The collected works of kubatyszko - Page 1

I would probably bet on some small ID in the Card which tells the OS whether it's Fuel or Tezro - and the workaround might be similar to the one for TG3 Gig Ethernet in Fuel's - couple small changes in the driver and that should be it
Now - who has a spare Tezro V12 then ?

PymbleSoftware wrote:

you'd better cross your fingers, because SGI probably has a database of part#/serial# for support purposes, and all your serial#'s (the ABC123 thingie) would show up as V10 parts ...

Maybe, but it also seem that at least some of the pre-rackspace SGI has been dismantled. Some of the SGI staff I've talked to don't even believe they ever sold MIPS based workstations. Weather they would know the difference between a V10 or V12 is up in the air.

R.

Well, this may be a bit on the edge, but there are ways to get many names from the RCS logs of something that used to be available on the net for a while (*you* know what I'm thinking of ), and approach them, I guarantee that no geek in this world who built something would ever let it die - so I would assume many of those people could be helpful - but aside from getting their names, it may be hard to approach them(also so that neither side faces legal issues)... And I think 6.5.5 didn't include support for Vpro, so those may not even be the right people which makes it even more difficult (but they might know who knows who knows who )

On the other hand, if by the time SGI released Fuel they knew or expected to be approaching end of MIPS line, it would make perfect sense to build V10/V12's from even the same hardware (many companies do that - CDWriters are often based on the same hardware with only fw being different for various models, even in Mainframes you get extra CPU's in the chassis and they enable them for you once you pay) - in the 2000's it could have been cheaper for them to build one unit of hardware and mod it by proper firmware accordingly to become V10/V12. Plus it gives them extra possibility to modify cards back per market demand if they ran out of stock (happening now ? - not that they still keep any people who would know how to do it though..)

"Oh, dear customer, and if you want to change V10 to V12 you need to pay a few extra $$, and we'll give you the same card with V12 firmware and a new sticker on it"

How likely is that ?

PymbleSoftware wrote: I think kubatyszko is talking about the "golden screw driver" ( http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... crewdriver ). Its been around for decades.

But I think there is a difference between V10 and V12 ... Look at the first table in http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/VPro#Features


R.

Yup. that's exactly what I'm talking about, in addition to the Golden Screwdriver there also used to be "a box with spare parts" - some countries were not allowed to be sold more than X of memory or CPU's in the set (cold war etc), so they would buy a bunch of "spare parts" (and don't I need to mention they would install all of them later).

Well maybe I'm smoking, first hamei suggested there may be a way to use Tezro's V12 in the Fuel, but later posts suggest "upgrading" V10 to become V12...

Time to go to work, cheers.

Hi, I just acquired a 1600SW + MLA (both as "Junk"), and i'm trying to test it out,
It all does work just fine with my MacBook Pro 15 via DVI-D cable, but there is some horizontal noise - flickering lines.

I tried capturing this on the video below:

http://vimeo.com/33275597

The MLA makes silent hissing noise when I put my ear up to it - I'm just trying to figure out whether this may be MLA or 1600SW issue.
I don't have any other MLA nor 1600SW to test - unless any members are from Tokyo (or Guam - I'll be there for a week from tomorrow) .

Thanks

The hissing noise is definitely from the 200 6V capacitor - I'm going to replace it soon, I only wonder if this is just going to fix the hissing, or the picture noise as well....

Guys, I'm actually wondering, if there is any correlation between serial number and a mac address (at least stepping order),
say if supervinx doesn't have his MAC but has the serial number he might be able to find someone with relatively "close" serial number and somehow derive the original MAC he should have - not that it matters much, but you never know, the world is small, his Indy might end up next to another Indy with the same (originally) MAC and not work

I think we all here have enough of hardware to come up with some schema for that, any suggestions or comments ?

Cheers

Reporting full success, the capacitors are: Sanyo OS-CON 6SVP220M and 16SVP100M, I had no trouble ordering perfectly matching ones from http://www.logic-d.net/ (Japanese), it cost me some 147 and 273 JPY respectively a piece (ordered 3 of each just in case).
Datasheets (in Japanese) are here: http://www.edc.sanyo.com/pdf/oscon/J32_33.pdf (the form factor matching the ones from MLA is F8).

Replaced them just now and the monitor works flawlessly, no hissing noise, and no noise lines in the picture either.

