to dry out). Many motherboards also butt the capacitors right next to the CPU (huge heat source) on the board, and should be instead moving them away as effectivley possible and/or using more durable tantalum capacitors instead.

Anyway, increasing the clock rate while keeping the heat dissipation and current draw nearly the same; which should be the case when replacing the CPU with one properly rated for the new speed, shouldn’t harm the capacitors one way or the other. In fact, overclocking won’t harm them either except for the possibly of increased heat from the nearby processor. Which can be remedied with the use of proper cooling techniques on the CPU to keep things within tolerance of the capacitors.

Shtoink wrote: Let's keep this freindly and not get another thread locked. We don't need any name calling in here, or any other kinds of slander.

Yes, that kind of thing will only degrade further the once friendly and informitave nature of this forum. Once that is gone, I'm sure nekochan.net as we know it won't last much longer.

chicago-joe wrote: akimmet wrote

The problem with faulty Aluminum Electrolytic capacitors extends beyond faulty manufacturing to incorrect engineering practice as well.

Yes. My other hobby is vacuum tube audio, in that group it is almost heresy to use electrolytic caps for anything including the power supply.

You haven't seen horrors until you see someone plug their old childhood favorite AA5 (after several warnings from me not to do so) and see that nasty confetti get all over.

canavan wrote: I think Indys would be a much better candidate for the VR5k upgrade, since at least some of the CPU boards have voltage regulators on them (according to http://www.reputable.com/indytech.html ). There's one visible on http://www.schrotthal.de/sgi/indy/indy_r5000_cpu.jpg In an indy, there should be some glue logic between the 5V and 3.3 V parts, so with some luck, I/O and core voltages are separate already.

My O2 R5k modules don't look like it could be possible to convert them to 2.5V core without some kind of adapter socket.

Actually the picture you show is the version of the Indy r5k that is without the DC-DC converter on it. I'm having a hell of a time trying to find a picture of a r5k module with one but I can't seem to find one right now. I don't understand why there are some with and some without because all Indy r5k CPU's use the same PCB.

The voltage regulator is located on the large white rectangles to the left of the CPU (in that picture).

I do own one of each (with and without) and I'll attempt to make some pictures as soon as I can take them and find a place to upload them.

squeen wrote: I also discovered a problem on my workstation. The xlock screen savers won't unlock for my machine (even with iconbar running). It rejects all of my correctly entered passwords!

Anyone else out there ever encounter this phenomena?

I don't know if the xlock in IRIX dose this but early versions of xlock did this...

The key you press to get to get the password prompt to appear counts as part of the password, as in you were adding an extra first character to your password every time you entered it.

Stonent wrote: Ok after reading the O2 overclocking guide, I see that the Indy R5k module has J1 - J5 on the side. Could these have a similar function to the resistor matrix on the O2?
http://132.180.68.114/~gemm/images/o2/i ... _modul.jpg

Supposidley you can only change the multiplier on a Indy CPU by hacking the EPROM on the CPU board, however the r5000 CPU's may be different...

mr_ripley wrote:

DaemonDraxx wrote: I just like to play around with old hardware. I'm kinda famous in some parts for that kinda thing. ;) Anyway, thanks...I'll consider this OS. I've noticed that some people here like Irix as their main OS of choice, and I've only seen Irix in action once, so that's kinda frustrating. I wanna see what the new 6.5.xx has to offer. :) Right now I'm just playing around with WinNT6 and a few other OSs like PHLAK, and that's not very fun right now. So SGI's Octane2 is a good box to start off with? I'll probably find one on eBay for cheap then. Too bad there's no Irix-Unix emulator or anything...I'll just have to stick with old crap like BSD and Knoppix for now. :roll: Wasn't the XFS disk format designed for Irix? Or was that for something else? I know professionals still use that file system today. >.>'

You havn't really stated if you want to do some productive work using IRIX, i.e 3D modelling-rendering, programming-compiing, etc. If you merely want to mess around with the OS and get the general feel for IRIX why not just buy an old Indigo2? You can pick them up for pennies off of ebay and the R10k-Impact versions run IRIX 6.5 very well.

That is about right, stick to a fast Indigo2 if you are just going to play around with it and will not use it as an everyday use machine. However, a fast O2 is also a good choice if you would also like to play around with video capture as well.

If you decide you really like IRIX; you can always sell your old machine, give it to someone else intrested in SGI stuff, or even leave it in the corner and use it as a http server or something.

If you do decide to give IRIX a try; whatever you do, make sure you have a good copy of IRIX, and a SOG capable monitor as well. Either that or prepare to suffer lots of un-nessicary frustration on the way.

I was fighting a Linux problem (again!) , where all gtk+-1 apps were displaying all pixmaps as translucent. It may have looked cool to the eye candy junkies, but it made most programs unreadable. I have been messing around trying to fix it for some hours, then I remembered reading about a similar problem here.
It turns out imlib was rearing its ugly head by picking a RGBA 32bit visualid. It was then just a simple edit of imrc later and all things are better again. I also then found out I could disable xrender for the Xserver, but that is no fun...

Although I haven't been active here for quite a few years, this site has a lot of information that can only be found here. I couldn't help but donate, since I still commonly find some useful posts here.

You might be able to low level format the drive using the format command on the Solaris install disc. Another route may be to download and burn SystemRescueCD 0.4.0 Sparc64 and use it to run the linux version of sg3-utils. Either way try to have the machine on a UPS when doing this, a power failure can permanently ruin a drive while performing a low level format to change the block size.
If worse comes to worse, you could install solaris on a IDE drive attached to one of the IDE busses. Just beware the IDE busses on these machines are VERY SLOW.

Here is another issue I ran into recently with my cheap sun blade 2500. I had all sorts of strange issues trying to install the latest version of solaris 10. The target drives not showing up sometimes among the problems. However my solaris 10u2 media kit worked just fine.
It turned out the stock lite-on dvd drive sun used dosen't like DVD+R discs. Solaris would silently ignore read errors. I just replaced the drive with a different IDE DVD drive and the install and upgrades magically started working all the time.