The collected works of mia - Page 1

Could you provide a link to the patch, I'm not able to locate it.


Thanks.

I read several posts about patch 5086, i.e.:

If one live-installs IRIX 6.5.21 on an Octane without applying patch 5086, it will kill the PROM, rendering you unable to boot the Octane anymore!

Question is:

Can I install 6.5.22, .23, .24 or .25 from scratch (newly formated disk) without worrying about these issues?

Thanks,
Jason

Please note that I forgot to mention that the Octane was running 6.5.19 before, therefore, it may have a prom = or older than 6.5.19.


Jason

unixmuseum wrote: 5086 applies to swmgr installations, i.e. installations you're performing while the machine is up and running, logged as a user with privileges to install software... It doesn't apply to installations done by directly booting off the CDs, so you're OK...

I assume this works for netinstalls too, right? Therefore I should be safe. Another question, after installation of 6.5.x (with x>=22) do I need to apply 5086, or does it comes with the base?

Great, thanks, that's all I needed to know...


Jason

That's no problem, I have stacks of irix distributions, I may have about 30 packs with each version from 6.5 to 6.5.25, and we're receiving 30 new packs of each release, most of them are getting thrown away tho.

Anyway, thanks, for some reasons, everytime I install irix, I get conflicts between java and whatever other java component, maybe I should not tell inst to install the application CD with the core.


Jason

Brombear wrote:

Jason wrote: That's no problem, I have stacks of irix distributions, I may have about 30 packs with each version from 6.5 to 6.5.25, and we're receiving 30 new packs of each release, most of them are getting thrown away tho.

You may consider sending all the unneeded ones cod to me I once did something similiar sending several sets directly to the trash can ... after I learned that a lot of people are looking for them I could have kicked my own butt

Matthias

Unfortunately they are the company's property, we are allowed to trash'em, but not sell/give them. In any case, I'm pretty sure everybody downloads them from support.sgi.com, no?


Jason

barefoot wrote:

Jason wrote:

Brombear wrote:

Jason wrote: That's no problem, I have stacks of irix distributions, I may have about 30 packs with each version from 6.5 to 6.5.25, and we're receiving 30 new packs of each release, most of them are getting thrown away tho.

You may consider sending all the unneeded ones cod to me I once did something similiar sending several sets directly to the trash can ... after I learned that a lot of people are looking for them I could have kicked my own butt

Matthias

Unfortunately they are the company's property, we are allowed to trash'em, but not sell/give them. In any case, I'm pretty sure everybody downloads them from support.sgi.com, no?


Jason

It's a real hassle to turn them into bootable cds though (assuming one has a compatible cd writer to start with).

Cheers

I usually find it faster to do netinstalls, no time spent reading the CDs, and inserting 10+ CDs in a particular order...


Jason

Well I don't know if you already coded something that uses Motif widgets, but it's really shitty. GTK produces a better job (mmm, antialiased fonts, greater flexibility, it's free, etc.) and it's SO MUCH easier to develop with it!

Please note that I never coded anything with QT, but I'm sure it's at least as great as GTK.


Jason

ruckusman wrote: If we could get some inside help from someone at SGI then we could probably make the required PROM modifications for the RM7900 at 835 and 900 MHz.

I don't want to offend you but do you believe in Santa Claus too?


Jason

I got a 600Mhz mod from chicagojoe a little while ago, everything works fine and I'm really happy about it, and Joe sure did a great job (btw: thanks Joe!)

If your application needs an O2 (and for instance its cheap video in/out capabilities, or 2D capabilities, or picture editing capabilities -roam or whatever-), or you already have the licenses (Jaleo, whatever) and everything, do it. If you're not sure of short in money, go with an octane, am octane v6+r12k will be cheaper than an O2 mod upgrade. Keep that in mind when you do the check.

However, a 600Mhz O2 is a very nice thing to own, and it surely makes ppl jealous.


Jason

For a while I was kinda hesitant buying one of these, especially considering the cost of the media. Now that blu-ray is *almost* available, I really don't see the point of this, the MO reader is afordable, but the media is so darn expensive. I don't see the application for this.

