SGI Origin 300 supported hard drives?

[jander31]

Hello, I hope all is well.

I purchased my first SGI server today, an SGI Origin 300, and was also given an SGI NL4R router module for free. The Origin 300 starts up with no glaring issues, and I purchased a set of drive caddies for it. The only issue now is finding a suitable SCSI drive that will work, in addition to installing IRIX (I know the Origin 300 uses the ARCS firmware bootloader, which will affect a line or so during installation). If anyone could recommend a decent drive, not looking for a ton of storage (just enough to run some compute-related tasks remotely), I would really appreciate the assistance!

Also not really sure what to do with the NL4R, as it relies on DC power.

(Ignore the R730xd, it's a bit crowded in my dorm room)

 

[joshyfishy22]

Nice find. Mind I ask where did you get this from? For the drives, any scsi SCA drives will work. I recommend the HP 300gb SCA drives you can find on ebay. These drives have the long 80 pin single connectors on them.

And for the NL4R. Those are used for sgi Altix 350s / 3000s and do not work with the MIPS origin stuff. The altix stuff can also be a lot of fun to play with if you want to mess with Linux and Itanium. They get power from a "power brick". I guess you could mod it to use AC power.

 

[jander31]

Nice find. Mind I ask where did you get this from? For the drives, any scsi SCA drives will work. I recommend the HP 300gb SCA drives you can find on ebay. These drives have the long 80 pin single connectors on them.

And for the NL4R. Those are used for sgi Altix 350s / 3000s and do not work with the MIPS origin stuff. The altix stuff can also be a lot of fun to play with if you want to mess with Linux and Itanium. They get power from a "power brick". I guess you could mod it to use AC power.

I got it from some guy in Connecticut, he had a lot of SGI stuff from New York University's old systems. I took his last Origin, but he has a bunch of NL4Rs and some SGI blades up for grabs. Do the NL4Rs have Itaniums inside, or is it something different?

As for the drives, it doesn't have to be Ultra160? I can use Ultra320 drives and still be fine?

I appreciate the assistance!

 

[joshyfishy22]

Oh its that guy on ebay. I had emaild him asking if he had any other system and he said no. Glad that someone in the group got it

For the NL4R its a pretty empty box if you crack it open. All it really has is the Router ASIC that acts, well as a router for the Numalink Fabric (and a usb hub). If you can find some Altix 350 bricks you can make a pretty neat system. I warn you tho. Its addictive as hell. Once you have one you will want more. Also what color doors did you get on it? the yellow accents or just normal grey?

The Ultra 320 drives also work well. Really anything with an SCA connector on it will work. I use HP Ultra 320 300gb drives in my Onyx 350 and assorted other bricks for storage.

Do you know if he still has those altix 450s in the picture on the ebay listing? Same with the Numalink cables too? Every time I see that picture I get sad that they prob all got scrapped.

 

[jander31]

Oh its that guy on ebay. I had emaild him asking if he had any other system and he said no. Glad that someone in the group got it

For the NL4R its a pretty empty box if you crack it open. All it really has is the Router ASIC that acts, well as a router for the Numalink Fabric (and a usb hub). If you can find some Altix 350 bricks you can make a pretty neat system. I warn you tho. Its addictive as hell. Once you have one you will want more. Also what color doors did you get on it? the yellow accents or just normal grey?

The Ultra 320 drives also work well. Really anything with an SCA connector on it will work. I use HP Ultra 320 300gb drives in my Onyx 350 and assorted other bricks for storage.

Do you know if he still has those altix 450s in the picture on the ebay listing? Same with the Numalink cables too? Every time I see that picture I get sad that they prob all got scrapped.

When I visited his house (I drove all the way from Maryland), he didn't have anything aside from a bunch of NL4Rs and some odd looking SGI blades. He also had an Xserve Xeon, which I got for $40. No Altix 450s, aren't those large mini-fridge sized units? I tried googling the Altix 450, and they look huge. No cables either as far as I know; he told me a lot of cables got sold, in addition to most of the "normal" SGI stuff.

I'd love to have some sort of visualization unit at some point, like an Onyx4. Any idea what PCI cards are supported by the Origin 300? Would be cool to have a graphics module, or an additional ethernet module. I probably won't ever be able to use the Numalink feature, as I don't see myself coming across another SGI unit anytime soon. I intend on getting the Origin 300 hosting *something,* and interfacing that within my website.

I might just get an Ultra160, the manual mentioned it. I'm afraid of incompatibility. I gotta check what I have at home though, I feel like I have some spare IBM SCA-type drives.

As for the NL4R, it has yellow accents underneath the grey.

Any idea how well an air-gapped network between the Origin and a Sun Blade 2000 will function? I wanted to make a tiny network with the Origin, my Sun Blade 2000, and Sun SPARCserver 5.

Edit:

I think it's 80-pin?

 

[joshyfishy22]

Finding cards that will work with these systems is pretty difficult due to the specific cards that the drivers want. There should be a list around of compatable pci cards. For graphics you would either need a Origin 350 and put a v12 in it. Or you would need a G-brick, V-brick, or Onyx4 GN brick. All are hard to come by and EXPENSIVE.

Iv never had drive incompatability with any drive iv thrown at it. You should be fine with any SCA drive

That NL4R looks pretty nice! I always loved the yellow of the altix line.

 

[flexion]

when you install a compatible LSI Logic PCI-x SAS/SATA controller, you can even attach SSD drives.

 

[RubyManning]

Try a 36GB or 73GB SCSI drive; IRIX installs smoothly.

 

[jander31]

I appreciate all of the responses! I ended up picking a 10K RPM 73GB IBM-rebranded Seagate 80-pin SCSI drive.

A couple additional questions for now:

• Will the Origin 300 support an IRIS Gigabit PCI-X card? There's two part numbers, 9470434 and 9210169. The latter is fiber optic, which I'd love to experiment with. I was looking at this thread, but I couldn't understand what was going on; what do 2, 6, 12, and X mean?
• What was the "average" use case of an Origin 300? Some guy on Facebook said he did presales for SGI, and one hosting company ran backup software on their Origin 300s. What else were Origin 300s used for?

Thank you again!

Edit: The manuals for each of the Gigabit cards mentioned the Origin 200, Onyx2, Origin 2000, and the Octane. I assume the cards won't be compatible with the Origin 300?

 

[joshyfishy22]

Ya those gigabit pcix cards should work. Iv never tried them myself in a origin 300 but they should work if they are the special sgi ones. And for the numbers. Thats the amount of pci slots that system has. And the X is a checkmark for what it is.

Id say the most average use case with the origin 300s today for hobbyist are for numalinking together and being used as compute nodes with graphics to have a workstation type system (Onyx 300/350). Another usecase would be a compliation machine for development since they are fast and have 2 or more procs.