The collected works of chicago-joe

My systems are:

Octane 360MHz MXE
Origin200 2x270MHz
O2 RM5200 300MHz
O2 R12000 270MHz

Sun Ultra2 3D 2x300MHz
Sun Ultra10 360MHz

Alpha PW500au SUSE Linux / Win2000

A couple of PCs for games.

"He who dies with the most toys wins"

I'm not there yet but, I'm working on it.

Joe

So this means that live installing 6.5.21 from pre 6.5.21 IRIX is not possible without this patch. Hmmm, makes you wonder about what happens next....

While on the telephone with SGI tech support a couple of weeks ago, the rep told me that after 6.5.21, the -m and -f streams of IRIX are going to be combined into a single release. I don't know if this relates to this change but...

BTW - He didn't say this was a "big" secret and from the way he said it, it sounded like a good thing.

Joe

The cpu boards come back from North Carolina this morning, I put on the reprogrammed EPROM, adjusted the voltage reg for 1.2V on the core, put it in my O2 and:

o2 11% hinv -mv
CPU: QED RM7000 Processor Chip Revision: 5.1
FPU: QED RM7000 Floating Point Coprocessor Revision: 5.0
1 602 MHZ IP32 Processor
Main memory size: 512 Mbytes
Secondary unified instruction/data cache size: 256 Kbytes on Processor 0
Ternary unified instruction/data cache size: 1 Mbyte on Processor 0
Instruction cache size: 16 Kbytes
Data cache size: 16 Kbytes
FLASH PROM version 4.18
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version ADAPTEC 7880
Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI controller 0 (unit 1)
CDROM: unit 4 on SCSI controller 0
Integral SCSI controller 1: Version ADAPTEC 7880
On-board serial ports: tty1
On-board serial ports: tty2
On-board EPP/ECP parallel port
CRM graphics installed
Integral Ethernet: ec0, version 1
Iris Audio Processor: version A3 revision 0
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x9004, device 0x8078) PCI slot 1
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x9004, device 0x8078) PCI slot 2
Video: MVP unit 0 version 1.4
AV: AV1 Card version 1, O2Cam type 1 version 0 connected.
Vice: TRE
o2 12%

The only thing I have seen so far, is a warning at startup about the "fast clock" not being able to run faster than 1000Hz
I'm not sure what this means, but I will look into it.

I ran some quick numbers:

mpeg movie conversion:
350 - 2.72 min
R12K-270 - 2.60 min
400 - 2.42 min
600 - 1.70 min

xmahjongg-3.6.1 gmake:
R12K-270 - 2.25 min
350 - 1.97 min
400 - 1.73 min
600 - 1.27 min

These were quick numbers, I will rerun them later this weekend.

I will put some pictures of the finished cpu boards up on my website later.

Joe

Here are a couple of pictures of the cpu boards without the cpu heatsinks. (these pictures are about 100KB each in size)

This is the RM7000A-350 MHz board upgraded to an RM7000A-400MHz.
http://users.rcn.com/joepage/rm7000_400.jpg

This is the RM5271-300MHz board upgraded to an RM7000C-600MHz.
http://users.rcn.com/joepage/rm7000_600.jpg
In the red box on the left of the picture is the PROM, this sets-up the cpu chip at start-up and has to be programmed for the specific cpu chip. The red box on the right side is the cpu core voltage regulator, there are two small resisters to its left that have to be changed so the output to the core is 1.20V.

I'm doing all this on the 600MHz system and it has been rock solid all evening (about 5 hours) and Mozilla now feels very close in speed to my 360MHz Octane. That means it's now useable as a browser.

Joe

Shtoink Wrote

Are these proc with or w/o cache? I couldn't tell if the second heatsink was for the cache or they were PC processors. You can see some blank spots where there is an option for cache modules on either side of the proc, but wasn't sure there was a second mounting point that had something resident.

