The collected works of iffy50

Hiya,

I managed to grab me an Octane (175Mhz / SI / 512Mb) for the kings ransom of €1! Sold as fully working, but I haven't been able to test this for the reasons below. I wonder if I could ask a few questions to hopefully get me up and running....

1) All of my screens are Apple (DVI-D only) connectors. Is it possible to get a 13w3 to connect to these, or am I going to need another screen with a VGA connector?

2) When I boot the machine connected to the network, I can't see it (I have it's currently configured IP address, but it's not responding there). I'm guessing that it's not booting due to the lack of an active monitor connection (and the red LED lightbar would suggest this as well). Is the diagnosis that it's waiting for a monitor connection likely to be the case here?

3) I got out a PC null modem connection and attached it to an old Debian laptop and serial 1 on the octane. I set up minicom for 9600 8N1 and booted the machine and I can't see anything from it. I tried again with 38400 as some pages say that this works for Octanes. Nothing there either. I've tried Serial 2. Nothing. I opened up the cable and got a pin out from this site. A bit of re-soldering and still nothing. Is there anything else that I can try to get a serial connection? What else could I be doing wrong here?

4) Finally, somewhere in the 'hardware archive (i.e. the pile of old computer junk that I get nagged about) I have an old 13w3 to VGA connector that I used to use for Sun machines. Will this work with an SGI, as I've found info saying that Sun 13w3 and SGI 13w3 is different?

Any help that anyone could give me would be most appreciated. It's pretty frustrating having is sitting there blowing out hot air and not being able to find any way of talking to it!

Cheers,
Ian
Hi R,

Thanks for the info (and your quick reply)!

So if I understand you correctly, then I should have been able to get a console connection already based on what I've tried. That leaves a couple of things (3 actually!) that could be wrong:

1) The console cable itself: The cable that I've made up is following the pin-outs given on http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... figuration

I bought the cable yesterday as a new 'null modem' cable and had no luck with it as it was. Then I opened it up and made some small changes to make sure that it exactly followed this pin out. From the pin out, these shouldn't have mattered, but I thought that I'd make sure it was right. Neither worked. Would you expect a normal null modem cable to work between a pc and an SGI?

2) The PC either has a bad serial port or there's something wrong with the software. I'll bring home another laptop from work tomorrow to see if I can eliminate this one.

3) The Octane's got some more serious problems.

On the monitor side of things, I haven't researched this sync on green thing yet, but is this something that you can get in commercially available screens these days, or am I looking for an old SGI type of screen?

Thanks again,
Ian
One final thought before I admit defeat for the night, does anyone know if using a null modem cable with a USB to serial type of connection (on a Mac) will work? This may simplify things a bit for me for connecting to the existing hardware that I've got, but I can't quite get my head around how the pin mappings would work for that.

Cheers,
Ian
OK, so I tried again last night, this time with a USB to serial connector and a brand new null modem cable (in case my soldering 'skills' were part of the problem). I reseated the XIO, the system disk and the IP30. Zterm didn't like it, but good old 'cu' was enough to get it to break it's vow of silence!

So I ran the diagnostics and everything came back as OK (so I don't know why I was getting the red LED, but there you go). I changed it to boot headless and it was good to go!

Thanks to everyone here for your help in getting me started.

Now making fairly good progress with performing a network fresh irix install.

Cheers,
Ian
Hi,

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a go!

cheers,
Ian
Hiya,

So, I'm getting ever closer to the perfect setup, but not quite there yet....

After a rebuild, I re-installed Maya 6.5. The problem is with the display in the viewport window (5 - shaded). It seems that there is some kind of front face transparency in there. I've seen this before when I used to have SI graphics in my Octane and thought that it was a graphics memory problem (pushing it the screen res. too hard so there was no z-buffer memory left). This is with a V12 DCD running at 3840x1200. I've had the same problem with 1920x1080 via the 13w3 connector. The frame buffer is reporting 35.156Mb used, accumulation buffer is at 17.578Mb & system buffer is 8.938Mb, so there should be plenty of headroom there.

Turning x-ray, transparency sorting, backface culling, interactive shading etc on or off doesn't make any difference.