Looking at the board closely, it seems it may be possible to mod the MLA to accept ordinary 5V (with enough current) and simply get rid of all those capacitors, voltage regulators etc.
I'm pretty sure there's no special reason for those other than being able to use the same power supply as in 1600SW...

It also makes me wonder what is the second power socket for - it's not soldered anywhere, but I checked and the respective pins are short with the same pins in the working one...
(for a moment I thought that may have been direct 5V input - but it doesn't seem so).

One important point - my cheapo (sparkfun) 30W soldering iron was not really able to melt the existing solder - it's very likely SGI used lead-free solder with some relatively high melting point (could be even 20C above ordinary).
So even though my soldering works I will need to resolder them again with better iron to ensure good contact (I have Weller stashed somewhere in my office so this won't take long).
Also, the original capacitors are soldered ALL THE WAY along the contact pins (underneath too), so depending on your iron you may simply end up ripping part of it away from the board - and with an ordinary soldering method you will not be able to resolder it in exact same way (unless you have SMD kit)..
The original capacitors have this little (red in my case) glue which holds them during manufacturing process - this one can be scraped off easily with any sharp object, you don't really need to apply any new glue, but it is helpful if the capacitor doesn't move while you solder

Updated wiki with a link to this post: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/MLA

Cheers and good luck if you dare to try .

Timmy wrote: I am experiencing the same problem with my 1600SW. But the monitor also turns on/off randomly.

I plan on replacing those two capacitors in the MLA, however I am not really clear how I am supposed to take them out. (I am a novice using the soldering stuff).

For example, I am looking on the backside under the 220 capacitor. I see 4 pins underneath it (C608, C607, C605, C605). I'm not clear which one I am supposed to de-solder. It doesn't even look like the normal soldering stuff I have seen. Looks very clean (hard to describe without a picture).

Any detailed up would be appreciated

The caps are surface mounted - so you only need to look from the top on the same side of PCB, doesn't matter what's on the bottom of the PCB.

Ideally to remove you would need a heat gun or chipquik, I made it work with an ordinary soldering iron though.
Looking from the top, you should see two contacts that stand out a little from the plastic base - heat one and keep on lifting the capacitor with some tool, after a while it would be high enough and should pop up, then repeat with the other contact.
You may also see some red glue on the PCB - this is what holds it in place during manufacturing process.

Remember that the contact area of the capacitor is pretty big (not only what you see from the outside), it goes some 2mm underneath the base so this method will likely rip the solder away and if ou're not careful you may permanently break the PCB this. It worked for me but doesn't guarantee it will work for everyone...

Soldering new caps back - again I used my old soldering iron, as robespierre mentioned, SGI might have used different alloy with higher melting point which means my iron couldn't make very good contact - the MLA does work, but I will definitely get a heat gun or a better iron and fix that.

Again - to do it properly you would need a heat gun, clean the surface, apply solder, glue the capacitor to hold it in place - and then you point heat gun which will melt the solder and make it connect both things together into a nicely looking contact.

Beware - with a heat gun you may break other areas of the PCB, so if you're not confident with your soldering skills - find someone who is and ask them for help.


Now that I think of it - I will definitely give it one day a try and mod the MLA to just accept 5V skipping all those nasty capacitors and voltage regulators
Oh well - now I also bought GFX1600 - the PCI version of MLA, together with another 1600SW

Cheers

Hi, I'm not sure if this helps and if it's relevant to your issue, but when you edit ~/file as root - it actually depends on the way how you "become" root,
when you log in as user x and use "su" - then it's likely the file ~/file edited as root will actually be /usr/people/x/file
but when you use "su -" it will be really root's file...
There's fundamental difference in the way your environment is set/reset/preserved during "su".

Cheers

So I decided to pursue the ATX->Fuel conversion as well, with priceless of Pontus' and Recondas' research and diagrams, I can report success.
Oh, did I mention I met with Hamei 2 weeks ago for dinner and beers, he gave me his spare Fuel M/B - proved extremely useful for testing my ATX conversion

I got this:



RockPower 550W PSU, ATX2.2, model LW-6550HG (used for ~11$), and another AQTIS 600W AP-600GR (about the same price)
I decided to use the RP - since its power levels are much closer to my Fuel's NMB (lacks a little on the 3V3 and 5Vsb).
(NMB supplies: 27A on 5V, 16A on 12VIO, 18A on 12Vdig, 45A on 3.3V, 3A on 5Vsb, and 0.6A on -12V)

The PSU has 20+4 separable connector, 4-PIN 12V (P4 connector?), couple of HDD Molex, FDD, SATA, and 2x PCI-express.

