Project Machine Pickups

[Jinroh]

After the WTB thread I made, I recently got two project SGI machines, though hopefully I can add a few more to my collection and get these two up and running again.

Firstly was a very nice R5000 Indy.

R5k 150MHZ
64MB RAM
NO HDD (Need to get one.)
24-bit XL Graphics
Very nice R5k Badged Skin
Sony Power Supply

Everything was tested and working, so just need the HDD.
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Secondly was an Octane (older model) from a junk dealer.

This one I probably should have just left, but the skins were too nice to leave it for a potentially junk heap after a while. They are nearly perfect. I felt bad for the poor thing. x3

Lucent Power supply (Black Handle) dead, just a relay clicks when it is plugged in.
Other than that it is complete, but I just picked it up and have not had time to open it up yet and see what is inside.

The model number says that is should be an R10000 at 195MHZ. So we shall see when I crack it open.

 

[Elf]

Congratulations!

Too bad about the Octane supply; I have heard about that failure mode many times. Unfortunately I don't have any solution on hand for you, but I really should take a look at those supplies soon and at least figure out how they work.

 

[Jinroh]

No worries.

I figured eventually I can pick up another working one and swap it in.

It and the Indy are another for the pile of projects, but still happy to have them.

 

[Jinroh]

Looked up how to remove the various boards. Love the mechanisms btw, lovely modular design.

Looks like a single 195mhz R10k, and the first set of RAM are 2x 64MB, not sure about the second set yet.

 

[Jinroh]

I bought a working Cherokee 747 from a local place, I will pick up this weekend.

Hopefully with that, I can get this girl back up and running. There is a Hard Drive in the unit as well, so hopefully that works as well, and we can boot into Irix and see what this machine was used for in its past life.

Judging by my unit, cross referencing with this drawing I found on Bukosek's page. My GPU should be a SI/SE + Texture RAM. So that is exciting if that is the case. Having some hardware texture capability would be nice.

 

[Elf]

I am glad you found a working power supply! If you ever want to get rid of the old one at-cost (shipping & handling), let me know, I might be interested. Octane power supplies are one of the few I haven't dissected yet. I have some working ones, but the "click of death" (borrowed from Iomega, I suppose) is an interesting failure mode to me.

The TRAM is a great addition as well; most of my graphics other than VPro has no texturing ability, and it really hurts despite the other aspects of its performance.

 

[Jinroh]

Oh bummer I let another user who messaged me about it, have it for the same purpose. They also want them for research.

I was also going to do the same, but I have so many projects it would be a year or two before I got to it haha.

The Cherokee works, but light bar shows red, with no start chime. So full stop again. X3

Will try hooking up everything. Just had a monitor cable. And reseat the backplane boards.

 

[rbz]

The Cherokee works, but light bar shows red, with no start chime. So full stop again. X3

Will try hooking up everything. Just had a monitor cable. And reseat the backplane boards.

Make sure you had a speaker / headphones plugged in. The Octane doesn't have a PC speaker so the lack of chime first puzzled me when I didn't have my VGA cable built and one of the first diag steps was checking for the chime. Also, you won't get a boot if the keyboard is disconnected, but it will display an error for that. I guess if you had no video, both points are kinda moot.

 

[Elf]

Oh bummer I let another user who messaged me about it, have it for the same purpose. They also want them for research.

No problem; I am sure it is only a matter of time before I encounter another dead one!
There is also a section in the user's manual (attached) about the light bar troubleshooting process of the Octane:



Also see the Higher Intellect wiki about front plane link status lights: https://wiki.preterhuman.net/SGI_Octane#Troubleshooting

 

[Jinroh]

Make sure you had a speaker / headphones plugged in. The Octane doesn't have a PC speaker so the lack of chime first puzzled me when I didn't have my VGA cable built and one of the first diag steps was checking for the chime. Also, you won't get a boot if the keyboard is disconnected, but it will display an error for that. I guess if you had no video, both points are kinda moot.

Ah I see, very good. I tried with external speaker and heard the chime!

