The collected works of chicaneuk - Page 4

Your router will (usually) act as a DNS server / forwarder, so just configure your I2 to point at that.

vishnu wrote:

mopar5150 wrote: ...they are usually hammered or missing parts.

It's a never ending source of amazement to me how bad of shape these things are in, given what their original owner's must have paid for them you'd think they would have cautioned their users against mishandling, if not deliberate abuse.

Agreed. Never fails to amaze me but as has been said subsequently I guess it's because they go to computer recyclers who just stack them up like crap and they proceed to get kicked around and beaten up. And we all know how brittle and non-durable the plastics on some models can be

I think I got lucky with my Octane - lived under someones desk in an office its whole life it seems. The skins are superb!

(And have a free bump in your Want To Buy, OP!)

Were there any nods to SGI anywhere? Was hoping there might be some workstations pictured on a desk, etc etc but I figure that'd be too much to hope for!

So sorry to hear of the terrible situation you find yourself in. It may sound a bit stupid but having been a internet forum user for some years now, you feel a friendship towards people on your most frequented forums.. even though they may rarely ever converse with them.. simply knowing they exist, seeing their name crop up in numerous threads, and just to share a common interest is enough that when something bad happens to one of them, it really strikes a chord. So I was genuinely saddened to read you've fallen quite quickly on difficult times.

I really hope you manage to land back on your feet again real soon and you can continue to indulge in your hobbies again in no time. All the best.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Silicon-Graph ... 1ea073fbb6

I stupidly bailed out at £40, not realising it would go for very little more. Skins look great, comes with the keyboard & mouse, etc. Seemed a nice little enthusiast owned bundle.

Not mine but.. this seems cheap for what it is!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SGI-4700-Serv ... 280180ebb0

Massive specification for the price of a new Mac Pro. Might need a slight overhaul to your home power wiring to drive it though

Amazing how an Indigo2 with MaxIMPACT almost manages to hit the power consumption of a well loaded Tezro! That's progress!

ivelegacy wrote: too many itanium cpus in that gear

can I ask you which is the Apps portfolio you had ? Any Irix App support ?
I do not know if it's possible to support Irix Apps on Itanium, and if it's reasonable

As I said, it's not mine. Just found it on eBay and thought it might be of interest to someone.

I walk 1.5 miles to work. Hell, I sometimes drive it just because I can

There was a chap who was uploading some great videos on youtube but they seem to have dried up in recent years.. I'd be amazed if he wasn't a user on here? Username on youtube is jpkiwigeek and an example of one of his videos is here:

My (at the time) recently acquired Indigo2 IMPACT failed about 4 months ago, and since then I've been patiently hoping a friend of mine will have some spare time to effect the capacitor replacement based on the guide published by Ian Mapleson - I've linked to the Google Cache copy as his copy seems dead? Clearly my friend is pretty busy as we've not been able to pin down a time to do this and I'd love to get my Indigo2 working in the meantime!

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... ent=safari

Anyway I did a bit of Googling around and turned up a company based in the UK who refurbish / overhaul power supplies. I looked on lists of known components and was surprised to see that the Indigo2 PSU I have is on a 'known list' of supplies they can quote for and work on:

http://www.advanceproductservices.co.uk/RepairsZ.html

Specifically the Zytec 22943507.

I've emailed to get an idea of a quote as I have no idea what the likely cost of this kind of work is. I'll update the thread if / when I get a response I guess it'll either go one of two ways - be surprisingly cheap, or more likely, horrifyingly expensive...

jan-jaap wrote: Ian moved his site: http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/i2psu.html

Ahh great - thanks

Just as a follow up, had a few good emails this morning from the chap - he was initially reluctant to quote without having examined the power supply but subsequently said subject to the kind of work needing doing, it could be anywhere from £80 to £200. The survey / quote process is free so he's advised me to send in the power supply so he can quote more accurately so I've decided to get it sent in as given the skill required to work on these types of power supplies, that seems very reasonable.

Also has to be a better option than getting a second hand power supply as it'll come warrantied and there's nothing to say a second hand PSU wouldn't fail in exactly the same way.

Will keep you posted!

I'm sure if he can fix this one for a fair price, he could end up seeing some good repeat business - I certainly read plenty about dead power supplies on this place!

Update.

Good news is they say that've repaired the power supply. Bad news is the bill is £190, and that I wasn't actually asked if I wanted to proceed - it was just done. So I pretty much have to pay it. In hindsight I'm not sure I would have gone ahead with it really as I don't think an Indigo2 IMPACT is an especially valuable system, but then looking around I doubt I could have found a good second hand power supply for anything less than £100 and at least this is warrantied for 12 months.