Storage? Hard drives are Waaay less expensive, even scsi ones.
Archival? Can't beat a tape or few dvds.

http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi ... #id5179360

Folks,

I have an old fuel somewhere that's perfectly working. Unfortunately the case is completely trashed, the door's borken, the sides have huge bumps etc. The fuel itself runs like a charm.

I do not feel like transplanting the contents in yet another fuel case, I just don't like them so much, I was wondering if someone knew of a peecee case that looks nice and that would work just fine to host a Fuel motherboard, a v12, few pci cards and few other goodies.

Let me know, thanks a million,
Mia

This is indeed great!

Let me know if you happen to find something that works. I guess I could run my fuel headless as well, but having a v12 output wouldn't be a bad thing either!

Headless would be a good start anyway, let me know if you find anything that could host the goodies.


Mia

I have a fuel, I can take a look at this.


Mia

Sure, why not.

I couldn't find the time to do this today (yet another crazy day at work) but it's something that I will look into in the next few days. I do also happen to have a camera, so that should be no problem. This project is certainly interesting in several ways, one of them is that I've always wanted to put more than 2 drives in my Fuel, therefore a better case would be preferable.

I know somebody that did this with a Sun Blade, the result may not be what you were hoping for:

http://unixconsult.org/frankenstein/


Mia

This is indeed a very good idea, an G5 case would be a fine thing as well.


Mia

I'm still working on this, I'll update this week.


Mia

loonvf wrote: Hi mia,

Keep up the good work.
I expect the motherboard to arrive this week so it would be very cool if the PSU connections are measured by then

All the best,

Will do, I think I might be going back to SGI for non obvious reasons, so I have to do this anyway. I left the scene for over a year (way too much work) but I'm back.


Mia

I've looked at it real fast and it's doable, but it's not going to be easy.

PDU is no problem, it *seems* non standard pinout, but I would imagine it's relatively easy to modify an existing one to make it a fuel pdu, more on that later. I don't expect any difficulty there, the dimensions looked standard.

Motherboard is non standard size, mostly because of the cpu module, I believe it would be possible to locate in a standard case with a few extra holes, I yet have to find the right case, but I'm confident this will work. Cooling is another problem.

Picture (not from me) of the cpu module there: http://www.schrotthal.de/sgi/fuel/FUEL_6.html

Video (v10 or v12) might be tricky, I still have to crack it open to take a better look at it (didn't have the time today) that's still the major unknown, but I expect a happy outcome.

All in all, it sounds doable, I don't expect the final product to be smaller than a regular Fuel. I intend to take the whole fuel apart so I can start measuring stuff and try to find a proper case. The airflow will have to be redone entirely (using fans or liquid cooling). Using a G5 case is very unlikely to work.

I'm still looking into all that, more to come this week, it's not going to be easy. Let me know if you have some good ideas for casing, G5 wouldn't work (too small). I've considered rackmount, but it's not cool for a desktop. Also liquid cooling would be preferred to try to reduce possible noise.


Mia

I took everything out, from motherboard to video card and power supply to measure things. From what I see, it seems doable.


Mia

The mobo is 14'5 by 16 that's huge.

Okay, I bought a case, it's a little ugly, but it might work. I don't really know if it will, we'll see when I get it I guess. It's ground shipping, so it might take a week to show up. I'm not sure I want to tell you which case I bought at this point (it's not SGI or Apple, it's some crappy PC case maker) so you'll just have to wait for the pictures

If this doesn't work, I'll just build a pc out of this case or resell it, no big deal. The fuel was all taken apart, and parts were cleaned up.

This case I just bought is just experimental, if it works, I'll try to find some better looking one, we'll see. This is quite fun anyway. This case is certainly not as good looking as some SGI product, but that's not my primary concern at this point, it's a part of a much bigger project.


Mia

While I will be waiting for this new case, I plan to study the cooling part. I intend to replace the original heatsinks, I have not yet decided if this will go water cooling or air cooling. One think I've considered is that the original Fuel PDU is 450W, I may try to replace it with something else; I will as well study the pinout.


Mia