The collected works of jeremy123

Thats my highly personalized OctaneII - My favorite machine so far.
Wanted to say thanks nekochan ! Lots of great people here, amazing concentration of knowledge.
Nekoware is outstanding !
I'm only sorry that these are probably the last remaining real computers - great build quality etc as opposed to
all we have now - chinese gamers toys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96OhJex0zrk

Its back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQKm7ifJ ... re=mh_lolz

Yes I have seen it some time ago - to be honest it doesn't have that magic - just a metal box full of PCs I keep my MIPS-octane and some old sun workstations because they remind me my best days - my father used to work in TV_Station they had octanes and O2s I learned all the computer tricks from him.

Other than that I believe they(the new ones) are pretty powerful

Hey Guys

I need to ask someone more experienced - I purchased an Intellistation 9111-285
Really nice machine - I have AIX7.1 - so far so good - OS is bit different from what I'm used to - but its very interesting.


My machine is equipped with standard audio device - the pci one. It is a /dev/paud0 but I can't see any /dev/mixer or anything similar.
Audio works but it is balsting full volume

My question is how does one control the audio levels - mixer of some sort - at this stage I simply ran out of ideas - it must be something obvious as no one is talking about that on the net. I even checked the chdev paud0 - but it only controls some pci attributes.


Does any one know ?

--thankyou

sorry for the delay:
bluecode: Yes the sound card works - I can hear mpg123 etc - problem is there is absolutely nothing to be found reassembling a mixer.
I was convinced it will be easy since IBM documents everything - well except sound cards it seems.
I got a full set of install media together with the machine - latest one - machine was used in Germany in Porshe - has a nice grafic card.

If it comes to aix - there are great things and annoying things - the whole vg thing (Virtual Volumes etc) is really great, whole disk subsystem is very effective - but when it comes to opensource compatibility its a nightmare its much easier to compile stuff on Irix.
Linux Compatibility is just a legend - found only one current distro able to boot - crux - I was thinking about Linux from Scratch in a future - but for now I want to get familiar with aix.

There is a great repository of opensoftware - http://www.perlz.org - but some stuff - like ffmpeg, python and couple other things that are there but they don't work - linking is different than on most systems - can't use gnu-ld

If it comes to Hardware - its really nice and powerful - but I think it is bit abandoned. AIX works fine but this is so far only useful as ftp server - what a pity

Well nothing is wrong with CRUX - I just don't like to run linux on that machine LFS or gentoo at least would give me a good overview on performance under load while compiling . Also I used to run Gentoo for many years on my first Intellistation Mpro 6889 - so its kind of nostalgia.
Well after I experienced the AIX goodness - especially the way it deals with storage I decided to stick with it.
After initial pain during first days - I got to know it better and I like it.

I'm just wondering because this machine was surly used as a workstation for some Catia or other mechanics CADs, hostname was cinsta02.porsche.de (something close any way) unfortunately all data was wiped - just a naked system left. It has audio adapter so I assumed it has to work - but so far I found nothing on the topic.
It also hase the nice video card GXT6500P - can deal with big displays easy.

So the question still remains if its would be possible to get some sort of a mixer to work. (not that its deadly important - just wondering)

Very nice Blog man! inspiring - one day I would have to write down my adventures in similar way.

Just as helpful info for people going to use similar machine.

I managed to install debian on it - there is some messing with boot-loader - as installer is trying to do it MAC way and expects formatted boot partition,
We need to have raw boot partition with boot-loader image dd'ed to it. everything works fine than.
I hope they will be able to fix it quick since its nothing serious.

Ofcourse it is nice to have some modern graphics card - the IBM issued matrox G-450 - does not work (bug in the matrox driver on PPC platform) neither the expensive adapters. Anyway they were so rare and designed with specific application in mind that there wont be much joy anyway.

Good news: old good Radeon 7000 - PCI PowerMac version is fully supported by this machine from boot-time - console support - basically 100% since it has OpenFirmware ROM. No hacking required, no boot-time mode-setting, nothing just plug-in the card and select it as the active console (do it manually form sms menu). Sourced on ebay for 15$.
So yes Radeon 7000 Mac edition is fully supported on on IBM Power

Sound card works, everything else works fine - this is very power-full workstation now. I find AIX to be more interesting but.... try to watch a video on it
or try to use the sound card that was sold with the machine, With aix I could only use it as file server or FTP really. Its like having Ferrari but being only able to look at it running idle

I will be happy to answer any questions

Another thing:

This machine is for sure the most complicated one I had so far.
I bought the raid enabler card for it (works fine)
And also wanted to add more HDs - so ordered a second scsi backplane type 32N1203
its exactly the same as the one for the first four harddrives but the machine wont boot:
it goes through some early init and back to standby.
there is a very similar machine (same motherboard and case) just horizontaly rack mounted
IBM 9111-520 and it can hold 8 HDs for sure with two backplanes.
Would anyone know if I need to change something in the settings
Or is it somehow disabled for marketing reasons on 9111-285
(which is the same machine just standing vertically) as it was meant to be a workstation.
This doc shows the machine equipped with 8 HDs so I hope its possible:
http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/power ... olving.pdf

Any help appreciated thx.

