The collected works of astouffer - Page 2

astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
and authored 78 notes
Wrote on the subject of So I nabbed a 164LX Alpha board... at April 9, 2013, 7:24 p.m...
ClassicHasClass wrote:
SCSI drives? How did you install it?


The only OS that can boot from the IDE controller is *BSD or Linux. Mine either has a Qlogic ISP1020 or 1040 controller. Video is from an Elsa Gloria Synergy card. It boots fine from an old 12x Toshiba (XM-5701B). For ethernet you'll a DEC Tulip based NIC. Installation is pretty straightforward once you boot from the media. If you want I could get more details. The trick is finding the right cards on ebay where the seller is not advertising them as specific for Alpha or DEC. People were selling that ancient 32mb video card for $150 while its really only worth $10.

I owned a Tekram SCSI controller with the correct chipset but wrong PCI ID. Nothing would boot from it. So I had the bright idea of trying to hex edit the firmware binary to the matching ID. My understanding of binary was less than stellar and ended up bricking the card. Who knew the values had to be entered backwards?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
and authored 82 notes
Wrote on the subject of VMS End of life at June 10, 2013, 7:31 p.m...
hamei wrote:
More to the point, how many customers will surround HP headquarters with burning torches, demanding Meg's head on a pike ?

You guys have got to quit letting these bastards pull this crap. The world will be intolerable if you keep allowing this kind of behavior.


How many production OpenVMS boxes are really out there right now?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
and authored 82 notes
Wrote on the subject of Operating System Options for Altix/Prism Systems at July 7, 2013, 11:10 a.m...
What all is needed hardware wise to run a rackmount Altix? Someone on ebay is selling them for $100 each but looking at the pictures there doesn't appear to be a built in ethernet port. Only a serial console and RJ45 console port. So you'd need a supported ethernet card?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Warp 4 questions at July 7, 2013, 12:01 p.m...
You got much further than I ever did trying to install Warp 4 on a Thinkpad 390X. Even with the IBM drivers it would hang during booting. After getting the updated Dani drivers it would still refuse to boot over some driver issues. I went as far as installing it (flawlessly I might add) on an old P4 box and then cloning the disk image to the laptop. Still never booted.

I think you can add some lines to the config.sys to allocate or reserve drive letters. Try moving AODBSMD.sys into C:\OS2\BOOT
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
and authored 82 notes
Wrote on the subject of Can't network installation IRIX to SGI Octane from FreeBSD at July 10, 2013, 6:34 a.m...
Maybe give hostnames to the addresses in your /etc/hosts file. Should bootparamd also be running?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
and authored 82 notes
Wrote on the subject of Rookie O2 Question (Hard Drives..) - FIXED at July 31, 2013, 2:36 p.m...
chicaneuk wrote:
as soon as I attempt to install IRIX I get a whole screen full of parity errors along with some ugly messages, before being spat out to the 'Safe to power off' screen.


Try doing a low level format of the drive.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Ultra 20 ATX based? at Jan. 6, 2014, 8:40 p.m...
A question for anyone out there who has experience with an Ultra 20. Is the motherboard an ATX form factor or something proprietary? The Ultra 20 white paper makes this confusing statement

The Sun Ultra 20 Workstation motherboard PCBA is unique to the Sun Ultra 20 Workstation products, and need not
conform to any specific form factor. However, for the purposes of this specification, it is ATX.


The cases are pretty sharp looking and I'd like to use one for my next PC build.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Ultra 20 ATX based? at Jan. 7, 2014, 2:39 p.m...
Thanks everyone. I was planning on using a new motherboard and maybe a FX-8350 cpu and tossing whatever it came with. My current case is an SGI 320 workstation. Let me tell you its nothing at all like a normal PC. From the back its not pretty but the front sure is snazzy with that slide down cover.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of obp update patches at July 16, 2014, 6:23 p.m...
Does anyone know how to obtain patches for updating the obp? I'm trying to update a Sunfire V245 to a later version (4.27 and up) so it can boot from USB drives. Oracle's site is absolutely no help and neither is google. I even have the patch number 140685-02.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of obp update patches at July 17, 2014, 6:41 p.m...
Eh nevermind on trying to extract the patch. I manged to with Linux and you can't apply the patches unless you boot with the cd. They segfault under normal Solaris 10. I plan on giving this server away soon anyhow.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Dream came true - Tezro arrived, selfmade VRM/PSU probs at Jan. 12, 2015, 6:06 a.m...
MrWeedster wrote: Ok i think i found it, laying in the case.

Board broken :<

[Update]

It turned out the part was from the IO9 card, near the holder bar for the card.
I soldered it back in, changed nothing.