I also bought a few ATX 24-24 extenders, one ATX 24->20 and 20-24, and a few ATX 24 plugs/sockets with pins.
(hint - removing pins without real pin extractor (20$) takes a little practice, I found a sewing needle held tighly in the pliers to work well - wiggle here and there and it works)

Following my own research (looking at pins on the NMB), Recondas' diagram and Pontus' post as well - I've built conversion-extender for ATX.
Started with connecting all the GND pins, and 5VSB, checked L1 - it worked from the start.

As expected, only 5VSB and 3V3SB are available - since I connected only 5V, it means the MB is converting 5V to 3.3 (probably to power up all the env monitoring chips etc).



Then I connected all the remaining pins except FANC and FANM - in my PSU the fan starts by itself (2PIN Molex).

Another test - (pwr up), the MB starts, reports some minor errors, then complains about fans - but the most important - all the voltages are very very good:



If course this was still without RAM,PIMM, no fans etc.

It does complain about some I2C not present - I haven't figured that out yet.

Now - real-world test, I plugged the contraption to my Fuel - and voila, full success.



Note that I still have nothing under FANM and FANC - to make it run I had to disable env monitoring.

My ATX PSU's internal supervisor chip is sg6105dz, and this one doesn't seem to provide any FAN signal, nor does the FAN itself.

Now the next step for me, is to make up some square wave generator to fool the Fuel into thinking the signal is from real fan,
according to my research, it should be 50% duty cycle square wave, with 1 or 2 pulse per revolution (that depends on fan, I don't know which type is the original one - anyone ??) - if I want to report 2000 RPM (my original PSU reports 1900-ish) I need 2000 or 4000 Hz wave - that shouldn't be difficult, the only trick, is that signal needs to peak at 12V (nominal FAN supply), not sure how easy will it be to find a chip which does that.

Alternatively I could just buy a fan with tachyometer - but hey, that would be too easy

I might try to take the other ATX PSU apart and see it's fan - maybe that one has it available... (I didn't choose that PSU for Fuel since it supplies much less power on 3.3 and 5 - though it does supply a lot more on 12V). - it's most likely that new ATX12V standard.

And now mandatory picture of my conversion kit:



One thing I found very interesting, is that 5VSB in my NMB PSU is wired on the PCB to the 3V3 signal - but it DOES deliver 5V...

Cheers

hamei wrote: Wow. Everybody must be asleep, because I think you just made quite a few people very happy

Thanks , the MB turned out to be very useful - I could play around with all the wires until I was confident enough to plug it into my "real Fuel"
I only need to sort out that fan signals and as always - I really should be doing something else now

Thanks

Reporting partial success:

First attempt - I'm glad it didn't fly out to space:


Second attempt, a little slower:


And third, getting close to reasonable values:


And then I ran out of appropriate resistors and capacitors for NE555, will need to source some and continue experiments.
What is interesting, is that my frequency meter (in cheap DSO) showed some 6.6kHz the first time, upper 5-something the second, and lower 5-some the third.
It's likely the fuel signaling is NOT the usual 2 ticks per RPM.

While I was at it - I checked the signal on the FANC pin - and it gives me constant 3.3V - nothing changes while powering up, nor while running.
This could be power for some of the internal logic - doesn't seem to be going directly to the FAN.

Cheers

Thanks, now we need to figure out how much does it apply to Fuel, since FanM didn't give me very clear confirmation whether it requires 1 or 2 ticks per rotation
- reading from the DMM showed 2 ticks, but then what I generated seemed to translate to RPM's by L1 in logarithmic fashion rather than linear.

I'm not sure if FanC will work that way either - if the above was true (and if the fan could actually start at those 3.3V - usually there will be some minimal kickstart voltage) then it should be as easy as plugging it into FanC.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was some kind of I2C signal between MB and that PIC inside.
I will give it another try and keep it running for longer to observe FanC - so far within 15 minutes of uptime nothing changed.

Very nice, I was just going to ask about the progress .
The problem with Origin200 is that it doesn't even have a video card, so in fact there is no way to test Gtk+ locally - you'd need physical box for that.

Cheers

That is possible, anyway I need to bring the freq down to some 3.8-4KHz before I try again, ordered a bunch of resistors and caps, should arrive in a couple days then we'll see.