The 7000A/C cpu chips have 16K/16K pri. cache and 256K sec. cache (running at full proc. speed) on the chip, and the 5271 had 32K/32K pri. cache on the chip. There is 1MB cache on the cpu board running at 60MHz that is ter. cache for the 7000 and sec. cache for the 5271.

As you look at the picture of the cpu board, the heatsink is on the VLSI controller chip on the right side of the picture, and the cache chips (3) are mounted on the bottom of the board.

Joe

I ran some quick numbers:

mpeg movie conversion:
350 - 2.72 min
R12K-270 - 2.60 min
400 - 2.42 min
600 - 1.70 min

xmahjongg-3.6.1 gmake:
R12K-270 - 2.25 min
350 - 1.97 min
400 - 1.73 min
600 - 1.27 min

A few people (including one with an SGI email address) emailed me asking how these numbers would compare to a more "mainstream" O2. I put my original 200MHz cpu board back in and ran the same two tests:

mpeg movie conversion:
200 - 6.53 min
R5K-300 - 4.53 min
350 - 2.72 min
R12K-270 - 2.60 min
400 - 2.42 min
600 - 1.70 min

xmahjongg-3.6.1 gmake:
200 - 3.60 min
R5K-300 - 2.80 min
R12K-270 - 2.25 min
350 - 1.97 min
400 - 1.73 min
600 - 1.27 min

Joe

radrob wrote

so test after test.. have you checked the termal differences between
r7k@350 and your 400-600mhz monsters?

As the cpu speed goes up the core voltage goes down and the amps go up, so, the wattage (heat dissipated) of the chip stays about the same, about 3W. After 5 days of running (with the stock heatsink from the 300MHz chip) the 600MHz chip was no more than warm to the touch, a little less warm than the memory chips.

Joe

I wanted to answer this earlier but I have been out of town for the last couple of weeks for work.

radrob wrote

but i think a lot of o2 users it's still thinking:

..if i'll want upgrade my o2 RM5200 cpu board...

-what i must do?
-the mods it's reversible? ...i'll get back the parts changed?
-have you detected "floating point" problems?
-what's the price?
-news from the 900mhz ?

The first thing to do is get an O2 300MHz or 350MHz cpu board. The cpu boards I have upgraded have both been FAB no 034-1451-004 rev A (this is the p/n of the cpu board itself, not the entire cpu board assy with parts) I know there is at least one other rev of this cpu board (it looks slightly different) that I have seen on eBay, I see no reason why it would not work to be upgraded, but I can make no promises.

Contact PMC-Sierra http://www.pmcsierra.com/ and they will put you in contact with your local agent. You will need an RM7000C 600MHz chip, they are about US$140 each + S&H.

Contact me through my e-mail (Nekochan.net members can find this under the "memberlist" link at the top of the page) and I will sell you a preprogrammed PROM chip (for the 600MHz cpu), or you can arrange to send me the cpu board and I will put the chip on for you.

You will need to adjust the core voltage regulator from 2.50V to 1.20V by changing the resisters (R50 and R46) on the cpu board. If you arrange for me to put the PROM chip on the board, I will do this at the same time.

Contact a pcb repair shop and explain to them you have a pcb that you need to replace a "BGA" (ball grid array) cpu chip, you have the chip, and you will expect a guaranty of their work. This should cost about $100 - $175 per board + S&H.

Put the heatsink back on the (new) cpu and you should be ready to go.

In theory you should be able to reverse this mod, but there is a finite number of times you can solder and unsolder from a pcb.

I would ask for the original parts back, ther belong to you.

I have seen no problems at all (floating point or otherwise) from either the 400MHz or 600MHz boards and they have been running pretty much 24/7 since I received and installed them in my O2s.

The samples of the 900MHz chip are going to "big" customers, something about thousands of chips bought per month.

My plan is to document this upgrade process on my website, this is a very busy work time of the year for me so I will do this as quickly as possible.

I am starting on my next project which is to upgrade the R10K 175/195MHz cpu chips to R12K 300MHz chips on the O2 cpu boards. I found a cache of new old stock R12K 300MHz chips for a very good price and this looks like a very "doable" upgrade, I will keep everyone posted.

