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Back after around 10 years ! - Printable Version

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Back after around 10 years ! - anotherlin - 09-08-2019

Hi everyone,

So this post is obviously in the off-topic area.

Previously, I was on the nekochan forum, under the "anotherlin" username. But I guess probably nobody remembers me Smile
Yesterday, I got back my O2 R5k from the basement, it spent 10 years there, if not more. I don't remember exactly.
It was so dusty that I spent almost the afternoon cleaning it.
It had some memory check issue but by removing all but the 2 mandatory slots, it fired up just fine.
In the meantime, I forgot the root password :( But hopefully, I always use the same password for my "regular" account.
It's a beautiful machine.

I was hopeful to still have an older (10 years) Samsung LCD with VGA connector (and DVI).
Nowadays, VGA is completely gone, DVI is almost gone for HDMI or even mini-HDMI.
I miss my 19 inch Sony CRT, it's like people listening to vinyl and not CD or even worse MP3.
Some Quake or Doom with O2 on a 19 CRT would have been a blast!

Moving from SSD to high-rev SCSI is schocking, that's so loud!
The small 250W PSU has a 3000RPM fan but I think most of the noise is from the SCSI.
10 years ago, SATA was starting/finishing to replace IDE.
Most of them were 7000rpm, so not that noisy. But we still had the noise of the heads moving.
Having switched to SSD, there is a noticeable difference.
Also, that 10k SCSI is used and probably well beat up.

My first steps will be to find out what happened to the memories.
I had 64MB using 2 slots, I have 6 more DIMMs to check.

Second step is to find a more recent SCSI drive, at least one that's not so noisy.
At some point, I had some recent SAS 15k Cheetah's and they were rather quite.
As I've lost the root password, I have to re-install IRIX anyway.

By the way, there was some guy on Nekochan who made a virtual machine disk (named Tina?) for network install of IRIX.
Where is it now? Can't find it. Used it very successfully for my O2.
Also, any source for a NOS or recent SCSI drive?
The UW160 or UW320 are backward compatible, and Cheetah 15k.5 are plenty to find. But I need to find a non-beatup one, so it's not loud.
Surprisingly, there are no SATA or SAS to SCSI adapter.


Best regards,
Best regards,

RE: Back after around 10 years ! - Trippynet - 09-08-2019

Hello! The tool you are looking for is DINA. There's a mirror of the site here: http://shiftleft.com/mirrors/dina.harrydebug.com/

Certain SCSI drives can be very noisy, but there are quiet ones out there. It's also possible to mod the O2 with a Notcua fan to make it a lot quieter. Mine makes very little noise these days with a quiet fan and quiet SCSI drive fitted. SCSI to SATA adapters do exist, as do SCSI to SDCard ones (search for ACARD adapters), but they're bloody expensive these days and probably not worth it. For quiet drives, might be worth speaking to Ian at SGIDepot, he can tell you which ones are quietest and can sell you one as well if you need one.

RE: Back after around 10 years ! - anotherlin - 09-10-2019

(09-08-2019, 11:03 AM)Trippynet Wrote:  Hello! The tool you are looking for is DINA. There's a mirror of the site here: http://shiftleft.com/mirrors/dina.harrydebug.com/

Thanks a lot for the link.
As for SCSI drive, amazon.com still has some brand new Cheetah 15k.5 UW320 for sale.
I used to have these in SAS for my PC, they're not much louder than regular drives.
I'm just wondering if I'm ok to spend around $100 for a new drive.