Adrenaline wrote:

kubatyszko wrote: Very nice, I was just going to ask about the progress .
The problem with Origin200 is that it doesn't even have a video card, so in fact there is no way to test Gtk+ locally - you'd need physical box for that.

Cheers

Couldn't he simply run a VNC Server? That's what I do with my O300.

There is a VNC Server installed on the box, the rest is up to NCommander.

So I got my parts, and made it to this point:



This is exactly what I need, but what is interesting, the frequency I had to use - was over 22KHz, that would be 10 ticks per rotation and not 1 or 2...

My working Fuel M/B reads the same (roughly 4KHz gave me over 60000 RPM) as the broken one, so I think this must be the right value, but what is really funny, is that frequency I measured coming out from the working PSU, was somewhere in 3800KHz - which would stand for 2 ticks per rotation.

I measured voltage at the FanM from the Fuel PSU and what I get is 1.5V - which would be completely against ATX/WTX spec for FanM - not surprised at all.

I also hooked up the oscilloscope again, and made very similar wave on my oscillator - same amplitude, same duty cycle, and what I get is 67000 RPM - the only difference is that I'm feeding NE555 with 12V or 5V (and the voltage didn't really change the reading in the L1). This is as low as I can go - NE555 starts from 4.5V - can't do 1.5, not even 3.3...

The only thing different about the wave, is that original Fuel PSU's wave has slightly rounded attack slope - as if it transitioned from low to high in logarithmic way - while mine is pretty much square.


EDIT, adding pictures.

Another EDIT, I'm reading datasheet for DS1780 here: http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/datashe ... DS1780.pdf and trying to figure out how to get it to work, it seems like waveform shape I get from the PSU is normal, and the DS1780 has internal conditioning to cope with that, so the shape of mine should not be an issue, it might rather be bad voltage or something around that.

Reporting some progress,

at frequency 2055 HZ (and later it turned out many others) I got the env chip to read exactly 4400 RPM,
I checked the reference for DS1780, and placed adjustable resistor on the output - when I dial it to 3.0-.3V amplitude, it starts reading 4400 RPM, once I got it to read 3800.
The result is not very reliable, and DS1780 seems to require amplitude of exactly it's input voltage - otherwise it reads bogus values...

NCommander wrote: so processor speed is a bit of an issue here

This is where you should be glad I didn't give you 200MHz O2 with 128MB ram , O200 with dual 360 is not thaaat bad

After a few more tries, I need to put a brake on this project, I can't in any reliable way get the DS1780 to read reasonable RPM using frequency that would make any sense (~22KHz is the only one that works).
What I have already done with ATX is good enough and allows me to use it as a PSU replacement with env monitoring off.
What I will do in some time is to solder DS1780 (I got a few) to some PCB (or get evaluation kit - though I heard those are discontinued), hook it up via I2C to PC or Arduino, and try to make this one read RPM's first - it's too much work to take the M/B from the box, plug in the PSU and keep trying. Small test PCB with oscillator and DS1780 will be much easier, and at some point I'm pretty sure I will get there .
In the meantime, I'll try to source a couple FAN's with Tacho signal and see what happens, or maybe I'll wait till Friday (another Fuel coming) - that one is with Sparkle or Hipro - afair those have 3pin fans - maybe this will give me some new insight into the signals.

So I made it !!!

I was actually on the perfectly right track, but my math was wrong,
Also the frequency I measured from the NMB PSU must have been wrong.

The mistake I made:

FAN generates frequency of 2 clicks per rotation with 50% duty cycle.
What I did wrong, is that I calculated required frequency per RPM, and not rotation - which is a difference between say 30 RPS and 1800 RPM.

That led me to think I need frequencies in 4000-6000HZ range, while all I needed was anything above 60Hz (>60Hz is universal for all the Fans in Fuel).

And indeed 5KHz was totally right to give me 60-130000 RPM, because this is the correct value.
63Hz should give this much:

(63/2) * 60 # (number of rotations per second / 2 clicks per second) * (60 seconds in a minute)
= 1890 RPM

At roughly 63 Hz, I get 1753 RPM reading which makes it more of 58Hz, but that's fine as long it's above the 1600 threshold.

What led me to finding out my mistake - I bought a couple fan's (to optionally replace the ones in Fuel), and checked their signal from Tacho.

There are multiple ways to create square wave generator, I did mine in two: using NE555 (+ 2 resistors, 2 capacitors and zener diode to limit the voltage), and using 70HC14 (schmitt trigger inverter, + 1 resistor, 2 capacitors and zener diode).

