The collected works of zuluchas - Page 2

zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of SGI systems power usage at March 30, 2010, 8:57 a.m...

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

Ian, you're welcome to add my results (above) to your list. I'd like to see some more figures for "big iron" SGI systems eventually. The next time I get a hold of a current clamp I'll do some more testing on the systems I have to hand as well.

Cheers!

zuluchas
Big Fan
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.
and authored 161 notes

Wrote on the subject of 5Dwm questions (Wallpaper/Save settings/Desktop location) at April 2, 2010, 10:08 p.m...

I don't know how to set the wallpaper "officially", but I use 5Dwm on my linux box and have been quite happy recreating the Indigo Magic feel with the following command:

Code:

xsetroot -bitmap ~/Pictures/granite -bg rgb:55/55/55 -fg rgb:38/8E/8E

Just copy the file "granite" over from one of your IRIX machines and voila!

Drag and drop doesn't yet work to the desktop itself, but you can get around that using nautilus (yuck) in a Gnome (double yuck) environment:

Code:

/usr/bin/nautilus --no-desktop 2>/dev/null &

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zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Make a irix install cd from overlays at April 9, 2010, 5 p.m...

This package works for me, straight from SGI's ftp site: ftp://ftp.sgi.com/sgi/cdburners/CDmastering.tar.Z

(use make_efs)

zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Make a irix install cd from overlays at April 9, 2010, 6:52 p.m...

recondas wrote:

zuluchas wrote: This package works for me, straight from SGI's ftp site: ftp://ftp.sgi.com/sgi/cdburners/CDmastering.tar.Z

(use make_efs)

That's the package mentioned in the thread that spawned the wiki - though at the time it was hosted on the now defunct toolbox.sgi.com

True, and it looks to be more complete of a EFS-cd-image-producing package than the one mentioned in the wiki.

I updated the wiki to reflect the two options.

zuluchas
Big Fan
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.
and authored 161 notes

Wrote on the subject of Irix Weather Station (iws) - my new small project / announce at April 17, 2010, 8:33 a.m...

Very cool! Keep us posted!

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zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 265 notes

Wrote on the subject of New flower stand! RS/6000-C10 (7009-C10) at April 19, 2010, 4:03 a.m...

I believe you need the key to open a C10 case.

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zuluchas
Big Fan
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.
and authored 161 notes

Wrote on the subject of Nekochan.net operating costs? at April 25, 2010, 6:41 a.m...

Hamei, I've got a Crimson chassis that needs a new home if you feel like being adventurous...

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zuluchas
Big Fan
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.
and authored 161 notes

Wrote on the subject of Diagnosing "spare" Octane chassis at June 1, 2010, 4:51 p.m...

smj wrote:

I did notice that the "spare" chassis reports Xbow 1.2, so I take it that the Xbow is part of the XIO backplane assembly? Would make sense if it's the crossbar switch...

Yes, that's correct, it's on the backplane (some would call it a frontplane, but whatever).

The SCSI backplane is separated from the system frontplane by a funny connecting board that runs the length of the underside of the drive cage. Have you inspected the SCA connectors to see if anything was damaged in the move? That might be a good place to start, especially if, as it sounds, the drive is working fine in other Octanes.

BTW, I have a few spares you may be interested in if you isolate the problem: a SCSI backplane and a frontplane with Xbow 1.3.

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zuluchas
Big Fan
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.
and authored 161 notes

Wrote on the subject of TFT display for Onyx2 at June 22, 2010, 9:35 a.m...

rusti wrote:

Is this something specific to that SUN display or the SUN adapter?

Any SUN 13w3-producing or -consuming device (like a gfx card or monitor), although some adapters "adapt" for this. For instance, I got a converter adapter with some dip switches on it from reputable.com years ago to let a standard PC monitor connect to a SUN system.

rusti wrote:

I mean can I buy a standard 24" PC Display, use the original SGI 13W3 to VGA cable and expect to get a clear and nice picture?

