Looking for a SD card image with irix 5.3 preloaded for Indigo R3k

[flexion]

I recently acquired an Iris Indigo R3k, but I don't have a network adapter cable to perform a network installation using booterizer.
And I currently also don't have an external SCSI CD-ROM available as installation media (well, I bought one, but borders to germany are currently closed due to some odd virus, so I can't pick it up at the moment).

So I would like to ask if someone could please share an image of an SCSI2SD card (v6) with IRIX 5.3 installed for the Iris Indigo R3000?

thank you

PS: I hope I'm not breaking any board rules with this request :-/

 

[mamorim01]

Alas, I do not have access to an R3000 machine so I am afraid I cannot be of any help or I would be glad to dump the image for you. There are a couple of disk images in MAME's internal drive format including a full installation of both 6.5.22 and 5.3 for an Indy R4600 machine at the following URL, but I have unfortunately not been able to find any other links relevant to your machine configuration online.

sgi.neocities.org

Drive images stored in MAME's internal format (CHD) can be converted to raw dumps using the mame-tools tool set (you can easily find this package in debian repositories if you are using Linux, or find windows binaries online). The whole process from downloading the drive image, to converting the CHD file takes 5-10 minutes, and it is as straightforward as it gets. The output file from mame-tools can be imaged to an SD card using dd. I have my Indy running using this particular drive image so I can attest that the process works really well.

SCSI2SD v6 boards can access a total of 7 drive IDs so it might be possible to dump the IRIX CD images on an SD card, one CD per drive ID, and proceed with the installation from the SCSI2SD board. In other words, you would be emulating a drive chain comprising 1 drive ID as main hard drive, and 6 different CD drives, each one fitted with one IRIX install CD, if that makes any sense. I can't say I have ever tried this so...

The other option would be to install MAME on your main computer, create a new drive and emulate an Indigo with similar settings as your real machine to proceed with the installation on the virtual drive. Once you have the system ready and the virtual SGI machine spooled up to make sure it works just fine, shut it down and use mame-tools to convert the CHD file and dump the result onto an SD card you can use on the SCSI2SD board.

 

[flexion]

thank you very much for your input and the link! I will try it with either CD on SD card or in MAME!

 

[flexion]

I played a bit with MAME emulation.. pretty cool to see the Indy start screen pop up!

just for fun I tried the Indy emulation, created a virtual disk, booted into fx.ARCS (irix 5.3), created labels on the virtual disk, then started system installation from "local CD", which starts but then exits after just a few seconds with "not enough space" error.. couldn't find the reason yet, as the emulated disk is 10GB and at first glance it looked OK in the partitioner. will try again tomorrow.

then I tried to launch the indigo3k ROM, but MAME shows the warning "machine doesn't work.. there's nothing you can do.." and then just a blank black screen, and beeps whenever you press a button. (I have used MAME 0.220 via ubuntu apt get installation)

So I guess I have to try the "CD to SD" method for installation on the indigo. Although can't try this right now, have to wait for the SD cards.

 

[mamorim01]

I played a bit with MAME emulation.. pretty cool to see the Indy start screen pop up!

just for fun I tried the Indy emulation, created a virtual disk, booted into fx.ARCS (irix 5.3), created labels on the virtual disk, then started system installation from "local CD", which starts but then exits after just a few seconds with "not enough space" error.. couldn't find the reason yet, as the emulated disk is 10GB and at first glance it looked OK in the partitioner. will try again tomorrow.

then I tried to launch the indigo3k ROM, but MAME shows the warning "machine doesn't work.. there's nothing you can do.." and then just a blank black screen, and beeps whenever you press a button. (I have used MAME 0.220 via ubuntu apt get installation)

So I guess I have to try the "CD to SD" method for installation on the indigo. Although can't try this right now, have to wait for the SD cards.

I thought they had partial Indigo emulation sorted out by 0.212 or so, but I seem to be mistaken. According to this website, R3k emulation is "far from working"

My experience with SGI emulation in MAME is very limited, and focused on the R4600 Indy. The whole thing is a bit experimental and there are glitches here and there, especially during the installation procedure, but once you have the virtual machine set up it works remarkably well (performance issues aside).