NE555 gives me much more "square" wave but that doesn't matter much.
Parts:

NE555:
1 * NE555
1 * 1800 Ohm
1 * 470 KOhm
1 * 0.022 uF
1 * 0.01 uF
This yields 69.6 Hz at 50.095% duty cycle

(Schematic here: http://www.royalrife.com/555_calculator.html )


Inverter:
1 * 74HC14 (I used Texas Instruments, another one from Hitachi HD7414P didn't want to work for me).
1 * 470 KOhm
1 * 0.01uF
1 * 0.047 uF
1 * 3.9V Zener diode

(Schematic here: http://www.national.com/assets/en/board ... rguide.pdf - this is actually schematic of the whole evaluation board of LN81 - which has the same function as DS1780)

The Inverter-based solution has an advantage (5 of them in fact), with 1 chip you can generate 6 independent square waves - just in case if somebody wanted to fool the Fuel in regards to other fan's , another minor advantage of inverter-based is that you don't need to worry about duty cycle, it's always 50%.

The generators are powered from 5V (NOT 12V), I used 5V from pin 17.

I DID NOT bother using FANC pin - this is NC on my adapters, maybe in the future I could make the oscillator adjust frequency to the signal from FANC - but that's not necessary for anything - would make sense only if Fuel actually verified feedback while controlling Fan speed...

Also, There is NO FAN MONITORING in the ATX PSU AT ALL - if it fries, you're on your own, (but you have working adapter and can simply replace the PSU with another one ).

While playing, I fried 2 fan's - turns out that tacho logic is very sensitive to sloppy people who forget to swap the pins around - but I had 3 more which worked well.

I bought:

2* Enermax UCTB8 1600 RPM (80mm)
2* Omega Typhoon CFZ-60F 3000 RPM (60mm)
1 * some kind of used noname (80mm)

I actually did replace XIO fans with Omega's but had to revert the process, since those spinned at some 1450 RPM's which was below the threshold (I want to achieve perfect result with no env off/on tricks).
Enermax fan didn't turn out good either, as it spins at 1100 !!! which is whole 20 RPM's below the threshold

I'll keep looking for more suitable fans.

Now a very interesting fact, the reason I did manage to get 2000+ RPM's at over 20KHz frequency - (this should not be possible - as 20Khz would mean some 600k RPM's),
The DS1780 uses internal 22.5KHz clock to drive the counter - somehow I must have managed to get close to sync with that clock and it started to think the periodical going out-of-sync was the real signal .
That means the maximum theoretical fan speed that DS1780 could measure would be < 600000 RPM's - useless for Jet engines
Interesting huh ?

---

Here is a "screenshot"



And below are the pictures.

There's no point making PCB for swapping 24 wires + circuit with whole 4 components.
PCB will also make for bad cooling and it will be hard to place it inside of the chassis.

Good idea, challenge accepted
I could employ the same device in my O200 - making this beast quiet would greatly reduce earthquakes in the region.
But since this is nowhere high on my list it will take some time...
Cheers

Technically any ATX PSU will do, but you need certain levels of power to make the Fuel run:

RockPower 550W PSU, ATX2.2, model LW-6550HG (used for ~11$), and another AQTIS 600W AP-600GR (about the same price)
I decided to use the RP - since its power levels are much closer to my Fuel's NMB (lacks a little on the 3V3 and 5Vsb).
(NMB supplies: 27A on 5V, 16A on 12VIO, 18A on 12Vdig, 45A on 3.3V, 3A on 5Vsb, and 0.6A on -12V)

I've never seen ordinary ATX PSU that would satisfy all those levels, so try to get as close as possible.
It of course needs at least 4-pin P4 connector (the 6-pin for PCI-X might also do but I haven't tried).
And don't be deceived by the overall power - my 600W PSU has lower levels than 550W PSU (the former has more on 12V rail though).

If your PSU has tacho signal on the internal fan you can also try feeding it directly into Fuel.

Would moving you to dual 600Mhz, 4.5G RAM Octane2 help ?
That can be arranged pretty quickly, I'd only need a fresh install of 6.5.22.

Good point, the sparkle is one of the very few that would match power levels perfectly.
I think we could try and assemble a list of tested PSU's that work well, bu there are so many of them it may knot make much sense...
I actually asked NMB (minebea) for specs, source and binary image of the PIC, so far all I got is that they are out of pc supply business but they will forward my request to the tech guys