[weblacky]

Irix 6.5.22 media: https://winworldpc.com/product/irix/6522
Irix 6.5.30 media (cannot personally vouch for this, use at your own risk): https://archive.org/details/IRIX6530TAR

Here a well-known CDROM media install guide, read this:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/6.5inst.html

Here is a GENERIC Network install guide:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/netboot.html

I would still expect you to use something like LOVE utility for doing the real network install. But reading these links will help you in understanding what the heck is going on.

A modern SCSI disk on a modern SGI should take under an hour to install a standard Irix distro...however you can add things like compilers and tools from additional CDs or files that could add extra time. Given that you're learning I would install the basic system first as as a high probability you might be reinstalling the operating system soon based a change of mind or an issue with needing to reinstall something.

Honestly if I were you be prepared to do in the installation multiple times. You're likely not going to get 100% right the first time. You also may change your mind or what you want to install and certain things are easier to install initially.

One thing that may not be well explained to you that will help in the beginning is you need to treat the SGI installation like you're installing an operating system with a ton of service packs. So you need a combination of the files from the original 6.5 OS and then all the files from the overlays (what you would consider to be a service pack). This insured that the user was still licensed for the initial OS release even as newer versions came out. The media was not released with a totally new installer make up. You always had to put some the original OS files in the installer with the service pack installer. You always boot with the first overlay CD, or the files from the first overlay if you're doing a network install. But during that install you need to feed in a bunch of CDs, or folders on a share, in a specific order to layer for the original OS files and their entitlements, then the updates to those entitlements. If you get the order wrong you'll see an enormous number of conflicts. Please note there is never zero conflicts. Most of the time you have to disable some Java client and potentially something else to get the conflict totally resolved. But if you come across an enormous number it's a sign that you put the discs in in the wrong order.

Read through the installer guide to understand what I mean but the installer was always designed for CD media. If you use a network install, unless someone has written a script for you, you're expected to feed it chunks of files manually that would've been the contents of each CD. Normally people just make a single folder for each CD, and then open each folder in the proper order as if you were inserting those CDs manually on a local media install. So the network install doesn't behave any real differently when it comes to the way files are organized. You cannot dump all the files in one folder because there are naming conflicts and you'll wind up overwriting things.

The basic steps are you first need to provision the hard disk with an SGI disk label, this is what you would think of as a partition table. You need to use the root style label which is designed to be the bootable volume. The option label is designed to be secondary storage discs and not used to boot the operating system. You'll use a program that you have to launch by hand called FX. You'll need to write an entire line to fetch it from the network if you're doing a network install. Once you have that done, though they'll be no file system formatting at this time just a partition table. You will then proceed to the install OS phase by clicking/selecting the option to install from the PROM menu. If you set up your network variables correctly that will automatically go to the server and fetch the appropriate startup file using TFTP. After that it will launch the installer that is totally command line driven with a simple menu. You will then go through the menu and can open multiple shares or folders containing the bits of the operating system installation media. Once you have all the media opened, you then tell it to go. Go means to install and it will attempt to do everything and reboot.

if you don't have any graphics card installed in the system there is absolutely no need for you to do a full Irix installation, you might want to do a minimal one as you have absolutely no graphical front end and you'll be stuck at the terminal. Unless you intend to use X11 forwarding to another system. If you do want to do things like that go ahead and do a full Irix operating system install.

Please read through the links above and then if you have any questions come back.

[jander31]

Please read through the links above and then if you have any questions come back.

Going to hold off on the installation until my fan arrives; gotta figure out the pinout in the meantime.  Thank you for all of the information, I really appreciate it.  I'll do some reading later tomorrow, and I'll report back for sure.  Just finished downloading everything; do I need the apps if my Origin 300 will be operating without a graphics card?  I would like to do some compute-related things, unsure if the apps have them.

Talk to you soon!  Fans should arrive by Thursday hopefully.

[weblacky]

Application is disk is mandatory, if you know what you want to prune, you can. But you cannot have "no applications", doesn't work that way. After you install you can see what wasn't really needed and create an install script to limit it next time or uninstall things after the fact...but we are talking taking SO LITTLE DISK SPACE for today's drives...that it's literally not worth your time. A FULL Irix 6.5 user install takes about/around 3GB of disk space...so waste of time to prune it today.

As I said, people have gotten X11 forwarding working so you MIGHT want to run a X11 GUI app on the SGI with the GUI remotely showing on a Linux system or whatever? Who knows...with the disk you have...not worth your time right now...make that a later problem.

You still have to about fixing things, updating your firmware, buying compatible adapter cards, configuring the base OS, etc...

