The collected works of cris_adder - Page 1

Saw this older thread and thought to add to the list...

Became interested in SGI's when a company went broke in the mid to late 90's sold all the Internet servers. Grabbed two SGI Indy's at the time. They came with two SGI monitors, full Irix CD sets, keyboards, and external SGI CD ROM. From memory paid only a few hundred for them at the time, which was pretty good when they were only a few years old.


Could not get over how well integrated the graphical interface was with the Unix command line way of doing things. Once you get hooked by an SGI, they are hard to get away from...
From other posts on the forum it seems that the stand 13W3 adapter that is typical for a SUN will not work on the Octane... take a look at these posts about the subject and it might help:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16720339

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16720341
Just wanted to ask what are the parts that need to be changed/upgraded on an Indigo 3K to get it to a 4K. From what I have searched and read the following is required as these are all specific to 3K and 4K series:

    Motherboard (of course)
    Backplane
    Power Supply

Is there anything else missing, or any other gotcha's?

The Indigo has some parts missing, so thought the best option was to upgrade it...

... thanks...
Thanks for your efforts in doing this ..!
Just wanted to ask if the Irix 5.3 variants are backward compatible on hardware. For example Irix 5.3 for R5000 will also on R4600, R4400, etc...

Thanks..
Thanks... this help to explain why my Indgio2 impact Irix 5.3 is has weird behavior on my Indy...

Cheers
Have DHCP setup at home which my O2 accesses under Irix 6.5 and trying to configure IPfiler as a firewall.

Just wanted to confirm that when setting up the IPFilter rules I can use 192.168.2.1/24 to indicate my O2 ip-address, which will be some ip-address that DHCP allocates in the range 192.168.2.* (since this is not known before hand).

Is this right, or is there a better way to handle DHCP, rather than specifying "any"?

Thanks...
Thanks for your help ...

Quote:
Is this for outgoing traffic(ipfnat.conf)?


This was being configured for incoming traffic, and the configuration file is "/etc/ipf.conf"

Quote:
Are you having ipfilter on the O2 itself or on a dedicated firewall?


Attempting to use Ipfilter on the O2 itself. So I guess from that perspective, using "any" for incoming traffic is probably just as good, since there is only one destination, i.e. not really trying to protect other nodes, does that sound right?

I am not an expert on IPFilter in anyway, and have just been going through the manuals to work out what is best.

Thanks
Cirs
Just got hold of a few Indy's and powered them up, one of them had not been switched on for 2885 days, (nearly 8 years), and the PROM battery was still going..!

The hard drive was stuck and did not turn at all, it was on the floor so I literary gave the Indy a couple of rapid kicks to force the hard drive moving again (i.e. another definition for booting the system up).

In any case, my question is... to re-charge the PROM battery does the Indy need to be turned on, or will the PROM battery receive power with just the plug connected to the power supply with the Indy off? Does is actually re-charge at all?

Thanks...
Can you hear if your hard drive is actually spinning up? Oddly enough, just had a very similar error message like this on the week-end.

In my case the hard drive was not spinning up (i.e. were stuck) and an error message was given similar to yours. If you have a spare drive, perhaps changing over a hard drive to rule that out might help...
A couple of other options to consider:
  • An Iomega Zip drive with parallel port interface?
  • Or, if you can find one, an 8bit ISA SCSI card (they do come up from time to time on ebay)?
  • Laplink with a null modem.
I had pretty much the same situation with a few O2's I just received. Had two Red light boards and in some cases no power.

I was able to fix the red lights by re-seating CPU and using a known pair of good (32Mb Kingston) RAM. I found that in most cases, there had been 1 RAM chip dead on each board and this was causing a RED light. After booting, at the PROM prompt type "off". After that everything seemed OK.


The no-power boards were fixed by shorting the jumper next to the battery.
Just wanted to ask if there was a jumper on the Indigo2 that forced power on each time you connect the power cable, similar to the O2 Jumpstart setting?

I have an Indigo2 that I cannot turn off. Even from the PROM, when I type in "off" is responds with "Unable to execute off"!

Thought there might be a jumper somewhere that is doing this...

Thanks
Thanks for all the suggestions, have tried the following:

Quote:
Did you try "resetenv"?

Yes, tried that with no change...

Quote:
Only it sounds like he might be asking about "on" rather than "off"

My apologies, yes I did ask about "on" thinking that there was a jumper that forced power on once power was applied; thought that might be the reason I could not turn this off. So in fact I am trying to turn it off as well as stopping it from powering up automatically.

Quote:
then the PROM environmental variable "autopower" might cause <or be causing> his system to auto-power-on

Also, looked at that environment variable and is set to "no" for no autopower, even tried changing this a few times with no effect...

