The collected works of jan-jaap - Page 12

If you're referring to the use of skeuomorphic interfaces, this shake-up could be good news

Delete /etc/ioconfig.conf and reboot?

Also, it's possible the previous owner changed the mouse mode to support a wheel mouse. Look up the remarks about systune pcmouse_mode in man(7) pcmouse.

I'll be damned. Thanks man! I had a rodent problem in the garage when some of my systems were stored there, and the bloody mice peed in my Crimson and Onyx which created corrosion also . I was thinking of finding some accessory to the Dremel to undo this, but I'll have to give this a shot first.

I think you're referring to the poop there. Apparently you're not supposed to use a vacuum cleaner to remove it, because it will simply blow the fine particles everywhere, making things worse. I know that now. I didn't when I cleaned up the garage, but I'm not dead so I guess it wasn't my time yet

We keep things like potatoes and vegetables in the garage, and my wife likes to feed the birds in wintertime so there's no lack of seeds either. Big attraction to mice.

The old garage was demolished and the new garage should be mouse proof. We're also getting all-metal cupboards to store food related items. And last (but not least): my SGI's are no longer in the garage

Before you get too exited: those extra channels run at 800x600 max. But hook them up to beamers and you can create your own IMAX

Ah, alright, I thought the extra channels were more limited in bandwidth. Found this in the IR tech report:

+2 for the (deskside) Onyx. And the Power Challenge, for that matter. There's something deeply satisfying about hardware with an 'ignition key', and the hum of that big blower

I'm not sure about Indigo GR2 graphics either. Those pins were simply marked 'reserved' for a while. I know Reality Engine does *not* provide separate sync . Worse: it supplies +10V for stereo emitters on one of the pins. I think there are at least 3 or 4 different and sometime incompatible SGI 13W3 pinouts. The Indy &co used 'monitor id' pins, Octane, Onyx2 etc. used DDC. And then there's the Onyx Infinite Reality which leaves everything except RGB n/c.

Because the O2 has a commodity VGA plug, everyone has a cable which provides correct sync signals to a monitor and the monitor merely has to tolerate the SOG present in the RGB, but not necessarily be capable of using it.

The majority of 13W3-HD15 adapters out there is wired for SUN systems, which use yet another incompatible pinout. If such an adapter is used with an Indy, Indigo, Indigo2, ... it will not pass sync to the correct input pins of the monitor. If the monitor does not support SOG either, it will not sync at all.


Nah, the old SGI's with GT(X) and VGX simply supplied SYNC on a separate BNC I used that GT with a bog-standard iiyama LCD screen, btw.

Delayed init delays startup of the disk, usually to some value * scsi ID.
The idea is to prevent a big power surge when all disks spin up at the same time.

An Onyx2 tall rack uses compute module(s) identical to those of an Origin 2000, plus one or more graphics modules. The deskside Onyx2 has a different backplane.

The outer dimensions of both backplanes may be the same, but the number (and position) of XIO slots is not the same. You'd have to replace various bits of metalwork to install essentials like the IO6 / IO6G.

That's hideous

Now, how 'bout this:

The Napier Bentley is a vintage racing car; a one-off special built in 1968 by David Llewellyn. It was originally built on a Sunbeam chassis, but after a serious accident was re-built on the chassis of a 1929 8 Litre Bentley. It has a 24 Litre Napier Sea Lion W12 aeroplane engine (the same as that used in the silver Napier-Railton, which it resembles closely), which develops approximately 550 bhp (410 kW).

The owner obviously has a good sense of humor:

Two things:

1) Always run the testsuite (' make check '). It takes twice as long as the actual GCC bootstrap but at least you know what you've got before it miscompiles half your source code.

2) Don't use GNU ld on IRIX 6.x. It works fine for 'old' ELF (IRIX 5.x, or O32 ABI), but is rather broken for N32/64 IRIX ABIs. As Rainer Orth once told me: Or bootstrap once with and once without GNU ld. The testsuite results will speak for themselves. So: configure with --without-gnu-ld --with-ld=/usr/bin/ld

I don't recall GCC 4.7. 0 being broken at -O2, in fact you need to bootstrap almost every GCC 4.x at -O2 or the binaries are so big you end up with multi-GOT misery. Not sure I ever built 4.7.2.