More info:
https://wiki.preterhuman.net/SGI_Origin_300

[jander31]

A bit worried about the fan, I came across this URL (https://web.archive.org/web/201603190717...46#p136996), and if you look at the photo (I've uploaded it), you can see that the wires were spliced oddly.  Yellow (sgi) to black, red (sgi) to yellow, and black (sgi) to red.  Am I going to have to do the same thing with my fan, even though it's the exact same model?  Or will I be soldering directly yellow on the SGI to white on mine, black to black, and red to red? I don't want to fry either motherboard or fan.  Both fans (SGI and mine) have red as +, black as -, and white as the tach, so wouldn't the only thing different be the yellow to white? I intend on cutting the SGI cable to leave the connector and a few inches of wire, then I will strip a bit of the wire for soldering (and cover it with electrical tape for good measure).

   
Nekochan post

   
My fans; original SGI left, my new version right

[weblacky]

This is not what I suggested before. I thought I was pretty clear but let me be very clear.

The best chance you have of doing this right is to actually slightly peel the label back where the wires are on the fan's body. Where are the wires are soldered to the circuit board of the fan sometimes have stencil marks/labels. That will tell you what each wire does. You want to mimic that on your new fan. So even if they've rearranged the signals, you want the proper signal on the proper wire.

Check for stencil labels where the wires are soldered to the circuit board of the fan by slightly pulling up the sticky label on the fan!

Do not attempt to remove the entire label, it will not reattach back properly and if you have an oil port you'll be exposing the oil port. Only lift as much of a label around the wires as required to expose their soldering points.

Then simply unsolder the old wires, from the broken fan, and solder them onto the new fan body in the correct order! Do not splice.  You want to match what was there but when they make new models of fans they can switch up the wiring order or even the purpose of what a color used to mean so please check what each color wire terminates to on the fans PCB, some symbol or stencil on each pad or wire is soldered on the fan. Do you want the old wires in the correct order to attach to the correct solder pads on the new fan that have the same stencil marking for the same function.

Luckily, it looks like you only deal with three wires and not four. So there's a large probability that the white wire is the same function as the yellow wire in the original wiring. I would still do what I stated above. Do you want to match the pads to the wires not the wire colors. The colors can be reassigned by the manufacturer. Make sure the pad with the plus goes to the same wire that had the plus on the old fan, the negative or ground wire on the fan went to a negative marked pad on the old fan, etc.

Don't splice, de-solder the entire wire harness from the fans PCB body and attach the old wiring harness to the new fan where the signals are correct based on the stencil marks between the two fans.

[jander31]

This is not what I suggested before. I thought I was pretty clear but let me be very clear.

The best chance you have of doing this right is to actually slightly peel the label back where the wires are on the fan's body. Where are the wires are soldered to the circuit board of the fan sometimes have stencil marks/labels. That will tell you what each wire does. You want to mimic that on your new fan. So even if they've rearranged the signals, you want the proper signal on the proper wire.

Check for stencil labels where the wires are soldered to the circuit board of the fan by slightly pulling up the sticky label on the fan!

Do not attempt to remove the entire label, it will not reattach back properly and if you have an oil port you'll be exposing the oil port. Only lift as much of a label around the wires as required to expose their soldering points.

Then simply unsolder the old wires, from the broken fan, and solder them onto the new fan body in the correct order! Do not splice.  You want to match what was there but when they make new models of fans they can switch up the wiring order or even the purpose of what a color used to mean so please check what each color wire terminates to on the fans PCB, some symbol or stencil on each pad or wire is soldered on the fan. Do you want the old wires in the correct order to attach to the correct solder pads on the new fan that have the same stencil marking for the same function.

Luckily, it looks like you only deal with three wires and not four. So there's a large probability that the white wire is the same function as the yellow wire in the original wiring. I would still do what I stated above. Do you want to match the pads to the wires not the wire colors. The colors can be reassigned by the manufacturer. Make sure the pad with the plus goes to the same wire that had the plus on the old fan, the negative or ground wire on the fan went to a negative marked pad on the old fan, etc.

Don't splice, de-solder the entire wire harness from the fans PCB body and attach the old wiring harness to the new fan where the signals are correct based on the stencil marks between the two fans.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ignore you.  I saw the old post, freaked out a bit, and forgot to re-read your instructions.

I've attached another image with the labels peeled back (not all the way, just enough).  It appears that every wire is the same (yellow has the same function as white), so I will be de-soldering the old wires into their respective positions into the new fan.  Red will be +, black will be -, and yellow will go where white was (both are stenciled as "S").  This has significantly eased my worries.  I won't have access to a soldering iron until this weekend, so I'll be sure to get that done ASAP.

   

[weblacky]

OK so good, you noticed that they've changed the order of the pads on the PCB! That is exactly why I wanted you to check that, don't go by color first go by pad stenciling, if it's available. In this case black and red appeared to serve the same functions as they did in the old fan. So that definitely makes it a lot easier.

But again to be clear, on your old fan you have a red wire going to the plus pad. You want that same red wire to go to the new plus pad on your new fan. You have a black wire on your old fan that goes to the negative pad, you want that same black wire to go to the negative pad on your new fan, the last pad being where your yellow wire will wind up.

