The collected works of mapesdhs - Page 5

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but thought you'd all like to know the QLA2342 works ok in O2:



This is an original Discreet Effect system. The array is 14 x 73GB Seagate 10K FC,
all with orig Discreet firmware.

Before posting full results though, I'll bump it to an R12K/400, and then try the same tests later
with an R7K/600 (setting up the disks as an XLV rather than a stonefs). Once done, I'll do
the tests with an R5K/200, see if there's any CPU bottleneck re Dr. Dave's comments earlier.
Meanwhile, here's a simple XLV test with eight 73GB 10K FCs:



The first line is the important one as that's the optimised request size for PAL. It's sufficient
for real-time SD.

I notice the QLA2342's LEDs show the links are only 1Gbit, which is a bit odd since I'm
sure the array modules can run at 2Gbit. Not that it would matter, looks like O2 couldn't
push it that fast anyway.

One point worthy of note: the peak numbers in the above test are very similar to the best
STREAM result I've obtained for O2, so maybe this really is just a question of limited
main-CPU/RAM/disk bandwidth. Here's a STREAM run for an R7K/600:




Either way, hope this brightens your day.

Ian.

If you strike out, I'd buy it for 60, can book my own collection.

Ian.

kshcsuf wrote: ... I've got an Octane Personal Video board on the way this week and would like to get Octane support added as well. ...

If it works with Octane, will it also work with IMPACT Compression and IMPACT Video in Indigo2?

What would be especially cool is if it supported Cosmo1 and related video I/O.

Thanks for all the efforts!! Great to see O2 being properly exploited.

Ian.

Remember I list some items on my eBid store for much less than is shown on my main site, to help hobbyists
obtain better pricing. See:

http://uk.ebid.net/perl/auction.cgi/25337313

Ian.

josehill writes:
> That enclosure looks minty fresh! Did you do anything specific to polish it?

I could have, but at the time I hadn't yet looked into the relevant techniques, so after discussions with the buyer
we decided to leave it for him to investigate. I did of course do my usual mega cleaning, so it was utterly dust-
free if nothing else.

These days I'd T-cut the sucker which would bring it up peachy. Here's some contrast pics I took a few weeks ago,
in this case testing the results of using T-cut on some really nasty O2 top lids (and thus the light scratching on the
O2+ would be trivial to deal with):

System 1: BEFORE / AFTER
System 2: BEFORE / AFTER
System 3: BEFORE / AFTER

Being able to tidy up badly scratched lids in this way is very useful for commercial sales. Makes them look at least
reasonably presentable. For hobbyist sales, it means minor marks can be completely removed, though sometimes
I obtain lids that are mint anyway (sold my last of those though a few weeks ago though).

Infact, I now have lots of O2s with no lids. :\ Anyone want a cheap O2 sans lid, etc.?


Btw, the buyer of the O2+ was pretty happy, to put it mildly:



Makes a big difference to motivation, etc. getting replies like that.

Ian.

PS. Nobody want my cheap 320 or Octane then?

directedition writes:
> 2nded. Proximity to Ian's QoS is near reason enough to move to Scotland. ...

Hehe, but then there's the weather...


> ... The packaging of the CDs I ordered from him could have survived WWIII.



Well, you know how it is, there's earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanoes, wars, floods, hurricanes, monsoons,
drout, famine, pestilence, asteroids, etc.... and then there's postal services, which makes all natural disasters
and man-made general hell seem like pleasant days out with tea & buscuits. :}


> Btw, what is a T-cut? ...

See:

http://www.carbasics.co.uk/what_is_t-cut.htm

It's designed for car paintwork but does wonders on other surfaces aswell.

I bought a 150g tube from B&Q , was about 5 UKP. Practice on some plastics you don't much care about first, get
used to it. Use it too much btw and it will discolour the surface.


> ... I have a few skins that are little beat-up and I'm interested in finding ways of cleaning them up.

It should work nicely. After I've used T-cut, I clean off the surface with antistatic foam cleanser.

I have a variety of solvents for removing other stains/marks, especially glue from stickers, security stickers,
marks left by knocks with other plastic surfaces, etc. Substances include label remover, WD40, Isopropanol,
tape head cleaner, Acetone and nail varnish remover. Depending on the nature of the offending grime, at
least one of these will work better than the others, though care is required with some of them as certain
plastics can react quickly (eg. Acetone can be nasty stuff, ditto isopropanol). Over time one gets a sense of
what is likely to work best in each case.

