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SGI Systems

techknight

techknight

68040
was given a couple of SGI systems.

One of them is an SGI Indy R5000, it powers up and chimes. No monitor so i cant test further.

The other one is a heavy SGI Octane, it powers up as well, but no chime or anything.

No monitors so i cant test what they are or anything.

Any ideas what i could do with these? anyone know SGI?

 
I have an Indy, don't know much at all about Octanes. They're not really good for much anymore beyond conversation pieces, but they're "interesting" hardware. Outside of IRIX (which is almost impossible to get legally) a few models will run Linux and NetBSD to varying degrees of success. I've run Linux on the Indy and it works pretty well. Not super-exciting or anything, mind you. (The machines are basically roughly equal to a low-end Pentium)

You can use a multisync VGA monitor on an Indy with a VGA->DB13w3 adapter. (It's the same plug most older Sun workstations use.) The adapters used to be available for a song from industrial computer surplus vendors but they're getting pretty thin on the ground now. The Indy uses a PS/2 Keyboard and mouse as well, but be forewarned that it can be pretty picky about keyboards. (It follows the IBM PS/2 signaling standard but it uses a few commands that aren't usually used by x86 PS/2 machines, meaning many cheap keyboards won't work. A "good" keyboard like an IBM Model M or a Microsoft Natural will be fine.)

 
The Indy I have is an R5000 180mhz i think? i cant remember. I know they cant be much, its also MIPS, not ARM or anything like that.

The Octain is the same thing, except its got 2 processors and i think its the R10000, I pulled the CPU stack apart and its solid gold. lol.

 
R5000 Indys are about as useful as an O2. Just a little slower.

You can however directly pull VGA of the graphics card if you are crafty.

The octane has no internal speaker so you won't hear a chime. They are nice so long as you have a video card with texture memory and if you are lucky, the PCI shoebox. Both systems however will give a console off serial port 1 if no keyboard or mouse are plugged in.

Edit: Also, DO NOT TOUCH THE COMPRESSION CONNECTORS. Theya re the #1 most picky parts of the system next to the Xbow revision on the backplane.

 
whats a compression connector?

Also I took the CPU board apart to find out what CPUs were installed, it had 2 CPUs so i took the CPUs out and they are R10000 2 of em. Some internet research revealed that removing the CPU completely fries the CPU board becuase the LGA brissles get screwed. i hope not. lol. Too late now. If they did, oh well. ill just put solder balls on it and reflow it in, make it a permanent attachment. basically convert the LGA to a BGA

Anyway, i put the system all back together. it has the PCI box, which contains a network card.

it also has 2 funky SUN style video plugs on the cards of the opposite side of the CPU card.

Edit: NVM, google is my friend. its those weird gold connector thingies that interconnect the boards together. I dunno if i touched them or not, i cannot recall.

 
NetBSD runs quite well on Indy systems and the R10000 Octane should be supported in -current.

One easy way I found to make a serial cable is to take a Mac serial cable and cut the handshaking wires. The rest are close enough to allow an SGI to talk to something else.

I use my R5000 Indy with a third party ethernet card as a NAT / IPv6 / DHCP / DNS / rsync server. SCSI drives are a pain in the rear so I put in a 120 gig IDE drive on a SCSI-IDE adapter.

 
I need to dig my Indy out of storage. I used one as a workstation when I was a snot nosed undergrad at the Salk Institute. I have the bag and the Presenter (but no cable) and an IndyCam, plus the matching granite keyboard and mouse.

 
Also I took the CPU board apart to find out what CPUs were installed, it had 2 CPUs so i took the CPUs out and they are R10000 2 of em. Some internet research revealed that removing the CPU completely fries the CPU board...
Click to expand...
Score?

You know, of course, that if you wanted to know what the CPUs were there were other ways of finding out...

 
You mentioned a network card in the PCI box. Does that network card also have PS/2 ports on it?

If so, it may have the fairly cool cadduo set of options installed. It essentially allowed one Octane (in nearly any config) be used as a workstation for two people. It was way cheaper than buying two different octanes for a pair of folks (developers, CAD designers, 3d animators) whose workloads either fit into one processor each, or were alternating in schedule. (i.e. user A writes/reads code while User B compiles, and then they alternate.)

The model sticker on the back, along with some tags it may have attached in the "options" areas should have revealed the CPU speeds without opening the machine.

Both the Octane and the Indy are nice systems. I had a 200MHz R4400SC Indy with maxed ram, dual disks, 24xl graphics, and indyvideo+cosmocompress. It was nice but for all of the options I had, it wasn't actually very useful. (like, at the time, in 2003/2004, I could browse the web on it, but it was never very good at video capture.)

It's also worth noting that although the graphics connectors are 13W3, they use different syncing than Sun does.

 
So long as you didn't totally fiddle with the CPU's when you separated the CPU board you should be okay, It lat least cost me problems when I separated the heatsink fro the CPU board in my old O2. Forget BGA'ing it if it's stopped working. You've nuked it and you'll have to find another CPU which is unfortunate as dual CPU modules tend to be expensive.

the Cadduo card IS awesome. I have one myself and it's cool to have two people running graphical sessions ont he system and palying quake against eachother. :)

Also, the Compression Connector looks like this:

compress.connect.gif


For any reason, do not touch it. Do not even brush dirt off it. You can only clean it with compressed air. The gold contacts on the midplane though you can easily clean with a Q-tip.

There is one particular board of the Indy which is the cool of all cool pieces of hrdware. It's the Nintendo Ultra 64 Development board. It's quite rare and very expensive but amazingly, I found one.

P9283164.jpg.ebb64cc64bd8ec3385d77d529f0ace35.jpg


It's also worth noting that although the graphics connectors are 13W3, they use different syncing than Sun does.
Click to expand...
True only for the Octane technically. The Indy as previously stated can do H+V sync while the Octane requires a monitor that supports Sync On Green.

 
Well i dont know if i killed the CPU board or not, i took it apart to find out what CPUs it had. I didnt know of the other ways because i dont know SGI or IRIX at all. the least bit. lol. I pulled 1 CPU off the heatsink to check it out. I re-thermal pasted it and put it back onto the retainer and sandwhiched it all back together. i didnt loose any of the brissles from the CPU retainers.

Does the network card have PS/2 ports? well actually yes it does. :-) Interesting Cory. i didnt know that tidbit. the Octane also has 2 video ports. And one of them has a port for 3D Glasses

I also have 3 rack peices too. They are CMN026 models, but from researching there are many many many variants. These are DVI ports, theres like 2 or 3 in the middle back. Also the face is gray with purple HDD covers. also has a CDROM. These all came from the same place, and ive been vowed to have the HDDs wiped. would be nice to go through the files to see what they used/installed, but i dont need a lawsuit either. it is P&G afterall.

 
I recommend before you wipe you at least try and salvage /var/flexlm/license.dat. Regardless of what is installed, that has to be one of the single most valueable files in Irix as it holds any first or third party software licenses.

 
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