SGI Indigo2 IMPACT Back Up and Running

[glitchwrks]

Wow, imgur says *five* *years* ago I pulled out Amy's Indigo2 IMPACT machine and started cleaning it up:



This machine came from Virginia Tech surplus, pretty sure Amy picked it up while we were still in college. Someone helpfully wrote a bunch of information down and stuck it inside the front door:



Including the hostname and the date it was shut down (which makes sense for when we were still at VT):



Well, last weekend I finally decided to actually set it up properly. I'd already done the NVRAM, of course I believe I'd had NetBSD 7.x booting on it, which let me verify everything was still working. Interestingly, NetBSD 9.2 no longer seems to boot from the installation CD: it loads the kernel and stops when it identifies int0. No messages, just hangs. Something to investigate later!

The main impetus to actually getting IRIX 6.5 installed was a) getting a hard disk in it and b) remembering to burn a set of discs. I have a super nice Seagate Barracuda with 50-pin low density connector, 36 GB, 0.2 hour on the internal counter. Very quiet, doesn't run hot. Since the Indigo2 should be fast enough that a SCSI2SD would be the bottleneck, that's where the Barracuda is now installed. I couldn't get a SCA drive and adapter in there, at least not with what I thought was a suitable fit, and I was worried about heat anyway.

After feeding discs and waiting a while, I have IRIX 6.5 up and running:



I had images for IRIX 6.5 from 1998 so that's what I've burned, but I'm thinking I will do a clean install with the 6.5.22 overlays, since I know everything is working now.

First thing to update will obviously be the RAM: it has 64MB installed, and if I understand the tables correctly, I should be able to put 384MB in there, with the R4400.

 

[Jacques]

Lovely machine! My favourite SGI, even though I’ve never owned one. For 6.5 I’d say 128mb is minimum, 256mb is nice. Anything over that is great!

 

[Elf]

Edit: With apologies, I no longer wish to have involvement with SGUG or SGI communities in general,
and have also chosen to remove all of my content. Many things have changed since I co-founded, named, and ultimately
then left SGUG. There are many good people around, to whom I apologize for frustrating by removing these things, and
also many petty people that over the years whittled down both the enjoyment as well as sense of obligation I used to
feel to anyone else regarding what was ultimately just a hobby. Unfortunately one of the latter now writes the rules
and so it is time for me to take my things and go.

This message will replace all of my previous forum posts because deleting threads that I started would have removed
other peoples' posts.

 

[glitchwrks]

Lovely machine! My favourite SGI, even though I’ve never owned one. For 6.5 I’d say 128mb is minimum, 256mb is nice. Anything over that is great!

Thanks! It is indeed a pretty nice machine, I like the form factor. I had an O2 for a while, which was fine, but I like this case style better.

Nice machine; I like the historical information on the door

Same here! I kept the original hostname, though it is now kriz.glitchworks.net instead of the vt.edu subdomain

Thankfully RAM for the Indigo2 (and Indy) should be fairly easy to obtain on eBay still, as it is somewhat commodity: https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/indy-ram-suppliers.625/#post-3704

Indeed, part of the attraction of the Indigo2 and Indy (recently-ish acquired one while designing the NVRAM replacement for it). Some of the old Suns I have use the same memory, so I've got some on hand, but usually only 4MB and 16MB SIMMs.

 

[supretao]

I got a Indigo2 Impact machine.
It has a good style and look very well.
But it is difficulty to look for HD and memory for it.