Joe

Shtoink Wrote

Joe, you are a GOD among men...

That's a nice thing to say, but hardly the case.

It has more to do with the lil' woman working 3rd shift as a pharmacist, so now my afternoon / evening hobbies have to be quiet ones so she can sleep.

I would have said the same about all of you that port and post all this great software, I just can't seem to pick it up. I've been told that, in general, people either "get" hardware or software, it is pretty rare to be very good with both. I guess it just goes to show that it does take all kinds to make the world go 'round.

Joe

warerat wrote

I'd be compelled to rip the R10K out of my Octane and plug a R12K in there instead.

In the O2s, the R10K and R12K (up to 300MHz) cpu chips use a surface array pin system and fit into a socket of sorts, so they are not soldered to the cpu board like the R5K and R7K chips. This would make changing the cpu chips themselves an easy task. The R10K/R12K boards use the same PLL and xtal setup for the external cpu clock but they use a set of 64 tiny resistors tied to the input pins of the cpu to set the initial conditions of the cpu. (the same thing the PROM chip does on the R5K/R7K cpu board) The catch is: the resistors are tiny and not labeled so I am having to map the the individual resistors to the cpu pins so I can figure out which ones to change to set the correct cpu speed. I have taken apart my Octane R12K 360MHz cpu board and it is the same type of setup, just that all the resistors are in different places. I would guess that the I2 cpu board works the same way. So upgrading the O2 or Octane cpu board (at least to an R12K 300MHz) should be a reasonable project. If someone wants to take the cpu board out of their I2, remove the heatsink assy and take some high res pictures, I would be interested to see if it is setup the same way as the O2 and Octane cpu boards.

Joe

Octane Wrote

Is this a question of saving money....

I just knew it, someone would come along and bring up ideas like "value" and worse yet "practical", it always happens.

The new old stock supply of R12K-300MHz chips I found are US$133 each + S&H. These should drop right into any of the 175, 195, 225 or 250MHz R10K cpu boards for the O2 so far as I can tell, you would also need to change a few resistors and adjust the core voltage regulator. It looks like the same situation for the Octane cpu boards, so I think value wise it makes a lot of sense (esp. for the O2) as you would be getting a lot of bang for the buck. The upgrade to a 600MHz R7k chip is going to be more like $300 - $350 plus the 300/350MHz doner card, but you would have an O2 with more performance than the SGI stock R12K-400MHz cpu.

I did the original mod on the O2 to learn how to do it and understand more about the hardware, but now there is NO way I could go back to the 200MHz chip. My O2 is now a very usable day to day machine (dare I say responsive) even with Mozilla.

In lots of 45, the R12K-300 chips are $110 each, if the upgrade goes well and there is enough interest, I might try and organize a "group buy" of the remaining chips (I bought 5 and there are 45 left) so that everone can get a better deal.

Joe

Octane Wrote

I was trying to point out that most people do not mod computers to save money, but rather for the joy of modding.

Sorry, that was my bad attempt at making a joke. That was my point exactly, I did it for the challenge (and for a faster machine).


SparcV Wrote

hmm... swaping the pair of 195 r10k's in my octane for a pair of r12k 300's that would be so worth it. Im assuming if its easy to mod a dual module the same way as a single.

That is something I had not thought of, I have seen several dual 195MHz Octane cpus on eBay for $100 - $200 over the last few months. This seems well worth looking into!

Joe

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.

That's a good point, but there no electrolytic caps on the cpu board. If you look closely at the picture http://users.rcn.com/joepage/rm7000_400.jpg all the larger power decoupling / filter caps are tantalum and all the smaller digital signal decoupling / filter caps are mica or ceramic. All these types are good for up to 85C and nothing on the board is more than warm to the touch. The power coming into the cpu board is through a TI uc382td voltage regulator, so there should be no issues with caps on the motherboard or in the power supply.