As long as the monitor supports SOG and the resolutions the SGI can pump out, yes.

rusti wrote:

If the answer is yes. Can I run two of them? I know it depends on frame buffer size and bandwidth. So has anybody hooked up two 1920 x 1200 or 1920 x 1080 displays to their Onyx2?

You'll have to do the math or just use ircombine to tell you what's a valid combination. A single pipe IR probably doesn't support 2x 1900x1200 at a decent refresh -- that's a lot of pixels/sec.

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zuluchas
Big Fan
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.
and authored 161 notes

Wrote on the subject of 4D/240GTX troubleshooting at June 22, 2010, 4 p.m...

Gerhard.Lenerz wrote:

zuluchas wrote:

Well, what I found was then when I put known perfectly good 8MB sticks in the MC2, they came up as 2MB! I tried it with 8x 8MB sticks, arranged in matching adjacent pairs, each set of four identical -- the 4D sees 16MB. I tried it with 12x 8MB and got "24MB." This is without any 2MB sticks in at all, so it has nothing to do with the supposed inability to mix 8MB and 2MB on the same board.

Is this a PROM version limitation, as suggested in the above post? Or am I missing something?

I finally had the chance to run a test with a 030-0117-001 MC2 board and as you describe, the 8MB SIMMs are not recognized. With 8 SIMMs installed the PROM reports 16MB and no error on startup. IRIX boots fine, for very low values of fine (5.3 isn't fun with only 16MB).

The other equipment in the system I used is rather new (IO3B and IP15). Given that it normally runs with a newer REV MC2 (8MB SIMMs installed) I presume it is safe to say that the limitation is related to the MC2 board itself.

Compared to the pictures I posted earlier the 003-0117-001 MC2 looks quite different. Most obvious is the lack of labels on most parts and a lot additional blue patch wires.

Thanks to Jan-Jaap, I have acquired a newer-rev MC2 board which *does* work with 8MB SIMMs:

1. (New MC2 + 128MB in left slot) + (nothing in right slot) = 128MB recognized
2. (Old MC2 + 24MB in left slot) + (nothing in right slot) = 24MB recognized

So far so good. HOWEVER...with both boards in the system I still can't access all the memory:

3. (New MC2 + 128MB in left slot) + (Old MC2 + 24MB in right slot) = 88MB recognized
4. (Old MC2 + 24MB in left slot) + (New MC2 + 128MB in right slot) = 24MB recognized

Case 3 is really bizarre: it seems that 24MB on the right board are all fine but only 4MB of each of the 8MB SIMMs on the left board are recognized. The appropriate number of green status LEDs are lit on the board edge for each card, so it's not like half the 8MB SIMMs are unused. So the board thinks the 8MB SIMMs are only 4MB when 4MB SIMMs aren't even supposed to be supported? Strange.

Anyway, 128MB is pretty nice with IRIX 3.3.2!

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zuluchas
Big Fan
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.
and authored 161 notes

Wrote on the subject of 4D/240GTX troubleshooting at June 23, 2010, 4:59 a.m...

jan-jaap wrote:

It's entirely possible that you need fill all slots on the first board before installing a second MC2. That's how the IP9 board works (which supports some RAM on the CPU card, an optional MC2 isn't used before all lots on the IP9 are full).

Very possible. I have 28x 2MB SIMMs, so if I run across 4 more some day I'll test this as well by maxing out the left board with 2MB and using the 8MB-capable board on the right.

jan-jaap wrote:

Good to see it's working. Mouse OK too?

The mouse seems to work (the light turns on anyway), but will have to wait for the right kind of reflective mousepad (or suitable homemade substitute) before testing further. Thanks again, though!

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zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 265 notes

Wrote on the subject of Does an Onyx2 have an internal speaker? at Jan. 15, 2011, 8:44 p.m...

FWIW, I've heard this same kind of noise on my Onyx2 as well.