I just received another Inidgo2, so I am going to go swapping parts to find out further what the cause might be...
Have installed Irix 6.5.15 on my Octane and at the end of the install, after the system restarts the following error message appeared:

  • "PROM Write Error on cacheline 0x1fcbf700 at PC=0xffffffff9fc42334 RA=oxffffffff9fc422d0"

Does anyone know what may have gone wrong? Is this an error when updating the PROM version? What might cause this?

Oddly enough, I rebooted my Octane and everything seems to work fine with the new copy of Irix. So I have no idea what may have gone wrong above.

The only other post about this type of error is here (but does not give any insight): http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16720506&hilit=prom+write+error

My current PROM version is "6.5 Rev 4.12 IP30 Nov 15, 2001 - 64bit".

The version of Irix was a 2002, so it seems the PROM did not get updated. I was going to upgrade this to 6.5.22, but a little hesitant with the above PROM write error; (i.e. while its working leave it alone)...

Any thoughts..?
Quote:
If I am not mistaken, the IRIX installer will try to update the prom if need be during the install, right? Kind sounds like it tried to and had a legitimate write error...


Yes, that what it sounds like, and was hoping to find out what might cause the write error?

Quote:
The only thing I can think of is a jumper located near the back of the board on the left of the CPU


Ok...thanks..! Will check out if there is a jumper preventing the prom from being flashed...
Quote:
Dump .15, really crappy/buggy release


You were right..!

Upgraded to 6.5.22 and the PROM was flashed successfully this time! So it must have been 6.5.15 not able to Flash the PROM correctly. When installing 6.5.15 on an O2 it was able to flash the O2 PROM, but not on the Octane.

Thanks...
I am trying to get a few of the older xmame versions (around v30) running on my Indy R4400 with Irix 5.3, (a number of years back I had one the older version working and its performance was ok).

In any case, I am getting a lot of complaints using the standard 'make' and was thinking the next step was to try and use gmake. My question is, is it better to get the makefile working with the standard irix make program, or is it much better to use gnu make?

Is there a gnu make binary for Irix 5.3 somewhere also? The SGI 5.3 freeware and TGC's 5.3 binaries have most GNU programs, except for gmake :(

:edit

Found the gmake, tgc had this labeled as make-3.81-2.tgc-irix5.3-mips1-tgcware.tardist...
Was able to eventually compile xmame 031.1, there were a few makefile errors and only one c error. But after those were fixed up, it compiled nicely and seems to work ok (although this was only tested with one ROM just yet).

This is running on Irix 5.3 (R5000 version, with a number of patches).

It is compiled with sound turned sound off at the moment, wanted to start with something simple, but will now see if the sound will work.

The real difficulty at the moment is finding xmame source files, as the old website is no longer available (replaced with SDL mame).
Are we talking about the SDL version of mame on Irix or is the GTK versions?

I have compiled a few of the very older versions (around v.35) of Mame to get them working on Irix 5.3 for my Indy, but have not attempted anything more recent... it might be something to do over the next few months, but need to get my O2 in order to be able to do this first...
Have attached below the steps I had to take to compile xmame 034.2 on Irix 5.3. This is probably a good starting point to get things going, hopefully may be of use if you would like to try this out yourself...

Steps taken to compile xmame 034.2:
------------------------------------

1. Before you start:

Install the IDO for Irix 5.3

Extract the xmame source files where you intend to do your work: tar -xvf xmame.tar

Install GNU Make "make-3.81-2.tgc-irix5.3-mips1-tgcware.tardist", and depenencies:
expat-2.0.1-2.tgc-irix5.3-mips1-tgcware.tardist
gettext-0.16.1-2.tgc-irix5.3-mips1-tgcware.tardist
libiconv-1.11-2.tgc-irix5.3-mips1-tgcware.tardist
libgcc_s1-3.4.6-2.tgc-irix5.3-mips1-tgcware.tardist
libstdcxx7-7-6.tgc-irix5.3-mips1-tgcware.tardist


2. Make the following changes in makefile.unix

> MAKE = gmake ## Irix make requires more effort, need to to use gmake. Line 40
> cc in lieu of gcc ## line 44, use the IDO compiler
> remove -n32 -mips4 ## we are compiling on mips3, causes error below for lib64/cmplrs/cc
> ARCH = IRIX ## line 330
> Enabled sound line 330 (used ARCH = irix # automatically includes sound)
> Did not need to change rm -fR to rm -fr # Line 433
> Changed OPTFLAGS = -O -Wall to " -O -fullwarn ## Line 85
## -Wall is gnu all warnings
## ERROR on flag -Wall in "OPTFLAGS = -O -Wall"

3. 1st Attempt to compile: "gmake -f makefile.unix"

Error on src/unix/video.c: 181:Unterminated string or character constant

FIX: Added backslash '\' at the end of lines 253, 254, 255 (of file video.c)

4. 2nd Attempt to compile: "gmake -f makefile.unix"

cc Error: cc is not installed in /usr/lib64/cmplrs/cc

FIX: remove -n32 -mips4 from makefile ## causing error for lib64/cmplrs/cc

5. 3rd Attempt to compile: "gmake -f makefile.unix"

Ignore Warning on optimisation, suggest to use -Olimit option on Dasm68000

Errors:
ranlib ../../obj/unix.x11/osdepend.a
gmake[1] ranlib: Command not found
gmake[1] *** [../../obj/unix.x11/osdepend.a] Error 127
gmake[1] Leaving directory '/usr/people/guest/xmame34.2/src/unix'
gmake[1]: *** [osdepend] Error 2


FIX: Edit makefile.unix and comment out use of ranlib on line 70.