One thing that is clear, as I have worked more with the SGI equipment on the board level, is the almost obsessive overengineering of the boards. I have little doubt that these boards will easily take the RM7900-900MHz cpu chips (when I get them) and still have a life of years.

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.

Brombear Wrote

you mentioned the prices for R12K processor. What is needed to find out if an R14K could be fited ?

The R12K-360 and 400 chips went back to being soldered to the cpu board. It might be possible to remove the socket and solder the cpu chip directly to the board, but without one to look at, I cannot be sure. I have not seen an R14K cpu board so I don't know how they are put together. The R12K 400MHz chips are about $165 - $185 each and are easily available (they were also made by NEC). I have not been able to find ANY information on the R14K or R16K cips anywhere (or raw chips for that matter). If anyone has data , spec or user sheets, or even knows who made them, I would very much like to see that information.

Joe

Rev.Bubba Wrote

How much is the 900MHz model?

It's not a shipping product yet. PMC-Sierra has been sending out a very few pre-production samples to their biggest customers, and that ain't me. I'm not sure I even want to work with a chip in its pre-production state, that would be quite a bit of money and time only to find there were bugs in the early rev. I will most likely wait until it is a shipping product and they have some stability information before I mess with trying to upgrade a cpu board to it. I appreciate the offer though.


assyrix wrote

I am just concerned about the elcas since I had several of them exploding on me in an VW320 power supply and motherboard after upgrading the box to a single 1GHz CPU (mobo rev. 007B), destroying all PCI-cards.

The 7000C-600 chip draws 4W at 1.2V core voltage
The 7900-900 chip draws 5W at 1.2V core voltage
The 5271-300 chip draws 4.5W at 2.5V core voltage
The R12K-300 chip draws 30W at 2.6V core voltage
The R10K-195 chip draws 30W at 3.3V core voltage
I have 3 O2s: a 5K-200, a 10K-250 and a 12K-300 (in their original forms) and they all use the same power supply, the Sony APS-90 Rev. N. Clearly the power supply is built to handle the power draw of any of these cpu chips. The 7K-600 chip is only warm to the touch after 5 days of running, the 12K-300 is much warmer but there is also a much larger space inside the computer without the second drive bay so there is better air circulation and I can see NO reason to cut sheetmetal or plastic. From the cpu power data, the temperatures I have observerd and the premium quality of the O2 componets, I don't believe any of these upgrades are going to cause catastrophic failure of any of the electrolytic caps. (and the Octane is even more overengineered than the O2) On the other hand, O2 and Octane power supplies are on eBay all the time at very reasonable prices, so having a spare might be a good idea even if you don't mod.

Joe

For anyone looking for a company to remove the old cpu chip and install a new one (with a guarantee of their work):

Advanced Electronic Services (336)386-1000 http://www.industrialelectronicrepair.com/
contact person: Joe Hughes (866) 789-7909
contact email: mailto:[email protected]

You will need to tell him you want the same work done (PMC-Sierra cpu chip changed on a pcb) as Joe Page had done. Their equipment requires some unique setting for this chip as the "shell" is a copper/polymer laminate, this way they can look-up the settings they used on mine and save everyone a lot of time.

-they guarantee their work
-they do deal with individuals
- you can pay with a credit card
- they will work internationaly

Joe

LoWeN Wrote

would an O2 with an R5K@180Mhz be a "good base" for that mod.