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zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of pam on irix at Jan. 24, 2011, 1:21 p.m...

I know PAM on IRIX has suffered from atrophy when compared with PAM on modern systems...but is there anyone out there successfully using PAM on IRIX these days? We're compiling the Nekoware version of OpenSSH with PAM support at the moment -- would be nice to know if this is a useful feature to continue and perhaps any success stories folks have had with PAM integration in SSH or other services.

zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of [Poll] Which do we have more of singles or multiprocessors? at March 1, 2011, 7:29 p.m...

Single wins out only if you don't weight by number of CPUs...

zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Looking for some SGI equipment in Colorado at March 12, 2011, 9:03 p.m...

If you're interested in a Fuel V12, I've got one available and am willing to ship. It's a little loud, but has been a great workstation for several years now. IRIX 6.5.30f and many software goodies included for $450!

zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 267 notes

Wrote on the subject of You graphics geeks might get a kick out of this: Sun GT at April 29, 2011, 4:17 p.m...

Cool! We had one of these at the Naval Research Labs in DC back in the '90s.

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zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Irix Insallation on another SGI at May 3, 2011, 6:07 a.m...

You can install IRIX from a hard drive. The tricky part is bootstrapping it into the actual install, but here's what I would recommend:

1. Partition the new HDD on the working IRIX system using fx -x
2. Create an XFS filesystem on the root partition of the HDD (dksXdYs0)
3. Copy the IRIX media to a directory in that partition, giving it a name that does not conflict with any standard UNIX directories (i.e., /IRIX)
4. Use mkboottape to extract the actual miniroot image "mr" from "sa" is the dist dir of your overlays or install tools CD
5. Copy the mr image to the swap partition of the HDD (dksXdYs1) using dd
6. Copy the contents of the volume header from the working system's drive to the new HDD's volume header using dvhtool (and remember what sash is called for step 10)
7. Mount the swap partition (fs type EFS) and copy the appropriate kernel (unix.IPzz) to its root (from the dist/miniroot dir)
8. Put the new HDD in the new system
9. Turn on the system and go to the PROM console
10. boot -f dksc(0,1,8)sash64 (using sash name from step 6) -- should boot into sash
11. boot -f dksc(0,1,1)unix (using unix name from step 7) -- should start the miniroot install

zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of WTB: Dual CPU modules for Octanes at May 29, 2011, 5:42 a.m...

I've got a dual-195MHz R10k module available ...

zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 262 notes

Wrote on the subject of Anyone running Linux on JS20? at June 25, 2011, 8:51 a.m...

Picked up a couple JS20 blades the other day, then found that I only had AIX 5.1 (and 5.2 was the first version to support JS20).

So I'm in search of a modern-ish Linux to run on them since, unlike with old IRIX versions, old Linux versions are pretty boring! Most of the links I've found so far are either broken or so dated that they hardly seem worth investigating -- lots of references to RHEL4, SuSE 8/9, etc.

One thing I'm not sure about is what are the practical differences between PowerPC 970 and G5 (if any), esp. in terms of distro hardware support? Should I be looking for some type of kernel in particular?

A lot of broken links on:
http://www.readmespot.com/question/f/96 ... rpc-blade-

I'm downloading the Ubuntu 10.04 CD now from:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/lucid/release/

And Arch Linux PPC looks promising:
http://www.archlinuxppc.org/

Any thoughts / advice?

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zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 262 notes

Wrote on the subject of Anyone running Linux on JS20? at July 3, 2011, 7:57 p.m...

Well, Yellow Dog Linux 6.2 is slightly dated now, but is the only one I've been able to get working so far. It's Red Hat-based, so will be familiar to CentOS 5 users.

Ubuntu Server 10.04 and IBM's own Linux Installation Toolkit v5.0 both panicked during the boot process, and some googling has led me to believe it's a yaboot configuration issue. I'm not sure I have the interest to really look into it at this point, but thought I'd mention it as a consideration for others that may follow after.

