Tezro Rackmount Expansion Enclosure - "Circe" - Printable Version

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Tezro Rackmount Expansion Enclosure - "Circe" - kaigan - 03-16-2021

Through some lucky circumstances, I was able to acquire a Tezro Rackmount Expansion Enclosure. These bricks were designed as an extension of a base Tezro system that included a quad-CPU 1.0 GHz configuration, as it wasn't possible to put a V12 into these bricks directly due to heat and space concerns. 

The system has no CPUs, but does include a node board that requires memory for operation. The system also includes PCI expansion, but no IO9 or a disk backplane. I added some spare RAM and put in a spare disk backplane, along with the IO9 from my currently non-functional Tezro deskside (likely a bad node board - the chassis and its components seem fine, thankfully). The latter two aren't required, but I added them anyway. With an appropriate node board and a PS/2 and serial daughtercard, it'd be possible to make it an independent workstation.

Since the system does require another brick to operate and I don't have a Tezro base brick, I hooked it up to the Onyx 350 prototype node that I use as the primary brick for my Onyx 4 setup. Normally, these bricks wouldn't be compatible. Tezro rackmount bricks have serial numbers beginning with a "P" prefix, whereas Origin 350s use an "M" prefix for serials and the Tezro brick won't inherit a serial from the O350 as a result. Fortunately, there is a way around this.

First, the wonderful command let the carnage begin must be run on the Tezro brick in the L1. This disables serial security and allows the serial clear command to be used to remove the brick's serial. Before that will work, though, there's one last step. The command make rmws takes a value of 0 or 1, depending on how you want to configure the system. Setting it to 0 turns the brick into more or less an Onyx 350, and it shows up as a "Chimera Blade" when using the brick command, instead of as a "Rackmount WS". The L1 will need to be rebooted for the change to take effect. After that, running serial clear allows the system to inherit the serial number from the primary brick.

With that completed, I installed IRIX on a secondary drive in the primary node, so that I can boot between an environment compatible with the Tezro and one compatible with the Onyx 4.

Since this is the hinv subforum, I'd be remiss if I didn't include one! Here are the shiny stats of the machine:


It's nice to have a system that can fit into my rackmount setup that's fully compatible with IRIS GL, and thus many SGI demos and older applications. The Onyx 4 is wonderful and phenomenally powerful (that brick has a quad-800 MHz node board in it, along with the quad-1 GHz in the main brick), but the ATI cards do reduce compatibility.

Finally, here are a few pictures:









Interested parties can find larger versions of these images on Silicon Image here: http://siliconimage.irixnet.org/index.php/User-Albums/Kaigan/Tezro-Rackmount---Circe

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RE: Tezro Rackmount Expansion Enclosure - "Circe" - jenna64bit - 03-16-2021

That’s a pretty awesome rack set up! I don’t think I even knew the Prism came as a rack mount unit. Other than the obvious GPU changes, what differentiates the rack mount Tezro from the Onyx4?

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RE: Tezro Rackmount Expansion Enclosure - "Circe" - Raion - 03-16-2021

So I've seen the unit firsthand at VCF2021 (we did a presentation)

The internals are identical other than the riser which has AGP slots IIRC for the graphics cards. Other than that the guts appear near identical.

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RE: Tezro Rackmount Expansion Enclosure - "Circe" - kaigan - 03-16-2021

(03-16-2021, 09:24 PM)jenna64bit Wrote:  That’s a pretty awesome rack set up! I don’t think I even knew the Prism came as a rack mount unit. Other than the obvious GPU changes, what differentiates the rack mount Tezro from the Onyx4?

As Raion said, they're nearly identical otherwise. Same node boards, same RAM, etc. The only differences are the PCI riser is replaced with an AGP riser, and the V12 snowball is exchanged for a pair of ATI FireGL X1 cards in the riser.

That does also mean that an Onyx4 can't be independent of another compute brick - it can't use an IO9.

An Altix/Prism isn't all that different, either, actually. They use different interface boards and node boards, but many of the other parts are interchangeable. I hope to make some videos detailing these systems in full in the future. I'm just a bit limited on space until I move later in the year.

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RE: Tezro Rackmount Expansion Enclosure - "Circe" - kaigan - 06-03-2021

I like rackmounts and I cannot lie.

Thanks to an incredibly generous gift from mopar5150, I've been able to take the expansion chassis and make it an independent node! He sent me the PS/2 and serial daughtercard that provides that functionality to the system. SGI claims that it is required for a base compute module, though it may be possible to work without it using a USB card. I'm not 100% certain, but I recall reading that it won't work otherwise. I'll try to verify that at some point.

Installing the daughtercard is kinda annoying. You have to remove most of the parts of the system to fit it into the 2U interface board at the bottom of the system. That includes the graphics card (if applicable), any blower fans, the node board, the IO9 and any other PCI cards, the PCI riser, and the 2U interface board itself. Removing the 2U interface board requires removing the screws holding the serial and NUMAlink/XIO ports in place. For example, this is the system fully-assembled:



Here it is ready for the daughtercard installation, with the exception of the small vent bracket on the bottom left. I had to pull that out after I snapped the picture to actually remove the 2U interface board for the installation.



The system looks a lot more barren, doesn't it? With the 2U interface board removed, the daughtercard can be snapped into its slot on the 2U interface (the long white slot on the left middle of the above picture), snapped into its standoffs as well, and then everything can be re-mounted to the rear chassis. At that point, the reverse of the disassembly can be followed to build it back up.

I know that isn't a ton of detail, but if anyone else ever plans to do this and has questions, just let me know. A few others in the community have torn these down for this installation, too, so they can provide help as well.

I have an album with a few more images of the teardown here: http://siliconimage.irixnet.org/index.php/User-Albums/Kaigan/Tezro-Rackmount---Circe/PS-2-and-Serial-Daughterboard-Installation-and-Rebuild

At some point later in the year, I'd like to get a video made which I'm tentatively titling "The Care and Feeding of the Chimera Rackmount". I have a few different kinds that I'd like to fully disassemble and go over the parts on. I just have to have the time and room for it. We'll get there eventually!

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RE: Tezro Rackmount Expansion Enclosure - "Circe" - Raion - 06-04-2021

Guys, this goes without saying but don't share ebay links in normal threads. Only in the Whats On Ebay subforum.

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