The cpu chips on the 180 and 200MHz O2s are V5000 series chips made by NEC and are completely different, swapping a RM7000C chip for a V5000 chip is out of the question. This was my answer to a question Shtoink had earlier on the same subject:

I don't know much about Indys, but the 180 and 200MHz O2s use the NEC v5000 cpu chip. I'll bet the R5000 series Indys use the same series of cpu chips. NEC made a V5000A series chip (pin and command compatable) that maxed out at 266MHz and I have seen these around so they are available. I downloaded the data and use guides for both and the only problems I see are that the 150, 180, 200 cpus use a 3.3V core and IO voltage and the 250 and 266 cpus use a 2.5V core and 3.3V IO voltage and there is not a 2.5 mutiplier for the core speed. I don't know how hard it would be to modify the voltages on the cpu card, if it could be done at all. I don't know what would happen if you ran a 266 chip with 3.3V on the core, it would get HOT so you would have to cool it well and I would think the chip life would be shorter but it might still last quite a while and should be much better in performance. To get around the core speed problem you would have to change the control resistors on the PLL chip (ICS9159-10) to change the Xtal to output ratio to 93/20 (66MHz X cpu mult of 4) to run the chip at 266MHz, this should be easy enough to do. I might try this with an O2 200MHz cpu board, I would think if it works on an O2 board it could be made to work on an Indy cpu board.

At some point I want to try upgrading one of the 180/200MHz boards to a 266MHz cpu, but the R7K chips are larger in size and have more pins so they cannot be swapped for the V5K series chips.

Joe

I have (tried to) organize all the 600MHz O2 CPU upgrade into a .pdf file to make everything a little more coherent, I hope it is useful.

http://users.rcn.com/joepage/o2_600mhz.pdf

Nekochan Net user radrob is going to mirror this file on his website as well.

Joe

Stonent Wrote

So... I am assuming the actual socketed chip is the same among the Indy and O2 right?

canavan wrote

Voltages will be the smallest problem, as opposed to packaging - O2 and Indy use PGA CPUs, the VR5000A is available as BGA only, with a different package size (29mm edge length vs 47mm) and different pin count.

The 200MHz O2 CPU board uses the V5000 CPU chip in the BGA package, I have not seen a 180MHz CPU board but I would think it also uses the BPG form of the chip. If the Indy uses the PGA chip, it looks like you could at least upgrade to a 200MHz CPU and maybe overclock that by a few MHz. http://www.necelam.com/microprocessors/uPD30500-200.cfm It should be possible to upgrade a 200MHz O2 to the 266MHz chip since they are the same form factor, as long as the extra voltage on the core doesn't damage the V5000A chip.

Joe

Hi All,

Yes, I'm at it again, I modded a 250MHz R10K cpu module to a 300MHz R12K and then overclocked it to 350MHz. Pretty much all it takes is changing the cpu from a 250MHz chip to a 300MHz R12K chip and changing 2 of the tiny resistors on the bottom of the cpu module. It runs much warmer than the stock module so I changed the fan on the top of the cpu module to one with about twice the air flow.

o2 1% hinv
CPU: MIPS R12000 Processor Chip Revision: 2.3
FPU: MIPS R12010 Floating Point Chip Revision: 0.0
1 350 MHZ IP32 Processor
Main memory size: 448 Mbytes
Secondary unified instruction/data cache size: 1 Mbyte on Processor 0
Instruction cache size: 32 Kbytes
Data cache size: 32 Kbytes
FLASH PROM version 4.18
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version ADAPTEC 7880
Disk drive: unit 2 on SCSI controller 0
CDROM: unit 4 on SCSI controller 0
Integral SCSI controller 1: Version ADAPTEC 7880
On-board serial ports: tty1
On-board serial ports: tty2
On-board EPP/ECP parallel port
CRM graphics installed
Integral Ethernet: ec0, version 1
Iris Audio Processor: version A3 revision 0
Video: MVP unit 0 version 1.4
AV: AV1 Card version 1, O2Cam type 1 version 0 connected.
Vice: TRE
o2

Some quick numbers:

Media Convert Test (all R10/12K cpus)
250MHz - stock - 2.80min
300MHz - modded - 2.58min
350MHz -mod & OC - 2.12min
400MHz - stock -1.82min

mahjongg / gmake (from SGI Freeware site)
250MHz - stock - 2.63min
300MHz - modded - 2.32min
350MHz -mod & OC - 2.14min
400MHz - stock -1.73min

It's been running all day now, I've done two 3 hour media convert tests for stress and the system has been 100% stable.