Sounds like no one else on here is using JS20s these days? (not really a big surprise -- not too many bladecenter home users, I'd guess.)

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zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 262 notes

Wrote on the subject of Learning a new progamming language... at Nov. 18, 2011, 5:41 p.m...

I second the ruby recommendation. Not only is it a powerful and elegant language, but it turns out it's in demand professionally as well. My company can't find enough qualified ruby on rails software engineers to hire! I started playing with ruby and rails a few years ago as a hobby, but these days I find it incredibly useful for everything from web apps to deployment automation because of the gem ecosystem and uptake in various open source projects (Chef, Radiant, Sphinx, Rspec, etc.). Sure, I still program in C and Bash when it makes sense, but I am generally more productive in ruby.

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zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of 1600SW + MLA - picture noise - SOLVED at Dec. 7, 2011, 9:11 p.m...

Having had several MLAs go bad on me over the years, I'm now of the opinion that they have a design flaw of some sort that does not promote long life. Or maybe I've just had bad luck with eBay.

And there's really not much to the inside of them to examine...but I'd be interested to see what you find out!

zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 262 notes

Wrote on the subject of Learning a new progamming language... at Dec. 15, 2011, 8:48 p.m...

Alver wrote:

Back on-topic:

Ada.

It's not the most common or versatile language (I don't see anyone writing games in it) but by Jove, it is great at what it does. Mainly aimed at multithreaded real-time applications. Brilliant stuff.

I believe most of our air traffic control system software is written in Ada (here in the US). Seen several job postings for Ada programming in that space, even recently with the software modernization program.

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zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Hedera project update (IRIX 5.3) at March 15, 2012, 7 p.m...

I use git on irix. With a well-configured .gitignore file, you might be fine with versioning files. Iirc, idb is text anyway

zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 265 notes

Wrote on the subject of Smallest HPUX/OpenVMS System Ever? at Oct. 14, 2012, 8:17 p.m...

is this cheating?

http://www.designspark.com/content/rasp ... ax-cluster

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zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 267 notes

Wrote on the subject of booting a sick VAXsta 3100/M76 at Feb. 6, 2013, 6:01 p.m...

You can also mopboot it off of simh. Then mount the CD from across the cluster and install to the local dusk.

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zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of MaXX Desktop Update – April-2013 at May 10, 2013, 3:06 p.m...

I don't think it would take much convincing to get most of nekochan to sign that petition, but would that be enough?

zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 267 notes

Wrote on the subject of Restoring a TransNote from the Recovery CD's at May 14, 2013, 4:12 a.m...

I used to have one of these and may be able to help.

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zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 267 notes

Wrote on the subject of WTB/T: Half rack for Onyx350 or similar [US] at Aug. 4, 2013, 3:44 p.m...

I'd like to find a good-condition Onyx350 / Onyx4 / Origin350 17U (half) rack, with or without systems inside it. I'm in the DC area. I've got an Altix350 full rack at the moment and would like to reclaim some space in the living room (well, vertical space anyway

) -- so if anyone's interested in a trade, that's a possibility. Local is best for obvious reasons, but may consider freight shipping within the US.

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zuluchas
Who joined June 25, 2008, 9:41 a.m.
and authored 267 notes

Wrote on the subject of WTB/T: Half rack for Onyx350 or similar [US] at Aug. 4, 2013, 4:15 p.m...

Adrenaline wrote:

I can vouch for zuluchas - great guy, and can definitely imagine the need to reclaim some space in his living room

Thanks!

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zuluchas
From Washington, DC, USA
Who joined June 25, 2008, 10:41 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of TIP: .sw/.idb distribution image format at Jan. 9, 2016, 10:54 a.m...

Here's a link to the 'midb' program mentioned above: http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/~spd/src/other/mydb.c
Looks like it will need some updating for modern systems, but should work on your Power Series and older!