If that cap became unsoldered by itself then its most likely shorted and you should leave it off. I've only ever seen a few ceramic caps go bad.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Infinite Reality at Feb. 19, 2015, 10:42 a.m...
TeamBlackFox wrote: An SGI Octane dual 300 with a V6, for example, can still drive a display at 1920x1080. Can it do HD video? Not from what I've seen with common encodings like h.264, XviD, or the dreaded WMV, but its capable of playing Quake 3 Arena acceptably and many other common tasks. I've seen Octanes with V6 or V8s for sub-$300, and unless you're planning to do something with it for your job, it has most of what you'd ever need.


I have an Octane with those specs and also enjoy playing the original Quake. So I thought hey that's a pretty cool way to do some multiplayer. Well the SGI binaries no longer work with the newer servers. There is a nekoware port but the performance is so bad you have to play in a postage stamp sized window. Kind of disappointing when you consider that a 100Mhz Pentium with a Voodoo card renders it so much better.

I know the Octane was never designed for gaming but why is it so slow?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of EBAY: Rare Crimson For Sale at March 28, 2015, 1:55 p.m...
What makes this one rare?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of For sale, "Bob" at May 26, 2015, 5:39 p.m...
Just think how cheap and easy it would be to counterfeit these :twisted:
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Power supply repair - Indigo2 - UPDATE at July 31, 2015, 6:08 p.m...
chicaneuk wrote: I'll report back when I receive it and of course first time I fire the IMPACT back up!


Did they say what was replaced? Maybe its a common problem.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of SunPC card drivers and software where to get it? at Oct. 23, 2015, 8:37 p.m...
Does it only run DOS or can you run another OS like OS/2?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of What SUN hardware do we have? at Nov. 7, 2015, 4:21 p.m...
JohnK wrote: On the server side I'm running a couple of SUN T2000 servers, one headless and the other running with an XVR-200 graphics card. They both have the T1 8 core processor and they are both running Solaris 10.


These servers show up super cheap on eBay. I have this crazy idea of making one fit in a normal ATX case. It would involve a lot of metal work and faking all the fan signals. Are there any cheap PC video cards that will run under Solaris these days?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of What SUN hardware do we have? at Nov. 7, 2015, 8:47 p.m...
JohnK wrote:
I don't know if you were asking about Solaris Intel or Solaris SPARC.

The only graphic options that I know of for the SUN T2000 are the XVR-200 and the XVR-300. The XVR-200 is a 1 lane PCI-e and the XVR-300 is an 8 lane PCI-e. The 300's go for about $200 and more so they are definitely not cheap. They use the ATI FireMV graphics engine and have 128 MB of video RAM and can drive two monitors. The 200's go for less since they are just 1 lane and 32 MB of RAM but can still be high. Luckily, one of mine came with a 200. I couldn't see paying the premium price for a 300.

SUN boxes need SUN cards in order to function with the OpenBoot firmware so standard PC cards won't work unless your going to install Solaris 10 on an Intel platform. If your going to run other SUN hardware like one of the more recent SunBlade machines (1500 or 2500 Red or Silver) then you can find cheaper cards on e**y like the XVR-100 or XVR-600 or even a PGX64. You can get these for $20.00 - $40.00 or so.

If your going the Intel route, I would check which video cards are supported on the Intel hardware compatibility list. What server board were you looking to use in an ATX case? That should be interesting.


Should have been more specific, the T1000 or T2000 based servers.

I ran a Sunfire V245 for a while in my basement but couldn't justify the noise or power draw (300 watts). Eventually I gave it away. But anyhow I got a good look at the insides and power supplies. Other than physically getting the motherboard inside the case I believe its doable. Now this is all just a crazy idea of mine and nothing is definite.

Is the T2000 faster than the Blade 2500? It would be pretty sweet to own the world's fastest unofficial SPARC desktop :D
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Very sick HP/Apollo 400 at Dec. 5, 2015, 1:06 p.m...
Hello all, I have rescued an HP/Apollo 400 from my employer that was stored in less than ideal conditions. The hard drive was seized and would not spin up so as a last ditch effort I opened up the drive to break the spindle loose. The platters were covered in condensation so yeah that drive was dead.

Now I don't have the special HP-HIL keyboard so I can't interact in any way. But last night I came home and found it powered up even though the front panel switch was off. Ok strange enough. I pulled the plug and then later on went to inspect everything closer. Now there is no video output and the status LEDs on the front indicate "CPU board timer failed or missing" according to the service docs.

What exactly do they mean by CPU board timer? Do they mean the 40Mhz oscillator, real time clock, or maybe the power up timer that takes the CPU out of reset? HP was nice enough to put voltage test points on the board and all the voltages read good.