I've tried both 16 and 24-bit accumulation buffers, and no joy there either. It won't allow me to change the frame buffer depth.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm frustratingly close to actually being able to use it for what I bought it for!

Cheers,
Ian
Hello again,

One of the problems I've found with Maya 6.5 is that there are very few shelves with the installation. Coming from a later version, the menu's are very different and so it's a bit difficult to find your way around. So, I re-built the shelves that you find in 2011 in 6.5! Well, as far as it's possible to.

I would like to post them up here so that other people can use them. I just wanted to check if anyone saw any problems with doing this (not trying to break any rules here).

Just to be clear, I put these together with the shelf editor although the layouts and icons are the same as the later versions (all internal icons). I haven't copied them from a later version and edited them.

Cheers,
Ian
Hi,

Reversed z-depth just about describes it, although I'm struggling to see how it could happen. I only installed Maya 6.5 as I was rebuilding the machine over the weekend, so the Maya.env will be the default out of the box. There's no plug-ins or anything installed (the problem's been there from the first time I started Maya up)

I've also got makehuman (nekoware) installed. I guess that this must be using OpenGL. I only briefly tried it to check that the install was working and all seemed to be fine. No problems seen with Blender 2.49a (although again, I haven't really used it in anger).

Thanks for your reply,
Ian
Hi,

So, I've tried out MakeHuman and Blender and they are both fine. However, I installed Maya 4.0 and that has exactly the same problem.

So I grabbed another drive and did a clean install with 6.5.14 (the full set of install CDs and overlays that I've got), then updated to 6.5.22m. Exactly the same problem with Maya.

Can any of the other Maya users on here give me some info about the IRIX version / Maya version and hardware config that they have (assuming that they don't have a similar problem, or even if they do). I'm sure that there's got to be something simple that's wrong, (probably caused by a large dose of my own stupid:-) but I can't for the life of me work out what.

Cheers,
Ian
Hi Recondas,

Thanks for getting back to me. The problem's on every file. If I just start Maya and put in a polygon cube, hit 5 for 'smooth shade' and it's bad. This is in the persp view. Interestingly, the orhographic views don't seem to have the same problem.

The file that I've attached has the problem (Maya 6.5 .mb). It's just a poly sphere with a cube inside. In orthographic smooth shade it looks fine. In perspective, I can see the back faces of the sphere, but not the cube inside. This would point to it not just being a problem with perspective z-depth sorting - if it was, then I would expect to see the cube inside as well (as you can if you turn on x-ray).

Let me know what it looks like for you.

I just put in another V12 (no DCD) that I've got 'lying around' (long story)... Exactly the same problem.

Thanks for your help. This is driving me mad!

Cheers,
Ian
Hi,

OK, here they are.

And a copy of the included text file....

Info
----
If you've come from a later version of Maya to IRIX, then you may find yourself a little bit lost. A lot of the same functions exist, but they're not where you expect them to be.

One of the main comfort blankets that I found was missing was the shelves. They've been there as long as I've been on Maya (since about 8.0). So I recreated them in 6.5 to be as close to the ones that ship with Maya 2011 as I could.

Not all of the buttons are there, but I was surprised to find that more than 90% of the features are. Also, the icons have changed a bit over time, so they may not be the same as the ones that you're used to (I've used the Maya IRIX 6.5 embedded versions in each case). I've tried to keep the positions the same and the help info in the info bar can be used to tell you what's going to happen.

All recreated from scratch (I didn't just copy the shelf.mel files over from a later versions), so there should be no copyright problems.

I haven't tested this on any IRIX version of Maya apart from 6.5, but I can't see any reason that it wouldn't work on earlier versions.

Install
-------
You've already expanded it, if you're reading this.
Copy the shelf_*.mel files to your ~/maya/6.5/prefs/shelves directory

Restart Maya.
The shelves should all now be there. You may need to adjust the order that they appear in. The Maya default is

General
Curves
Surfaces
Polygons
Subdivs
Deformation
Animation
Dynamics
Rendering
PaintEffects

I guess that it's also possible to make ones for Toon, Fur and Hair, but I don't use them so I didn't bother. If anyone wants them, then let me know and I'll knock them up.