Yes I have both cards - not supported in linux.
Radeon runs fine and is initialized by firmware (mac version equipped with OF rom)

lower scsi backplane connects to motherboard so it should work in theory.
media backplane is not connected anywhere at the moment (has a scsi plug in the back) but I only have ide dvd.
I couldn't find any definitive answer.

vishnu: I ran AIX for some time on it - its really powerful - true and I got to know it somehow well now
but you know how it is in real live ? you run xterm or dtterm for 90% of the time - I'm not working on any Katia stuff
So this uber-powerfull card is producing heat mainly. Would you suggest any other app that can take advantage of this hardware under AIX - I would be happy to try.
This machine was only useful as IRC/file server. Earlier in this thread we were talking about sound cards - no way to control the volume from aix no mixer device - unless you know how to - or tell me how to watch a movie? well maybe ffmplay but no sound. Or try to compile some open software - its very hard to compile anything. I have tried aix 5 - 7 very interesting os, but now I'm trying with linux. I'm absolutely not a linux fanatic its just for nostalgic reason a bit: my first machine was Intellistation M Pro with gentoo Linux. I have around 7 classic Unix workstations every single one run its original OS > Irix,Solaris,NeXT Step, some OS9 on older mac - This 9111-285 is the most over engineered piece of hardware I know - its kind of love/hate relation for now - it gets me annoyed from time to time - but its impressive otherwise. My SGI octane for example is a very useful machine - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96OhJex0zrk . I would love to have the AIX done like this - I spent a lot of time trying but now I just started to think its not doable. If it comes for the additional four drives I think it might need additional scsi card. I read that: "9111-285 is a workstation based on 9111-520 server with one scsi-controler and powerful graphics adapter" Its sort of implies that 520 had more scsi controllers. Any thoughts ?

I got the GXT6500P initialized under X but its not usable - colors mixed and absolutely unstable. headphone jack - sure its there
I tried many audio mixers - that would be a smallest problem - but the software has nothing to interact with - there is no /dev/mixer - just /dev/paud0 (or similar) and thats about all - I was wondering why do they (IBM) sold it with this audio cards while there is absolutely no way to use them in AIX it gets me thinking there may be some additional AIX CD that I don't have or so. If it comes to "variables that read like Polish jawbreakers" no problem either I speak fluent polish .
What I need this machine to do is: Play video(with sound ) run some browser (don't need flash shit) then it can stay on my desk
otherwise it goes under the desk and will be used as a file server - then I would love to have 8 HD
So far with linux and powermac-radeon card it runs fine - did some video reencoding with ffmpeg - CPU power is impressive.
previous time with aix I went as far as having ffmpeg compiled with help of Michael Perzl - I have sent him few mails and he helped me understand linking in AIX etc - really friendly man and has build himself a huge repo of rpms. But it is more usefull for me now with linux. Struggle continues.

To clarify the situation:
In Linux: everything works, sound works, graphics works (with powermac radeon - console display to).

But Ideally I would like to run AIX to keep it authentic - in AIX: no sound - device /dev/paud0 present but no way to control it or use it.

Additional problem: additional scsi backplane is not supported (so it seems) unless adding another scsi controller would help

wenp wrote:

jeremy123 wrote: I have tried aix 5 - 7 very interesting os...

It sounds like you tried AIX 5 to 7 on the same machine. How did they compare in terms of performance and resource requirements?

Well to be honest I cant see any difference in performance.
Its rather additional futures in 7. But then I haven't really test it hard, maybe there would be a difference after 4 days of calculations.
For now definitely most impressive part of this machine is disk subsystem - super fast. If it only could take 8 drives it would be a treasure.

when I had second scsi-backplane installed (identical PN of FRU as the first one)
2nd being the lower 4 drives. Machine does not boot - it will shutdown after while.
Its not clear to me if it possible or impossible to run it with 8 drives. But so far no luck.

I have 2 types of the scsi backplane - one is as I mentioned above same as the upper one.

at the moment machine has the second backplane with no drive connectors (kind of a blank) but it has a connector on inside from which the cable is run to the back of the machine (to have a scsi conector on the back) runs fine with this one and also scsi-devices connected through that backconector->blank-scsi-backplane are detected fine.
I'm worried its sort of marketing-Idea and disabled functionality so it won't take more drives in this workstation. - 9111-520 is identical mobo but horizontally rack-mounted machine marketed as a Server and
docs clearly show it can take 2 scsi-backplanes
Wonder if anybody can confirm that.

Upper media-bay has only a cdrom in it.