*Quick edit*

I was counting the service LED as part of the diagnostic LEDS. They are all lit meaning the CPU hasn't even accessed them. This thing might be destined for the trash.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Very sick HP/Apollo 400 at Dec. 5, 2015, 6:34 p.m...
Thanks for the info about the serial console. Unfortunately my null modem cable won't fit because this Apollo has a female DB25 port. I tried replacing the battery but the board is still unresponsive :( Before I was getting video output but now nothing.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Tezro deal at Dec. 17, 2015, 6:26 p.m...
Anyone here snatch up this Tezro for sale? http://www.ebay.com/itm/SGI-SILICON-GRAPHICS-TEZRO-CMNO27-024-1798-001-REV-A-AS-IS-T3-W-/291641211175?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&nma=true&si=2gY4lYYkVyxfuYqWBmLQ7iVj73w%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc Looks like maybe it was only missing the hard drives?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Tezro deal at Dec. 18, 2015, 4:13 a.m...
That was so cheap I was considering buying it just to install Irix on and then resell.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Octane died slowly at Dec. 22, 2015, 8:34 p.m...
It seems my Octane (dual 300MHz V6) has developed a serious fault while sitting for a few years. It booted up fine and I was able to run a few programs before it froze up and the light bar turned red.

I hooked up a serial cable and was getting errors about bad or missing DIMMS. I tried re-seating them but things started to go down hill quickly. After a few tries it said "No usable memory found". Once I managed to start the diags but it froze and never finished. I have four DIMMS and was trying various combinations but now its totally unresponsive.

Looking at the XBOW lights only Heart and QB are lit. Pushing the power button makes BaseIO flash once. I don't have any other parts to swap out except for an IMPACT card. Using that card results in only BaseIO and Heart being lit, but still nothing on the console. I've inspected the compression connectors under a magnifying glass but they appear fine. Does this sound like a bad CPU board or bad connectors?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of OS/2 Warp and Thinkpad 390 at Jan. 7, 2016, 6:25 p.m...
Has anyone successfully installed Warp 4 or 4.52 on the Thinkpad series? I have a Thinkpad 390E and 390x. Both models run just about any operating system great (BSD,Linux,Windows) except for OS/2 :-x The 390E is a p2 300 and the 390X is a p3 450.

I have tried the updated boot disks from IBM but they freeze when the screen asking for disk 2 appears. I have Warp version 4.52 with a bootable CD, that freezes up over a driver. I've even installed OS/2 inside a virtual machine and copied that image onto the Thinkpad, it freezes up as well. What is the secret? :? You'd think an operating system written by IBM would run on hardware designed by them but noooo.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of OS/2 Warp and Thinkpad 390 at Jan. 9, 2016, 4:42 p.m...
ivelegacy wrote: have you already tried OS/2 Warp v3 ?


Ok here is how it went. After replacing all the old IBM drivers with the Dani versions it gives me an error "OS/2 is unable to operate your hard disk". I've used OS/2 in the past and was always impressed with it, but installation is a nightmare. Oh and I also tried the (sigh) eComStation demo and it freezes up while loading the floppy driver. Too bad they never added an interactive mode where you can confirm if you want certain drivers during the boot process.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of OS/2 Warp and Thinkpad 390 at Jan. 10, 2016, 12:28 p.m...
Sacrifist wrote: I had to log back in (after a 5-year absence hehe) to say that I had Warp 4 working on the 390E without any trouble, but that was when I was regularly using it around 2001-2004. I do remember using the updated disks, updated the firmware to the latest (1.55) and using the original 3.2GB hard disk. You sure it isn't a hardware problem?


Hmmm my hard drive is 20Gb. Maybe that is causing some problems? I don't know if the updated Dani drivers fixed the size limitation. The hardware seems solid. Right now XP is running on one laptop because its the only other device with a floppy drive. I swore I'd given up using floppies years ago ;)
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Real T1000/T2000 power consumption figures at Jan. 29, 2016, 11:39 a.m...
Well my Sunfire V245 with dual cpus and 16Gb of memory used around 300 watts on 120VAC. That was with two 73Gb drives and recording video from my surveillance camera. I think that was with only one power supply running so its probably more with the second one installed.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Giveaway: Indigo2 Extreme with SGI monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. at Feb. 4, 2016, 5:51 p.m...
I was going to take the offer but it sounds like he wants to give away everything at once. I'd have paid to ship the Indigo and then paid his doctor bill after heaving that CRT into the recycle bin.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Giveaway: Indigo2 Extreme with SGI monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. at Feb. 4, 2016, 8:28 p.m...
foetz wrote: why :shock:


Shipping probably costs more than the value of the display itself. Of course being SGI branded gives it some collectibility. I don't miss having a CRT one bit.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Indy with SCSI2SD setup? at March 13, 2016, 11:15 a.m...
Any difference in speed when using this compared to an "old fashioned" drive?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Octane2 serial port output at March 13, 2016, 7:31 p.m...
Remove the front cover and look at the bottom right. There should be a group of small greed LEDs. Which ones are lit? I have an Octane that died and no longer outputs anything.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Indy R5000 for sale - a steal at $1,100! at April 6, 2016, 4:39 p.m...
I like to offer insulting prices to people like that, say $19.99.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of IBM AS400 E series 170 at May 10, 2016, 5:52 p.m...
uunix wrote: qsecofr
qsecofr


Isn't one supposed to be all uppercase?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of IBM AS400 E series 170 at May 11, 2016, 6:14 a.m...
uunix wrote: This would not have been my plan of actions. Maybe though the disks are in the incorrect positions?
Where the disks mounted RO ?


I wonder if they were indeed written to? AS/400 formats the drives in really odd sector sizes of 520 bytes or even 528 bytes. The drives also have unique firmware with extra commands/features.

The bad part is qsecofr might not even be the correct account. It is the default but in AS/400 land there is no such thing as root. You can name the admin account anything.

If you really want to dig into the architecture there is a great book called "Inside the AS/400". These systems are a fundamental change from how typical hardware interacts with the operating system.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of POWER6 Linux and AIX at Nov. 4, 2016, 7:38 p.m...
Just wanted to say a few things about this box so far. Again Linux support is pretty bad. The only distros that seem to work are the ones you need to pay for, RedHat Enterprise 6.8 and Suse Enterprise 11. RedHat uses an ancient 2.6 kernel while Suse is newer. That brings me to the next major problem.

While you can install Linux to a SATA drive, you are not able to boot from said drive. The boot prom will not recognize a drive unless it has special IBM firmware. So you are limited to 146Gb SAS drives. Any larger capacity and there is suddenly an extra zero on the price. I guess its possible to boot from the DVD and specify the path to your hard drive but I don't know the right syntax now.

Anyone know of a work around or hack to bypass this nonsense?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of POWER6 Linux and AIX at Nov. 15, 2016, 5:56 a.m...
Alright I did some experimenting with a cheap SATA drive to see if anything can be done. The bottom line is whatever drive you use has to have the IBM firmware. In the open firmware is a program called "ioinfo" that does some low level drive utilities. With a SATA drive you can't even read the information out. It gives an error about can't open the drive in raw mode and googling the error gives zero results. System p and System x drives will work.

I have IBM i on a small AS/400 machine but let the license expire. You need a code after 70 days. It was interesting to install and play around with but at the end of the day its pretty boring. Everything is text based menus and there isn't a lot of third party software available. About the only thing you could use it for is OS administration or coding some native apps.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Xlc compiler demo install at Feb. 4, 2017, 7:48 p.m...
I'm trying to install the xlc 13.1.3 compiler demo on my AIX 7.1 box but its failing over a pre requisite package.

Code: Select all

MISSING REQUISITES:  The following filesets are required by one or more
of the selected filesets listed above.  They are not currently installed
and could not be found on the installation media.

bos.adt.libm 6.1.2.1                      # Fileset Update


The package bos.adt.libm is part of bos.rte.install.7.1.4.30. I downloaded and installed this package but still no go for xlc. It looks like the right packages are installed. The version listed above isn't even for my version of AIX.

Code: Select all

# lslpp -l|grep -i bos.adt
bos.adt.base              7.1.4.30  COMMITTED  Base Application Development
bos.adt.include           7.1.4.30  COMMITTED  Base Application Development
bos.adt.lib               7.1.2.15  COMMITTED  Base Application Development
bos.adt.base              7.1.4.30  COMMITTED  Base Application Development


Any ideas?
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Xlc compiler demo install at Feb. 5, 2017, 1:52 p.m...
Just wanted to say I installed the bos.adt package from disk 1 and xlc installed just fine. Thanks everyone.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of POWER6 Linux and AIX at March 30, 2017, 4:54 p.m...
Hey all, just a quick note. I have to retract my statement about Linux support now. I tried openSUSE and it installed without a hitch and gave me a working system (with an up to date kernel 4.10.1). Don't waste your time with Debian, its installer is buggy and you have to play games trying to get some 64 bit packages.

My only gripe now is the direction Linux is going. You can't use ifconfig anymore and now they don't include vital tools like nslookup or traceroute! So I bork my network config and can't even download the tools needed for troubleshooting. Oh and systemd is always the top resource on a completely idle system.
astouffer
Who joined Jan. 29, 2011, 5:52 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of POWER6 Linux and AIX at March 31, 2017, 10:16 a.m...
Raion-Fox wrote: Try NetBSD?


I'll see if the powerpc port boots but it looks to be more focused on Mac and Mac clone hardware. I'd love to run *BSD.