If anyone finds any other things that I missed in there, then please feel free to update and upload.

Enjoy,
Ian
if at voom dot org
29/04/2011
Right, got it!

The MAYA_ODYSSEY_8888 value fixed the display, but as it's a workaround, it enabled me to find the actual problem (Google's always your mate when you've got a pretty unique search term)!

http://download.novedge.com/Brands/Alias/Helps/Maya6.5/en_US/ReleaseNotes/generalmayalimitationsampworkarounds.html

Which pointed me back to Xsetmon and the Frame Buffer Depth, which was at 8-bits. Set it to 16 and it works without changing MAYA_ODYSSEY...

I've changed the Accumulation Buffer Type to 24-bit for good measure. Can I check if these are the 'right' settings for Maya?

Thanks for everyone that helped.
Ian
I've do my network installations directly from Mac Snow Leopard to my Octane a few times. The stuff in the wiki about network install from Linux or FreeBSD was the info that I used to sort out the process. If you want to give it a go from your Mac, I'll finish typing up the install notes that I made when I was doing it and post them here.

ianj's right. The first time you fight your way through the network installation, it's a swine. The second time, it's nicer, but by the third or fourth it's a breeze and a really neat system.

Ian
Nolis asked me to provide a detailed walkthrough on how I set up my OSX Snow Leopard box for a network install. So here it is in full....

Net Installation of IRIX 6.5 from OS X Snow Leopard - A Huge Walkthrough

I've tried to be as detailed as I can (and as my memory will let me be…). Hopefully, it should work out as is, but if you get any problems, then I'll see if I can help you troubleshoot them. I put this together after a good few nights of swearing at my Octane and MacPro. I've changed this to read Onxy2 throughout. I'm basing this on the assumption that the process for an Onxy2 is the same, but I've got no way of testing it.

First, credit where it's due: I've compiled this mainly from information at -
http://techpubs.spinlocksolutions.com/irix/remote-irix-6.5-installation-from-linux.html
http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?p=8959#p8959
I've also put in links wherever I have them to the sources that I got specific details from. Thanks to the people that put in the work on those.

I've tried to state where you need to type something into the terminal and where you can use the finder to make life a little easier.
For creating / editing text files, you will probably find 'pico' the easiest one to use. Type

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pico filename
or

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pico /full/path/to/filename
for this.

One final thing that could be a problem. Do you have any way of reading the IRIX installation CDs? OSX can't read them natively and I've never found a way of making them work with it. I've tried Linux through Parallels, and although it should be able to read them, OSX spits out the CD before it gets the chance to have a go at mounting them. The only way that I've found (without an IRIX box with a CD drive, of course) is to have a machine that's booting Linux (I used an old laptop that I had lying around and put a default Debian Lenny installation on it). I don't know if any nekochanners know any other methods for this.

Make a directory for the install files to get copied into:

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mkdir ~/irixinstall


If you have a CD set, then for each of the CDs in turn, type:

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mount -t efs /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom
cp -a /media/cdrom ~/irixinstall


When the copy is finished, type:

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umount /media/cdrom

And on to the next one…

If you're using .iso images, you need:

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mount -o loop -t efs /path/to/file.iso /media/cdrom
cp -a /media/cdrom/dist/* ~/irixinstall


When the copy is finished, type:

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umount /media/cdrom


The full list of CDs that you need to take the files from is listed below.

The exact syntax for this may change on different distress, so you may need to Google this if you're having problems. There's also some good info on this part of the process in the links at the top.