Ian.

PS. Some of the above solvents are toxic and damaging to skin, lungs, etc. Be careful if you use any of
these things. Well ventilated area essential.

indyman007 wrote: Wouldn't a MAC G4 be quicker in every way?

If you prefer Macs, why are you here?

Ah, now I understand, that's why the Octane I bought from you was so badly packaged (ie. wrecked) - you don't
like SGIs. Makes sense now...

Ian.

(does the abrasive powder you mention have a typical brand name or product name?)

That's very true, re doing it too much will leave a visible patch. Thus my suggestion of trying this stuff first on something
that doesn't matter so much, get used to how it works.

For deep scratches/marks, I found one way which works rather well, for O2/Octane skins anyway: use a box cutter
or Stanley knife to scrape away at the surface of the scratch, and then use T-cut. The results are surprising. Also,
O2/Octane skins are particularly prone to the kind of scuff mark which leaves a brighter-than-surroundings smear,
ie. not really a scratch as such. Lightly scraping away at the mark and then using T-cut normally makes such marks
vanish completely. This is what I did for the pictures shown earlier (the O2 top lids), works wonders.

Ian.

indyman007 wrote: More of an SGI orientated question, is any O2 system with an R12K processor considered an O2+?

Technically, no; in literal terms, an O2+ is any O2 that has an 030-1327-002 motherboard, as that's the only real difference
between an older O2 and an O2+. However, lots of earlier O2s with normal skins were sold with 1327 boards.

One other thing, O2+ systems were normally sold with a DVDROM by default, whereas older units might have had a CDROM instead.

Ian.

I've been collating some results, but need to redo a few of them as the meter was in the wrong mode in some cases (VA instead of Watts).

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgipowerusage.html

Indigo2 IMPACT is the big juice chomper, by a mile.

I would test my quad-1GHz Tezro, but it currently lacks fans/VRMs on the CPU board. Had to move them when I bought a board
on eBay from which these items had been removed (nuts!).

Ian.

The Keeper wrote: A 1% drop in power consumption is below the noise floor... Interesting to note, but not a meaningful statistic...

Wrong, it was completely repeatable.

Ian.

> Wow - O2 has quite decent performance/watt - too bad the total performance was always so low

Indeed, if one considers a typical render job, O2 takes longer but uses less power overall, eg. with
an R12K/400 it's only a bit slower than an Octane2 400/V6 but uses barely 1/3rd the power.

Even for the complex Alias test, Octane is 2X faster but (unless it's headless) uses 3X the power. Only
good dual-CPU Octanes, or other systems such as Fuel, start to win overall. On the other hand, not
everyone is happy leaving an appliance on overnight doing something.


> - my AlphaServer4/266 tends to leak over 80(!!!!!)W when off (somehow).

Ouch!

Ian.

Alas in the event I never had the time to sort it out. I have all the parts but haven't done the mod yet. However,
it should work fine. The replacement fans are much quieter.

I have to reorganise my desk and sort out a new set of shelves before I can setup the Gbit switch.

Ian.

Excellent!!!

Re the deeper fan, I could probably leave out the 3rd fan completely, or just rig something up to fill the gap, since I'll only
be using at most 4 to 6 ports. I bought the switch because I needed one with the option ports to hold Gbit fibre modules,
in order to support optical Gbit Ethernet cards for O2. Thus, power consumption should be pretty low. Yeah I know, 48 ports
is overkill, but 16 port and 24 port models were more expensive; I bagged mine for a bargain price of 95 UKP.

Ian.

FOR SALE:

SGI Fuel
R16000 800MHz (4MB L2) CPU
1GB RAM
146GB 10K disk
V10 graphics
32X CDROM

495 UKP + shipping

Addons/upgrades as follows:

- Upgrade to V12: +295
- Add extra 1GB RAM: +25
- Or just max out the RAM to 4GB: +100
- Upgrade CDROM to DVDROM: +40
- Add 36GB 15K 68pin disk (fastest disk I've yet tested!): +30 (ie. this becomes the system disk, with the 146GB 10K setup as a data disk)
- Or just upgrade the 146GB to a 15K: +35
- Add a Gbit NIC: +30
- Add an LSI U320 PCIX SCSI card, LSI21320-IS: +25
- Add a dual-port U160 QLOGIC QLA12160/33MHz 64bit PCI SCSI card (LVD/SE): +50
- Add a dual-port U2W QLOGIC QLA1280 PCI SCSI card (LVD/SE): +20
- Add an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 PCI Audio Card: +50
- Add a tri-port Firewire PCI Card (3 external): +30
- Add a tri-port Firewire PCI Card (2 external, 1 internal): +25
- Add a 3-port USB PCI Card: +15


My usual full mega 6.5.30 installation. Email/PM/call if interested! (email/phone preferred) My address is:

[email protected]

My phone no. is: +44 (0)131 476 0796


Shipping costs in UKP (includes extra insurance):



Any questions, please ask here or contact me direct.