Otherwise, 'strip' from GNU binutils is broken so you'd best delete it.

You can disable some runtime checks in the compiler to speed it up a bit with --enable-checking=release

You need an Ada compiler to bootstrap the Ada language. I have Ada enabled GCC binaries for IRIX 5.3, 6.2 and 6.5 for those willing to try.

If you want to build the Java compiler you should build the Java libraries too: --enable-libgcj --enable-java-awt=xlib .

An all-language (C,C++,Ada,Fortran,Java,ObjC,ObjC++) GCC with triple ABI runtimes takes about 8 hours to bootstrap and check on my 8-way O350.

I'm using binutils 2.22 (well, binutils minus GNU ld and strip). Works for me.

Oh, when I said bootstrap at -O2, I meant pass STAGE1_CFLAGS=-O2 to 'make'.

There are many intricacies to building a compiler toolchain. As you found out, GCC has many dependencies. If you build the dependencies (or binutils with shared BFD) with GCC, they will depend on libgcc_s.so, creating a circular dependency. A misconfigured compiler can thus leave you without functional toolchain suitable of recovering. I maintain a separate 'bootstrap' compiler outside $PATH with all dependencies linked in statically to avoid this, and, in general, build any DSOs with MIPSpro to avoid libgcc_s.so.

IRIX obsoletion has been postponed a couple of times but in the end there just weren't enough people to fix bugs and run regression tests on a regular basis. It will be a while before software requires GCC >= 4.8

What's the CPU spec of the machine? Maybe it can't handle (much) more than that. I've got a QL2342 in my 400MHz R12000 O2, that's a dual 2Gb/s FC card. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was rather underwhelming


Lost a Corsair M4 myself last week. I've got an SF based SSD in my 2011 MBP (an OWC Mercury Extreme 6G ), seems to work fine (after Apple replaced the SATA cable of the MBP, that is).

Amen to that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-Shift_Gearbox

It eliminates the torque converter. Torque converters always give me the impression there's a kitchen mixer stirring a bucket of snot somewhere under the hood. If I use my right foot I want the car to move *now*, not sometime after lunch. I also hate it if a car decides to change gears halfway through a turn. I guess I just want maximum control

Maybe an automatic makes sense if your roads are straight and abandoned, but where I live it's quite different.

LOL, that's a variation on a theme pioneered by the Dutch car maker DAF , called the variomatic, except most people called it 'jarretel drive' (garter belt drive)

Due to the variomatic these cars could go as fast backwards as forwards so they were great for racing in reverse :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoh8i0jfpTo&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO-insDVzDE&feature=plcp

Edit:

My experience with automatic gearboxes was whatever the rental companies gave me on US trips over the years. Usually midsize (by US standards) sedans. The last 10 years or so I always get Japanese brands although the models are quite different in setup from what the same brands sell in Europe.

I've performed the same hack on a SUN NVRAM too: http://www.vdheijden-messerli.net/sgist ... sun-nvram/
That was for an IPX, the Ultra1 might be different. I have an Ultra1 Enterprise so I might get to that eventually... if I don't get rid of the Ultra before that. The trick is to figure out where to dremel the original timekeeper to expose (and cut!) the battery leads. Datasheets and google are your friends.

What a cruel thing to ask

I'm using a similar system as my install server. Installed a TG gigabit card and an FDDI card, so network installations are always at maximum speed. It's got a QL2342 too so I could eventually move the installation media to a SAN. With these cards installed, PCI slot order is important. Otherwise the TG card complains about a lack of some sort of bufs at boot and drops the interface when under load.

The O200 makes for a decent (though loud!) server. If you want to do something similar I'll look up the PCI slot config of mine.

Carnival season starts the 11 of November (at 11:11)

(11 is fools number)

I'd like to go diving in The Maldives again, before global warming submerges everything.

Sorry to hear about your loss.

I'm in The Netherlands too -- mains fuses here are the 'fast' type, and a faulty PSU will almost always trigger it, regardless of what else is on the same circuit. This has happened to me a couple of times, dried up capacitors, blown rectifiers or PFC diodes. The biggest problem is usually not replacing the component, but damage to the PCB.