----------

Some basics for the installation:
We'll assume that you're installing from a directory called '/users/nolis/irix'
We'll assume that your home network is addressed 192.168.1.0 subnet 255.255.255.0
Mac IP address is: 192.168.1.1
Onyx2 address is 192.168.1.2
Onyx2 hostname will be 'onyx2'
Ethernet address of the Onyx2 is 08:00:69:0B:81:A3 - Info on how to get the real one is in the BOOTP section below.
IRIX version is 6.5.30f (full set of CDs including the overlays are needed for this)

Things you'll need to set up on OSX:
Installation file copy
TFTPD - For an initial diskless boot
RSH - For running scripts needed for the installation
BOOTP - Assigning configuration info for the diskless boot
NFSD - Provides a network filesystem so that the installation files can be accessed
KSH - The installation scripts expect this shell to work correctly
Guest user account - The account that is going to be used for the installation file copy

Installation File Copy
Create the installation directory. Type:

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mkdir /users/nolis/irix/install

Copy all of the files from the installation CDs '/dist' directory into this folder (you can do this with the finder).
For a 6.5.30f install, that will be from the CDs:
Overlays 1 of 3
Overlays 2 of 3
Overlays 3 of 3
Applications 2006
Complimentary Applications
6.5 Foundations 1
6.5 Foundations 2
6.5 Developer Foundations
6.5 Developer Libraries
6.5 Applications Nov 2001 (This could be different depending on what your base 6.5 install comes from)
6.5 OCN3_NFSv3 (you get the files from /6.5/dist on this CD)

Depending on how you've got your files stored, it may tell you that a file already exists when you copy some of these in. I've always found it OK to just overwrite the existing file as they are just text files that are not necessary for the installation.

Different installation guides have different approaches to the directory structure for this. I've found that if you put all files in one folder (Overlays and base 6.5 installation), then it saves you a lot of trouble with opening different directories in the install part later on.

Setting up TFTPd
TFTPD is already installed on your OSX - Further info if you need it is at:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?s ... 8233806794

Start it with:

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sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/tftp.plist


The default directory for tftp booting is /private/tftpboot

Create a symlink to this so that you can copy the files in
Type:

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ln -s /private/tftpboot /users/nolis/irix/tftpbootlink


Then:

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sudo chmod 777 /private/tftpboot


(Please note that the above is a potential future security hole as any user on the machine can read / write files to that directory. once you've got it working, then you should type 'sudo chmod 755 /private/tftpboot' to prevent anyone but the superuser being able to write / change files)

You can then use the Finder to drag / drop copy the following files from into the tftpbootlink directory via the symbolic link that you've set up (it appears as a folder with a shortcut arrow on it in the iris folder under your home folder). Files to copy are:
fx.64, sa and the /miniroot/unix.ip27 (I think that this is the right one for an Onyx2, it's unix.ip30 for an Octane, so you need to get the right one for your machine). Make sure that it's copied keeping 'miniroot' as a subdirectory of tfptboot.

The originals of these files will be in your /users/nolis/irix/install directory. For the fx.64 file, it's located in a directory called 'stand'. I can't give you the definitive CD that this comes on (I've found it in Installation Tools and Overlays 1 on my 6.5.14 set)

When you've completely finished the installation, you can stop it with with:

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sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/tftp.plist


BOOTPD
Create a bootptab (type: 'pico /etc/bootptab'). Get the hardware address of you're Onxy2 for this by typing the following at the boot prompt on the onyx2:

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printenv


The 'eaddr' entry is the value that you need.

The /etc/bootptab file should look as follows (you can copy and paste it into the terminal window)

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#
# bootptab example
#
%%
# machine entries have the following format:
#
# hostname      hwtype  hwaddr              ipaddr          bootfile
onyx2  1       08:00:69:0B:81:A3       192.168.1.2     boot


Then to start up booted:

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sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/bootps.plist


Again, you can stop it when you're completely done with:

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sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/bootps.plist


Setting up NFSD

Create a /etc/exports (type 'pico /etc/exports') file that contains the line:

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/users/nolis/irix/install   -network 192.168.1.0  -mask 255.255.255.0


The documentation states that once there's an entry in the /etc/exports file, it should automatically work. I've found that I need to reboot it to make it actually appear. To check if the export is working, type:

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showmount -e


If you don't get anything listed, then reboot the Mac and run the command again. You should see:

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Exports list on localhost:
/Users/nolis/irix/install                      192.168.128.0


Setting up KSH
ksh is already installed in 10.6. Don't need to do anything more with this for the moment.