Ho hum. It'll be nice to have it running again I suppose!

I'll report back when I receive it and of course first time I fire the IMPACT back up!

Actually the bill was nearer £230 once VAT was taken into consideration. Jesus.

I paid less than half that for the complete Indigo2 IMPACT system with a monitor, keyboard & mouse, external CD ROM drive, external DAT drive and external hard drive.

I've no idea yet. I'm hoping there will be some kind of report in the box when it arrives on Monday. I will keep you updated.

Hi folks.. sorry this is probably an extremely micky mouse question - I'm not a long term UNIX kinda guy and just dabble with SGI stuff for a bit of fun.

I've just setup a basic, clean IRIX 6.5.22 on my Indy (175MHz R4400) and gone to install some Nekoware apps onto the system and to my surprise they're all saying upon launching 'Program not supported by architecture'.

I did tar up the packages from my Octane and copy them over the network so wondering if either something happened in transit to corrupt them, or whether something happened to the packages on the source host that makes them unusable on other architectures?!

Thanks in advance for any ideas!


OK - so the Indy despite the R4400 CPU is MIPS3. This explains why. Weird.

Sorry for the pointless thread

For some reason I was sure I'd had Nekoware MIPS4 packages working on my Indigo2 but then realised it might have been my R10K one which of course is MIPS4.

Wouldn't mind scoring IRIX 6.2 for my Indy but alas I only have a 6.5 media set so it has to just manage with that... bit slow, but just about usable

Where from? Any search for IRIX on eBay brings up ludicrously overpriced CD sets. Not that I need it as I do have a full IRIX install set, but just think you managed to score a bargain.

Great success. Now if I could just find IRIX 6.2... hmmm....

Really wish SGI (or whatever is left of them) would just make old versions of IRIX available to download, or sanction something like Nekochan hosting copies of them. Seriously it's of no interest to anyone but hobbyists like us.

Works good for me using Chrome on Android? And there aint nowt wrong with a nice stout!! I prefer stouts / porters to pretty much anything else beer wise and I'm only in my mid 30's

There is no breakdown on what has been done but they've certainly had the supply open.. when I sent it off I couldn't even see inside as there was so much crap and fluff in there, but peering inside now it looks pristine. So that's promising at least. Will be trying it out when I get home this evening so... will report back.

yetanother**ixuser wrote: individuals who insits on using a SMAAAAART PHOOOOOONE to browse nekochan.net, will get their entitlement to use this site removed. same goes for using this spydevices inside a pub.

I know this is a retro computing forum but... I'm not going to make any apologies for using a modern smart phone.

The excitement quickly turned to the usual kind of predictable disappointment as I hooked up the power supply, and pressed the power button to be greeted by nothing.

On closer inspection I can see basically the same symptom as before... the first time mains is applied and the power button is pushed the front intake fan spins for all of a second and nothing else happens. No output on the serial port.

I guess the power supply is going back to them then, as I'm not sure it could be anything else to blame?

Problem is not having any spares or identical systems to test swapping parts round on to rule them out.

If they repaired the PSU, presumably they tested it was working before they sent it back.

That would be a quite reasonable assumption to make - however I'm not sure that's the case. I got this line in one of the emails from the company:

"We have managed to repair it but we can’t actually test it here – you will need to do that at your end."

Mkayyy... I mean I'm sure they tested it in so much as they were able to verify that it should work and not actually blow up my computer?!

Anyway - the main reason I sent the supply off to a company to look into it as I basically know nothing about electronics. So being able to test rails, etc on the board myself is just not within my skill set.

On the plus side a friend local to me does, it turns out, have an R10 Impact Indigo2 as well so I think he's up for a bit of a component swapping session one evening to work out if indeed it is still the power supply, or whether it's something else like a component on the mainboard.

As another follow up I did a lot of searching through Nekochan to find out about what power supplies are compatible and what are not so that when I go to my friends place, I can at least verify if the PSU in his Indigo2 is suitable to test in my system or not. Found an extremely helpful / holy grail kind of email that breaks it down quite nicely which I thought might be useful to be referenced here, in case anyone goes through the same fun as me:

There are five power supplies available for an Indigo2:

Part number: 9430814
Suitable for Extreme, XZ and XL graphics on R4400 and R8000 machines.