This module has 6nS cache chips (as does my 270MHz that I also modded to a 300MHz) and I would guess that a 225MHz module could be modded/OC to a certain point (don't know how far), the limiting factor will probably be the speed of the cache chips. 195MHz and below modules will require adjusting the cpu chip core voltage (not to hard) and mapping the resistors from the VSLI controller chip. I don't have a 195MHz cpu module, but the work should be able to be done in a few hours.

If anyone want to try this, let me know and I will post pictures showing which resistors to change.

Joe

acronym wrote

there's pictures on the 600mhz thread for moving the resistors to get to 300mhz.

It's not the same resistors as the 270 to 300MHz mod, I'll post a picture this weekend of the modded / overclocked module and the resistors to change.

Joe

I know this is a little late, but I have the information (pictures) on which resistors to change on a 250MHz O2 CPU module to mod it to 300MHz and/or overclock it to 350MHz.

This is standard NEC VR10K/12K CPU chip control, so bits 9 through 12 set the chip's SysClk multiplier of the module's oscillator (100MHz) to get the Pclock frequency for the CPU chip core. please review this thread for the basics viewtopic.php?t=1230&start=0

http://users.rcn.com/joepage/o2r10k.jpg This is the bottom of a 250MHz CPU module. The two bits we need to change are bit 11 and/or 12.

http://users.rcn.com/joepage/o2r10kzm1.jpg bit 12 - Changing bit 12 will clock the module to 300MHz, it is the 4th resistor up from the bottom of this group, move it from the right set of contacts to the left set of contacts.

http://users.rcn.com/joepage/o2r10kzm2.jpg bit 11 - Changing bit 11 will overclock the module to 350MHz, move it from the left set of contacts to the right set of contacts.

please note: the 250MHz module running at 300MHz (with a 300MHz CPU chip and the stock fan) was not much warmer than the stock 250MHz module, the overclocked module was very warm (way to warm) so I changed the stock 60x60x10mm fan (on the module) to a 60x60x20mm fan that had about twice the air flow and it dropped the module temperature quite a bit. I have had this one running for about 3 weeks now without any problems.

Joe

miunk wrote

Since there are no takers and I am too lazy for eBay. I'll part these machines out at low prices.
RM5200 300Mhz Processor: $150

I would like this if no one else has called it first, I'll leave you a PM.

Joe

Hi All,

I have found a new shop here in Chicago to do the 600MHz CPU chip rework, I have sent them one set of 4 boards and have been happy with their service. I am going to send them another set of boards (including one I am going to do some cache mods to) this Tuesday, if they do a good job on this set as well, I will post their contact information. I don't want to be hard to get along with by not posting the shop's information, but I want to be sure I'm giving people information for a reliable rework shop.

For the O2, when you start the computer the CPU board reads the data from the boot-mode PROM chip (the Xilinx chip) into specific registers on the CPU chip and does a Power On Self Test (POST). If the POST passes, the ip32PROM then reads that data from the specific CPU chip registers and checks that the CPU module is returning data values the ip32PROM recognizes and passes those data values on to IRIX for the system. The problem is that the data is in different registers and has different values for the RM7900 series of chips than the RM7000 series of chips. The RM7000 chips and the RM5270 chips use the same data registers so the ip32PROM sees the RM7000 chips just fine, not so with the RM7900 chips. When ip32PROM does not see a data value it recognizes (for whatever reason), it halts the system at that point.
So at least three things need to be done to get this project back on track:
1.) a way needs to be found to tell the ip32PROM the correct registers to look in for the data on the RM7900 CPU chip
2.) new values need to be added to the ip32PROM's list of possibe data values for a couple of items
3.) the setup for the L2 cache in the ip32PROM needs to be changed as the RM7900 chips start the cache memory at a different memory location than the RM7000 chips
If there is someone out there who understands the ip32PROM and how to modify the bin file, I will help them any way I can but the software part of this is beyond my understanding.