I have a 13w3 to component cable but none of my monitors like the sync on green apparently.

No problem; I am sure it is only a matter of time before I encounter another dead one!
There is also a section in the user's manual (attached) about the light bar troubleshooting process of the Octane:

View attachment 622 View attachment 623 View attachment 624

Also see the Higher Intellect wiki about front plane link status lights: https://wiki.preterhuman.net/SGI_Octane#Troubleshooting
View attachment 625

Thank you so much! And ah-ha. This could be why. I opened the front of the machine to see the HDD and.........

It has Bad Drive written on it. xD

Why would they just leave it there, after marking it........no idea.

Once I get a 13w3 cable and/or a monitor that likes sync on green, I can confirm, but that seems likely.

 

[rbz]

Ah I see, very good. I tried with external speaker and heard the chime!
I have a 13w3 to component cable but none of my monitors like the sync on green apparently.

It has Bad Drive written on it. xD
Why would they just leave it there, after marking it........no idea.

Glad to hear you heard the chime! That is very good news. My Octane also came with a 13W3 to component/BNC cable and I had zero luck getting it to work with anything, so I just took a spare VGA cable and spliced in the RGB signals off the 13W3 to the VGA RGB. It isn't pretty but it works great with my old Dell LCD that supports SoG.

Funny enough my Octane also had a bad drive in it that prevented booting, but thankfully it was only one of the three and I was able to reuse the other two.

 

[Jinroh]

Oh yes good idea, A VGA has a simple mechanism for wiring. Now I need to find a spare VGA I do not mind cutting up.

Oh nice! I am glad you got them working.

I think I am going to get a pair of SCSI to SD and throw them in my Indy and Octane. :3

 

[rbz]

I think I am going to get a pair of SCSI to SD and throw them in my Indy and Octane. :3

I think a SCSI2SD in the Indy would be fine from what I have read, but it would be too slow, even a SCSI2SD v6, for the Octane.

Your best bet is to buy one of the new-old-stock surplus drives sold on eBay Universal SGI disk solution: 15kRPM 300GB SCA SCSI drives this thread has a link to the part number, they are ~$35 on eBay which is cheaper than a SCSI2SD v5.1 ($60) and a lot cheaper than the v6 ($98) and much much faster.

 

[Jacques]

Yeah, get a 10k / 15k spinner for the Octane, you'll be doing it a disservice if you stick a SCSI2SD in it. The Octane's SCSI speeds are actually very good.

 

[weblacky]

Make very sure before you go much further that your system fans are all spinning correctly and can be "free-handed" with ease, while off. A couple people have appeared lately with Octanes whose fans were hard to move (or frozen) and they burned up their drives and possibly an Xbox board heart IC from lack of cooling.

Octanes run hot and don't have much monitoring to alert you or complain of fan issues (later system have this in spades), please make sure the fans you can't see really are in fact in good working order before installing a drive that hot.

 

[Jinroh]

Thank you so much for the info everyone!

I think a SCSI2SD in the Indy would be fine from what I have read, but it would be too slow, even a SCSI2SD v6, for the Octane.

Your best bet is to buy one of the new-old-stock surplus drives sold on eBay Universal SGI disk solution: 15kRPM 300GB SCA SCSI drives this thread has a link to the part number, they are ~$35 on eBay which is cheaper than a SCSI2SD v5.1 ($60) and a lot cheaper than the v6 ($98) and much much faster.

Yeah, get a 10k / 15k spinner for the Octane, you'll be doing it a disservice if you stick a SCSI2SD in it. The Octane's SCSI speeds are actually very good.

Oh excellent! Thank you guys! With the 80/50 Pin adapter for the Indy and 2 drives is cheaper than getting the SCSI2SD as well. So I will go with this option. Then get a few more drives later in case 20 years later those die or I get some other dead drive machines.

Make very sure before you go much further that your system fans are all spinning correctly and can be "free-handed" with ease, while off. A couple people have appeared lately with Octanes whose fans were hard to move (or frozen) and they burned up their drives and possibly an Xbox board heart IC from lack of cooling.