So what you stated is correct and yes I am advocating that you removed the old fan's wires, then remove the new fan wires, and attach the old SGI fan harness (wires) to the new fan body (PCB) using the correct pads but the old colors! This will mean you do not have to fiddle with the connector that goes to the SGI Origin mainboard. The connector is already pinned out correctly on the SGI fan cable!

So you will strip both fans of their wires as best you can by desoldering them and removing them, intact. You will then fish the old SGI fan harness correctly through the body of the new fan and get things in position, using tweezers and pre-tinning, and reconnect the old SGI fan harness to the correct signals on the new fan, as we've discussed above!

It makes a complicated thing incredibly simple, you don't have to worry about that fan connector on the board if there's nothing wrong with the connector. The signals will be in the correct order because you mapped the original SGI wire colors to their signals on the PCB. You don't care about order, they've obviously changed the order but you don't care about that. As long as you get the right color wire on the right signal on that fan PCB you're going to be just fine.

If you think about it this was a lot simpler than converting colors, snipping wires, or having to use a micro tool to gently push in the pins of the connector and rearrange them to meet the SGI standard. If there's nothing wrong with your old fans wire then it's ready to go now.

It's also important that some SGI systems use a large connector for a series of fans, all in one. The SGI fuel does this, instead of replacing that connector you're going to reuse the wires to change fans out. So this technique is going to work no matter what you encounter in the future as long as the original was working and untampered with. Reusing the original wire harness is almost always preferred to the new one. The only time that's not going to be true is if there's damage, somebody's been there before and so it's suboptimal, or the plastic fan connector actually cracked and broke due to age or heat. I've seen those kind of things and at that point you have to go further to get everything back in order. And your case swapping the fan cable assembly and soldering those three wires to the correct pads are going to be exactly what you need with very minimal risk.

In terms of soldering, I don't know your proficiency but I'll give you these hints/tips:

1. Completely desolder the wires from both fans first, gently removing them and setting aside the wires you will not be using so you will not confuse yourself.

2. If you end up melting a little bit of the fan wire or having any breakage or problems you don't want then you'd have to trim back all the wires to account for the damage and you'll want to pre-the wire if you've been forced to cut it. This also means you'll require flux at that point.

3. To practice, remove the old wires from the old fan first. You're liable to melt some of the fan's body trying to articulate the iron in the small space. Better to do that on the old fan than your new one.

4. I don't personally think you need to remove the old solder and clean and apply new solder in this scenario. Most of the time I would advocate that but in this specific case I don't think it'll get you anything and at worse it'll give you more opportunity to touch the hot iron to places in the plastic you don't want, so after you remove both wires spend the extra time properly routing the old wiring harness into the new fans wiring channels and get everything lined up. Don't worry about replacing, cleaning, or adding additional solder. I don't think you'll need any more than what's already going to be left behind. Obviously you have to tinned soldering iron to create a heat bridge but I don't think you need to copiously add extra solder for the joint.

5. The easiest way to solder has to do with knowing if your right handed or left-handed. Assuming your right handed it's easier to go from left to right or top down. So what you should do is turn the fan around 90° counterclockwise from the picture shown so that the wires and the PCB lineup with your left hand/arm.

6. It'll be easier if you slightly pull the wires you're not working with back out of that last retention clip to free your PCB area of any wiring you're not currently soldering.

7. I recommend that you go from top to bottom, assuming you're right handed, and do the wire farthest away from you first. You want to grip the wire with a pair of tweezers and you'll want to put some heat with a solder bridge onto the pad you expect to be soldering to and you want to introduce the wire into the blob and then remove heat, remove your iron, keep holding with your tweezers for a few seconds until it's solid.

8. Repeat that with the wire adjacent to the top most one and work your way down with the same technique. If you have all the wires in the area at once and try to solder them in series you run the risk of melting their plastic insulation coating or attaching the wrong wire to the wrong pad. Work with one wire at a time and then introduced the next wire, and so on.

9. You want to test the fan before you reattach the label. I would recommend you use a small amount of crazy glue or if you have one of those small dots or rolling tape dispensers for sealing envelopes that's another great option. You want the label to sit nice and flat and cover approximately what it was doing before. You'll need to add adhesive to do that but you will want to make sure your fan is working before you do it as you won't be able to lift the label up as easily ever again.

Go slow, and if you get shaky just take a break. It's not a race, it doesn't matter if it takes you 20 minutes to do this!

Obviously you should test without the fan installed in it's final place, because you still need to reattach the label. After testing and after you have already attached the label make sure you put the fan in the correct orientation so the airflow goes in the direction it's supposed to. Use pictures or other evidence to double-check that the airflow is correct and you didn't accidentally install the fan backwards.

Then you're done!

[vishnu]

I guess I'm lucky to live in a town where Microcenter has a fully stocked outlet center. As far as I've been able to tell, in terms of fairly modern computing, there's nothing Microcenter doesn't have, and their sales associates seem very knowledgeable.