Start RSHD
Info at:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1329821

Start RSHD with:

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sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDeamons/shell.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/login.plist
sudo launchctl start com.apple.rshd
sudo launchctl start com.apple.rlogind


You can test that this has been successful by typing the following:

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sudo launchctl list | egrep "rsh|login"


If the number at the beginning of the line next to com.apple.rshd and com.apple.rlogind is NOT 0, then it should be good to go.
RLogin / RSHD can be a bit awkward. I've found that I have to keep restarting it after every time that I've tried the boot. If it's not working, then when you try and run the sash64 part of the install process, you'll get the message:

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*** PROM write error on cacheline....

Restart the rshd and rlogind and power cycle the machine that you're installing.

Set up the guest user account
Set up the users for the install:
Add a user account called 'guest' through system preferences. This has a blank password.
Type:

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dscl . -create /Groups/instguest PrimaryGroupID 998
dscl . -create /Users/guest
dscl . -create /Users/guest UniqueID 998 PrimaryGroupID 998 NFSHomeDirectory /Users/guest


To change the login shell for that user to be ksh, do the following:

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sudo dscl . -change /users/guest UserShell /bin/bash /bin/ksh
sudo pico /users/guest/.rhosts


Add the following to the file:

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onyx2   root


(Note, I'm sure that this this is what I used to get it to work, but it may need to be 'onyx2 root guest' - this was the hardest part to get working if I remember correctly)

Save it, then:

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sudo chown guest .rhosts


As we've used a hostname, we need to:

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sudo vi /etc/hosts


At the bottom of the file add the line (on its own):

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192.168.1.2 onyx2


Save it and to bring the change in, use the following

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sudo dscacheutil -flushcache


If all of that's worked, then your Mac should be just waiting for the Onxy2 to ask it for an installation!

------------------------------------------------------
For this section, rather than just copying the already excellent instructions at http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/index.php/IRIX_Network_Installation_from_FreeBSD_to_an_Octane . I've just given you the changes to make it work for the example here. Start reading from the section entitled Client Configuration:

Cold start the Onxy2 and hit 'stop for maintenance' and 'enter command monitor' and type:

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resetenv
setenv -p notape 1
setenv -p netaddr 192.168.1.2
setenv -p srvaddr 192.168.1.1
setenv -p fxaddr bootp()$srvaddr:/users/nolis/irix/install/fx.64
setenv -p tapedevice bootp()$srvaddr:/users/nolis/irix/install/sa
setenv -p


Then follow the rest of the how to from there.

Once you've got through that little lot, I can't recommend http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/index.php/IRIX_Installation_and_Customization highly enough on where to go from there.

Good luck, and let me know how you get on!
I'm trying an install from a Mac to an Octane at the moment and I've checked the relative status of the .rshd and .rlogind whilst I'm doing this and what you're seeing seems to be correct. The number comes in at the start, then it goes back to 0 whilst it's listening. When it's working, the additional .rshd connections show with their own lines and process numbers as below:

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jalopy:guest root# launchctl list | egrep "rsh|login"
4563   -   0x1034005c0.anonymous.rshd
3504   -   0x100101fe0.anonymous.rshd
4563   -   0x103400300.anonymous.rshd
3504   -   0x100101d20.anonymous.rshd
86178   -   0x100520960.anonymous.login
-   0   com.apple.rshd
-   0   com.apple.rlogind
61   -   com.apple.loginwindow


So, I'm thinking that you've got a different problem.

If you do 'ls -la' in your install directory, what are the file's permissions. They need to be at least r--r--r-- (i.e. readable by any user). What are yours set to?
@josehill - Thanks for the suggestion. I tried this when I was trying to get mine installed as I'd read it could be a problem. I couldn't find any changes that made any difference. For completeness though, here are the settings as recommended for linux:

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sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.path_mtu_discovery=0
sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.portrange.lowfirst=2048
sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.portrange.lowlast=2048
sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.portrange.first=32767
sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.portrange.hifirst=32767


And to set them back to the original settings:

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sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.path_mtu_discovery=1
sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.portrange.lowfirst=1023
sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.portrange.lowlast=600
sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.portrange.first=49152
sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.portrange.hifirst=49152
Hi Nolis,

I'm around on Skype for a bit so maybe we can try going through it. I've PM'd you my username.

Cheers,
Ian