This old thread has some additional information on some other glitches during the installation process.

Indy and Indigo2 Emulation Screenshots

These were taken in MAME 0.211.

forums.sgi.sh

And you can find more information regarding the current status of emulation, as well as guidelines and resources, here:

Console Protocols - SGI Emulation

MAME can emulate either SGI Indy or Indigo 2 running the IRIX Operating System. https://github.com/mamedev/mame/releases 0.207 Initial Support (slow) 0.213 has a graphics bug regression 0.232 Networking works 0.240 Non-Dynamic Recompiler 0.241 Dynamic Recompiler was added (faster) Current MAME

sites.google.com

 

[flexion]

no problem at all, it was fun to try out MAME emulation! was on my todo list for a long time anyways thanks for your efforts, really appreciated!

PS: got the installer working in Indy MAME now

 

[phineas64]

I can confirm writing the CD images to the sd card works as I did just this with my R3k Indigo and an SCSI2SD V5.3.
I started by partitioning the SD card in linux with fdisk and setting the partition table to be SGI type and the one 8 GB partition to be the hard drive, enable boot on this partition, and the second partition was 2 GB. I went ahead and made some extra partitions in the remaining space on the SD that I am not using yet.
I set up 2 drives on the SCSI2SD with the first being the 8 GB hard drive partition and the second being a CDROM. You have to enter in the start and number of sectors for both partitions which you can get from fdisk. Make sure you enter the actual sector count from fdisk not rely on entering the GB size in SCSI2SD since it might not match how the SD actually got partitioned.
After that you can use dd to write the iso file of IRIX 5.3 to the second partition we just setup on the SD card i.e. /dev/sdX2
Pop the card into the SCSI2SD and turn on the Indigo it might report an error but you can still continue and it will report the 2 SCSI drives present.
You can now enter the standard boot commands to start the installer from the "CDROM" drive.
I ran the installer and did the default setup on the hard drive device and let it partition up the 8 GD space how it wanted so it now technically has its own nested partitions for root, usr, swap , etc.
After the installer finishes you can boot into IRIX no problem.
Now if you want to add a different CD you can pop the SD card into another machine and dd to the /dev/sdX2 whatever image you want. A small hassle but it was my only option without an ethernet transceiver to try network install.

 

[flexion]

I can confirm writing the CD images to the SD card works as I did just this with my R3k Indigo and an SCSI2SD V5.3.

Excellent, thanks a lot for the write-up! I have now prepared an SD card in ubuntu. Unfortunately I can't try yet if it works, because the additional SCSI2SD adapters I had ordered have still not left the U.S... --> USPS =

 

[nevyn]

Apologies if this has already been solved, but does your R3000 not have the 15pin AUI network port on the back? I have some spare AUI -> RJ45 transceivers that could help get it on a network (or even fibre, if thats what floats your boat)

 

[flexion]

Apologies if this has already been solved, but does your R3000 not have the 15pin AUI network port on the back? I have some spare AUI -> RJ45 transceivers that could help get it on a network (or even fibre, if thats what floats your boat)

Hi and thanks for the offer meanwhile I was able to boot the Indigo from that pre-installed SD card. The machine starts, but has some intermittent issues and lock ups, so a network install would have been impossible.

Although such a transceiver would still be nice to have. Which country are you from? .. because I'm located in europe.

 

[nevyn]

I used to be located in Europe, but some referendum thing happened and now apparently I'm not. (UK based)

I could stick one in a jiffy bag if you're willing to cover P&P - DM me your address and I'll sort a quote?

 

[megaimg]

I having issue installing on a IRis Indigo R3000. Keep asking for the Ip for rpgi - any clue?
Using Reanimator for RaspBerry Pi.

 

[megaimg]

Apologies if this has already been solved, but does your R3000 not have the 15pin AUI network port on the back? I have some spare AUI -> RJ45 transceivers that could help get it on a network (or even fibre, if thats what floats your boat)

I been trying to use Reaniimator with out luck....after booting the miniboot, ask for the ip of the server, put it in and it loose connection. Any help!