I've never seen secondary damage to the rest of the system <knocks on wood>

As a matter of fact, I do. I may even have a spare keyboard & mouse.

I have an entire R4K Indigo in the grey 'Siemens' look, these seem to be less in demand (and it lacks the front door). Just have to figure out how much I need as spares for my own systems. The place is a big mess because I'm halfway moving everything from the attic to the new computer room .

With a corrupt NVRAM, the 'console' variable could be garbage. I would remove the keyboard & mouse to force it to serial. The get into the PROM console and do a 'resetenv', 'update' and 'reset'

The engine of a 914 fits a Volkswagen beetle as well (with minor adjustments). The 5-speed gearbox is a decent improvement over the Beetles 4-speed transmission as well. Better upgrade the suspension too, though. But then you essentially have a Porsche disguised as a Beetle. A great way to make teenagers in hot hatches look like shit at the traffic lights. And it's loud too

Me, I'd go for a 1980's 911 Turbo. The one that's continuously plotting new exciting ways to kill you if you loose concentration for a split second, and the *only* car that can get away with such a rediculous spoiler on the back and still look good

Honestly, I would leave the mainboard (where the RAM is) in place for the moment.

The boot message is pretty clear: the disk fails diagnostics, apparently because there's something wrong with RAM on the disk (could be cache memory).

SCA SCSI disks are easy to find and cost next to nothing. Try to find something with FD bearings like a Seagate 10K.7 or 15K.3, 15K.4 ... Those are as silent as a modern SATA disk.

With a new disk your problems will probably go away.

The Octane uses 'compression' connectors internally. Even touching them can destroy them. There's probably dust inside, if that gets on the compression connectors they will become unreliable too.

If it ain't broken, don't mess with it.

(and if you've got to mess with it, change one thing at a time. starting with that disk).

Those things belong on the LG1 and LG2 ('entry') graphics boards.
Do a google image search and you'll figure it out.

Take a close look at the 'honeycomb' air vent above the cpu carrier.

The metal strips can get wedged and block the carrier from sliding in or out.

Nope, you can attach multiple DVI-D equipped systems, and select *one* at any time: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/M ... perate.htm

Now, that would be awesome.

If you have a 2006 Mac Pro and you want to run Mountain Lion on it, you still have to hackintosh it .

Oh, the irony

http://billioncountdown.com/

5 hrs 57 minutes left. Was nice to know y'all

I was watching this thread hoping someone would come up with a good recommendation. So far I've only learned what not to buy. I had already disqualified the FVS318 myself after I read the reviews.

I'm looking for:
[1] Something I can trust.
[2] Reliability
[3] A router / firewall which can handle at least 500Mb/s WAN <-> LAN
[4] Wireless N on 2.5GHz and 5GHz bands
[5] Basic VPN capabilities
[6] A hardware DMZ and VLAN capabilities on the LAN side are a bonus
[7] A 'tap' for intrusion detection/ flight data recording purposes at Gb speeds

Doesn't have to be a single device (in fact I'm pretty sure it won't be). Large, loud, power hungry devices do not qualify because it has to be installed in my utility cabinet.

Right now I'm using an Engenius ESR9850 wireless router and a Netgear DS104 hub as a tap device.

The Engenius has proven reliable, but it's a closed device so I have problems trusting it. Trust is #1. So right now I'm using my Linux server as a secondary firewall and the actual LAN is 'behind' the Linux server. This effectively puts my wireless network in the untrusted zone which isn't practical in this age of laptops and gadgets. The DS104, being a genuine hub, is limited to 100Mb/s which is my current internet speed -- no future there either.

I'm considering something like this: http://www.dual-comm.com/gigabit_port-m ... switch.htm to replace the DS104 hub.

I want to replace the router with a DD-WRT based solution. Maybe that firmware will be maintained a little longer than the 6 month attention span of the original manufacturer. This effectively reduces my search to 'the best DD-WRT' solution. So far I've seen the Cisco / Linksys E4200 (v1) come up a lot, and the Buffalo WHR-G300N . I intend to go to the bottom of this before I make my choice because 'reliability' and 'alternate firmware' are not necessarily a good match. Also, DD-WRT &co seem to target mostly el-cheapo consumer devices so I have to find something there with decent hardware specs and build quality.