# RANLIB = ranlib

Need to be careful of line 499 and 508 as these have references to RANLIB.


6. 4th Attempt to compile: "gmake -f makefile.unix"

gmake: execvp: obj/pacman.a: Permission denied
gmake: *** [obj/pacman.a] Error 127

Caused by line 507 which has the line $(RANLIB) $@ # and hence executes nothing.

Fix: Removing RANLIB fixes the problem


6. 5th Attempt to compile: "gmake -f makefile.unix"

Compiled and linked successfully...
Yes, they did this a while ago... fortunately there are some other alternatives on the Internet but you do have to go digging for them - perhaps we could host some of these on Nekochan - but not sure if that is in-policy?
Had come across this problem also on the O2's ... there is an issue installing Irix 6.5 base version onto the O2 that does cause problems. It is necessary to go with a slightly newer version 6.5.x, so try to get hold of a more recent overlay with the 1998 base set.

Hope that helps...
You could try one of the scientific packages, such as viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16726713 , there are many others for stellar and geographic analysis...
Thankyou!!!
Wanted to ask for help from someone who lives in Japan with a few Yahoo Japan Auctions...

I restore classic (80's) sports motorbikes and some of the parts are near impossible to get here in Australia, but seem to be plentiful in Japan. These are mainly the racing replica's such as Suzuki RG500 and RG250, and an 85' model GSXR.

So just asking if anyone is able to bid on Yahoo Yapan auctions, obviously need to be fluent in Japanese, and have the items posted to their address (since they do not post overseas) and then forward the items onto me. Of course, I will pay up-font for all costs plus a fee for your help.

The items I am after are basically the dash cluster for these bikes (i.e. speed, tacho, guage, etc), and maybe some other small items...

Cheers...
Ok... thanks for the suggestions..!
Have seen this type of error caused by the CPU but also sometimes this type of error can be caused by faulty RAM too... have seen this error occur on an Indigo, which was giving cache errors, and it turned out to be the RAM... so it may be worth checking that out also...
Great...!!!
Just wanted to ask if there was a link to one of the Irix complied versions of Dillo3 from those groups?
Yes... thank you to the Dillo team and diegel for putting Irix on the map for this browser..!
foetz wrote: now i could of course not help but try it on 6.2 because that's where something like dillo is needed most. managed to compensate the missing snprintf and isinf but dns.c seems to expect more content from struct addrinfo:

that might need a more serious workaround. defining the missing macros is no problem of course but finding adequate substitues for the missing or different struct members ...


If 6.2 is possible... how easy would the step be to get it then going on 5.3?
Thanks heaps foetz for getting Dillo working with 6.2..!
This is great work...!

I can't seem to be able to access ftp://ftp.nekochan.net/incoming ... is this where the nethack Falcon has been placed?

The site won't allow me to access the directory... is anyone else having this issue?

Thanks...
Thanks for these..! I will be using these on 5.3...
foetz wrote: a quick update here although not a good one. dillo3 for 5.3 might not happen because it seems it requires pthreads


I have found this reference to an MIT team possibly getting pthreads onto 5.2 and 5.3?

http://web.mit.edu/databases/mysql/mysq ... hreads/FAQ

(2.1) What platforms does proven's Pthreads run on?

Lot's! It should run on the following platforms; the i386 processor
running NetBSD-1.x, FreeBSD-2.x, BSDOS-2.0, Linux-1.2 and Linux-1.3;
the r2000 (DECstation) running Ultrix-4.2; the Sparc running NetBSD-1.x,
SunOS-4.1.3, Solaris-2.3, and Solaris-2.4; the alpha running OSF-2.3 and
OSF-3.x; the SGI running IRIX-5.2 ; and the HPPA running HP/UX-9.x.



I think these are the source files: https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/pthreads/

Some other files mention irix 5.x (e.g. https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/ ... iff-951012 )


I will do some more digging around to see if pthreads is real on 5.3 ???
It would be an Indy as my first choice... followed quickly by an O2...
Is anyone on here bidding on these? There are 89 pieces and I would like to grab just a couple, and could buy them off someone on the forum if they are bidding. These PMC chips are in the US, ... I am based in Australia...

Thanks
These CDs are slowly becoming collectable, so it might be worthwhile holding onto these ... or seeing if others would like to grab any spare copies you have... just a thought to consider in any case...