Octanes run hot and don't have much monitoring to alert you or complain of fan issues (later system have this in spades), please make sure the fans you can't see really are in fact in good working order before installing a drive that hot.

Oh yes very good idea, the Power Supply fan is excellent, but I will check if there are any additional fans, that I can check.

I read some posts on the web and heard Dell monitors usually work well with Sync on Green, the thrift store had a 16:9 monitor, I picked up for $4.99 and got a wayward VGA cable as well, so I will splice that with the 13w3 connector I have, to make a VGA cable. If this monitor does not work, I am only out $4.99 and can use it for another PC, but it does not have HDMI port so I figure it should be old enough that it might work. There are some other non-Dell (HP and SONYO) 4:3 monitors there. I might pick up one later for my Pentium II PC if any of the interest parties do not pick it up.

I should be able to find a pinout of each and match them up. It has been a while since I have made cable for <RANDOM FORMAT> to VGA.

 

[weblacky]

Warning about SCSI SE adapters inside an Indy...Indy SCSI cable it has no additional length in it, often if you place an adapter of ANY KIND (even a 68-> 50 pin slim adapter), the next bay will wind up with a connector that won't quite reach. That's ok if you only use one drive, if you plan on having two drives...either make sure both are 50 pin native...or buy a extremely overpriced SCSI M/F ribbon extension cable to makeup the length issue.

You could also you could use a completely new 50 SCSI ribbon internal cable for the Indy...just make sure you SCSI termination is correct (either with ribbon terminator, like the Indy's native cable, or proper last drive termination, or BOTH.

 

[Jinroh]

Warning about SCSI SE adapters inside an Indy...Indy SCSI cable it has no additional length in it, often if you place an adapter of ANY KIND (even a 68-> 50 pin slim adapter), the next bay will wind up with a connector that won't quite reach. That's ok if you only use one drive, if you plan on having two drives...either make sure both are 50 pin native...or buy a extremely overpriced SCSI M/F ribbon extension cable to makeup the length issue.

You could also you could use a completely new 50 SCSI ribbon internal cable for the Indy...just make sure you SCSI termination is correct (either with ribbon terminator, like the Indy's native cable, or proper last drive termination, or BOTH.

Thank you for the heads up. :3 I will keep that in mind when I weight the options. Likely though I will just be going with 1 drive anyway. The Octane will certainly get more use than the Indy.

 

[weblacky]

I love Dell 4:3 17" monitors on SGIs. Dell models 1704/1705/1706/1707/1708 work just fine. Also many NEC Multisyncs work (check the manuals). Older 4:3 Samsung SyncMasters (15" to maybe 19") often work great. Dell Models won't say in manuals about SOG. Forget widescreens...just forget that...lost cause of VFO nightmares. I use all Dell/Samsung/and NEC 4:3 LCDs @ native 1280x1024 and go on with life.

For cables, please just buy, this (I have 5 of them and need more): 6 ft. 13W3 Male to SVGA (HD15) Male Universal Cable w/ 12 Dip Switches - W3-606 https://ebay.us/nulMUI

Serious...forget Pinout hell of which model has what...all the old ones won't stop outputting SOG even if you use separate H/V sync pins (SOG signal still present) so whatever LCD you use MUST BE SOG tolerant anyway. You'll know it's intolerant if your picture is perfect but GREEN tinted. If perfect picture is green tinted it's not tolerant of wiggle sync signal on the GREEN signal line and you'll need to change monitors anyway. If you're going to collect SGIs just get Monitors they like...makes life a lot easier. instead of trying to make it work on your current desktop PC monitor. Many Dell 4:3 Monitors can be found for like under the cost of a subway sandwich. I once found two dell 1708fp monitors at a PC recycler for $5 each, run on SGIs perfectly, great condition. Nobody wants to buy 4:3 so they are priced to just trash them. Nearly free.

 

[Jinroh]

Thanks. We will see if the monitor I got today will be compliant.

I will report back. (Judging by my research it seems 99% likely.)