Part number: 060-8001-xxx
Suitable for single-head (Solid, High or Max) IMPACT graphics and
dual-head Solid/Solid IMPACT graphics on R4400 machines. Can also
be used in place of 9430814.

Part number: 060-0021-xxx
Suitable for dual-head (Max/Solid, High/High or High/Solid) IMPACT
graphics on R4400 machines. Can also be used in place of 9430814
or 060-8001-xxx.

Part number: 060-8002-xxx
Suitable for single-head IMPACT graphics on R10000 machines.

Part number: 060-0027-xxx
Suitable for dual-head IMPACT graphics on R10000 machines. Can
also be used in place of 060-8002-xxx.

On the plus side, if I never manage to get this PSU fully repaired and decide to source another second hand one, I at least know I can use the cheaper 060-8002-xxx type one as I've no intentions to 'double head' my Indigo2 and just plan to stick with the single HighIMPACT card I currently have. The supply I own and sent off for repair is the 060-0027-xxx type suitable for a double head configuration.

Welcome!

Hoping someone will read this and be able to advise.

I do actually have a second Indigo2 but it's an R4400 non-IMPACT model so only has the 9430814 power supply. So that I can simply confirm the power supply is the component to blame, can anyone answer if it is safe for me to remove all expansion cards / drives, etc to absolutely minimise the load for the supply and fit that supply to my non-working R10K Indigo2? I figure the connections to the mainboard are the same and that the blue extension cable out of the supply is only there to provide additional power for the IMPACT cards. So surely with no graphics card fitted the PSU should have enough juice to power up an R10K and I can just verify it's alive using the serial port?

This would save me having to drag my system over to my friends house for a fault finding session.

Thanks in advance.

So uunix and I scored a good price on a brace of Indigo's (R4000 100MHz, 128MB RAM, XZ Graphics) and we're going to be taking one each.

I took to tinkering with mine last night and ran into some interesting quirks.

Firstly with no HDD installed in the internal slots, the system won't get to the prom. It powers on, makes the chime, and then just dumps some horrible kernel panic type error message that starts with an: 'Exception: <vector=UTLB Miss>'

Even if I have an external drive plugged into the external SCSI port, it throws the same error. Without an internal disk plugged in, it's not happy. As soon as I have a legit disk installed internally, it'll come up to the PROM OK.

Secondly. Compatibility of disks for the internal slots. A number of disks which I would have expected to work just sit and endlessly make a weird, weak half powering up type noise but... never actually spin up. The prom eventually comes up after a small delay, and doesn't find the disk. I eventually managed to find a single drive which would actually work and power up (old 4GB Seagate jobbie) - several others just made this same weird noise.

Thirdly.. I put in a 15,000RPM drive connected via a 50pin to 80pin SCSI convertor (which works just fine in my Indigo2 and my Indy) and the system won't even switch on... is a 15K drive too much for the PSU in the Indigo?

I did try searching but information on Indigo's seems a little thin unfortunately!

I had a 300MHz R10K O2 and have to say it never felt that quick to me. Always felt my R10K Indigo2 IMPACT felt like a faster system overall. Couldn't say why, and whether it was all in my mind though as I never did any benchmarks or anything to back that up.

Doesn't seem to be the same issue uunix - my similar sounding error message occurs without even going near loading anything off a disk. Once it has a disk in that it's happy with, it will come up to the PROM fine and seems to boot into 'fx' or the IRIX installer OK. The external SCSI port does indeed have a terminator on it.

Looks like I'll have to try crack it open and reseat everything just to rule that out. I won't lose too much sleep if there's something wrong with it as it wasn't an expensive acquisition but would be nice to know it's in good health!

Sadly multimeters and oscilloscopes are not something I've ever owned or been familiar with - not an electronics guy at all

I tried the power supply from the other system and the behaviour is the same.

I reseated the main and graphics boards and again, no change. At this point the system is happily booting IRIX 6.2 with the only disk I did manage to get working, so I'm fairly reluctant to start pulling anything else further apart so have just reassembled it and shelved it. I guess my Indigo has got some.. um.. quirks which I'll just have to live with!

I haven't mate. Packed all the kit away again as the spare room will be getting used as a bedroom over the weekend, but will try remember to fire yours up minus disks and see what happens next week!

We are not off to a good start between us with these two machines are we!

LOL - are you serious about the porn? Haha The drive in my system was dead so I never got to find out of there was anything interesting on it!

Beast! Nice Octane

Criminal if it has been scrapped!