Cheers!

Ian.

First unit sold! Here's a pic of the system, and of the box just before it was collected, with my usual mega nuke-proof packaging:




Eight units left!

Note that one unit has some marks at the back (red marker pen should cover them reasonably well), I'd do that one for 475 UKP + shipping (the front looks fine though).

Ian.

2nd unit sold, seven remain.


JacquesT writes:
> Damn...Double Damn...If only I had some cash right now!

Hmm, any relatives you can sell? Hehe.


> Very nice though Ian, clean as usual.

Well of course!

I've moved the addons/upgrades notes to the 1st post.

Ian.

pilot345 wrote: this a real possibility? ...

No.

SGI told me categorically the PROM source will not be released.

Ian.

evil ppc wrote: When was this? Did they give you a reason?

June last year:



Time to quit wasting energy on this IMO and move on to other things. I'd much rather see a decent port of Firefox 3 for IRIX atm
than a CPU bump.

Ian.

hamei wrote: Umm, there's a few key words in there that you seem to have missed - "public domain" being the most significant. I'm not saying they should or would but allowing a qualified person or even an SGI insider to modify the PROM to permit a 900 mhz cpu to operate does not even resemble "release into the public domain."

You're picking at straws. It's not going to happen, move on.

Seems to be way too many people choose to believe that somehow this can be done purely because they wish for it to be possible.
Wizard's First Rule: people will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or they're afraid it's true (in this case the former).
I love those books...

Yes, it would be great if we could have the PROM source. I've asked numerous SGI people many times, the answer has always been
no, and the aforementioned reply was from the CEO; high up enough for you?

Btw, the IRIX people have basically all gone now anyway, as have all the O2 dev machines. There's no way it can be done now IMO.
The O2 people pretty much all moved on mere days after the system launched, switched to the 320 project or elsewhere.


> All of use would certainly like to see a quality browser running on Irix but whether that would be Frieflop, that's a different question.
> IMNSHO Fireflop 3 is pig shit and we should look for something better as a starting point. But as a viable project, a decent browser
> should be doable. Phoenix started from less.

I want to use a browser that's recognised and validated by the numerous web sites that matter, eg. online banking. I see no reason
why Firefox3 can't be ported, unless there are issues with the dependent libs which make it too difficult on SGIs. I don't know, this
isn't my field. I'm already using Firefox3 on my PC, looks perfectly fine to me. It certainly isn't pig-whatever. I like it.

Ian.

hinv:



Note that only half the RAM slots have been used.


gfxinfo:




uname -a:



The system is running IRIX 5.3 with XFS, with a 36GB 15000rpm 68pin system disk (Fujitsu MAX3036NP + adapter), 40X CDROM
and QIC-150 tape drive:



It runs buttonfly surprisingly well.

Ian.

jan-jaap writes:
> I am somewhat surprised you managed to install IRIX 5.3 on it, when the

AFAIK any R3K can use it just fine. I've been running 5.3/XFS on IRIS Indigo for years, so I saw
no reason why it wouldn't work on an old PI. It doesn't need anything special in R4K CPUs to function.


> IRIX 5.3 with XFS is not supported on products containing IP4 or IP6 processors.

Could just as easily be SGI not wanting customers to try it, and thus pretending it won't work.


> IRIX 5.3 with XFS is not supported on systems with less than 32MB of RAM.

I've had Indigos with 16MB booting ok.

I think it was just SGI trying to avoid customer issues.

Ian.

ajerimez wrote: Very cute! Hope to see pics if you get a chance to post some.

Here's an older picture before I took before all the upgrades and OS reinstall:




Here's one I took when I was fiddling about with the internal devices (better CDROM not yet fitted, trying to
clone the temporary 18GB onto a 36GB/15K; didn't work, Fuel wasn't happy with an 18GB 50pin connected
to the 50pin cable, so I cloned the disks using an Indigo2 instead):



Ian.