The situation with the cache upgrade is this: a rework shop is going to charge about $30 per cache chip (9 or 5 chips) to remove the old chips and another $30 per chip (5 chips) to put the new ones on. The new cache chips are about $25 each (5 chips) so the total to mod one 250MHz 1M cache Octane CPU module to 4M cache will be about $545 plus S&H, double that for a dual processor CPU module. The cost for a 360MHz Octane or 400MHz O2 module modded to 4M cache will be about $425 plus S&H. It goes without saying that this can get to be an expensive hobby very fast. I have been working on a way to do this cache rework in a more reasonable money way, at this point I just can't justify the "out of pocket" expense of several hundred dollars for something I don't know will work. I'm working on a couple ideas on this though, as I would very much like to see the performance difference of a 1 or 2M cache module vs a 4M cache module.

Anyone who has ideas or would like to help, please jump in, there is plenty of room in the O2 pool.

Joe

Diego Wrote

So, the first group of thing neededs:

1) registers to look in for the data on the RM7900 CPU chip
2) new values to be add to the ip32PROM's list
3) RM7900 L2 cache memory location

Items 1 and 2 are not a problem, I know the new string values and which registers they are in. I was thinking that for the time being the L2 cache could be turned off. No L2 would hurt the overall performance of the system, but it might make first steps of the ip32PROM mod easier to get going. Once we had a running system, the cache issue could be addressed (no pun intended).

As far as the test bed goes, I still have the 2 835MHz RM7900 chips and I would be happy to send 1 to someone that wanted to put it on an O2 CPU module to do the testing.

Joe

Diego wrote: I'm very interested on such mod; my only question is:

What is the lastest state reached by an O2 currently with the RM7900 mounted on his motherboard? ...I mean, what is the "last screen", before the die?

I could be interested; even paying any costs that you could have for this. My other question: could this burn on fire my motherboard?

Seriously! Could it be possibly? ...Or it is just a matter of:

"No O2(s) were harmed during this debugging" ???

Diego,

I had the 835MHz chip mounted on a standard (older style) RM5271-300MHz based O2 CPU board. When the computer was started, the CPU module would make it most of the way through the POST and then stop the system with a red blinking LED. I never tried starting the system with a serial console attached, it never crossed my mind. After I ran out of patience with the 835 chip, I had it removed and a 600MHz chip put on and that CPU module is still running today so I don't see any problems with it "killing" the O2 CPU module or the motherboard. If I were going to use the 835 chip again, I would use a socket and header setup with a 600 chip on one header and an 835 chip on another and the PROM chip in a socket so I could have a useful O2 when I wasn't working on modding the ip32PROM program. The socket/header setup would cost more up front, but would be far more practicle in the long run.

FWIW - These are the same issues with the SandCraft CPU chips. If the ip32PROM could be hacked to make the PMC-Sierra RM7900 chips work, then the SandCraft chips could be made to work as well.

Joe

foetz wrote:

in my folder. irix64 version is highly optimized.

Wow, thanks!
I'll try this on the O2100 this weekend.

Joe

TeeTylerToe Wrote:

for instance, that place stocks
30710AF5360VR1200
I'm guessing that it's the wrong package, or it somehow wouldn't be compatible with the O2 board.

The 225 and 250MHz R10K and 275 and 300MHz R12K are 100% pin and command compatable and can be interchanged by changing the SysClk multiplier on the CPU board.

The 360 and 400MHz R12KA chips have a different pinout (soldered to the PC board) and a lower core voltage requirement.

I have not tried overclocking a 250MHz chip to 300MHz, if it works, expect the CPU chip to run very hot.

Joe

I see the scheduler's url is: http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi </scheduler_url

Does this mean I need to have SSL installed on my computer to get work units from the scheduler? Sorry, I've always run this from the command line.

Joe

nekonoko wrote:

Nope - nothing to do with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) - that's just the abbreviation for Berkeley's Space Sciences Lab (SSL).

Wow, real time answers.

Thanks,

Joe