[Intuition]

So, I have successfully managed to get my O2 back working again. 

Hadn't booted it up since 2019. Was afraid it was going to pop like the old Octane Power Supply did. 

It booted up ok and I had two different O2 drives.

One that came with it and the other from Acronym which is a clean install of Irix 6.5.xx with nothing on it yet. 

I had an issue where I couldn't log into any profiles and for whatever reason... Irix was booting right into Root vs having me choose a profile and then login. 

Noticed that if I logged out I could not login to any of the profiles and had to pull the plug. 

Found info on the web and decided to hook up the O2 drive as a 2nd mounted volume in the Octane would allow me to access the root directory... and change the passwrd txt file with no permissions issues. So I did... removed the encrypted entry in jot text editor... saved.. and voila... I could enter SU mode in the terminal once the drive was back in the O2.

Ran SU and did 

passwd for root and all the profiles... entering twice with no entry effectively making it no passwords. 

Tha worked. Yay. 

Anyways... in the meantime I had purchased a drive from GIjoe77. It has a ton of stuff on it. Alias 5 through 9... Softimage 3D / XSI... I mean the drive is packed. 

Only issue.... when I boot up this drive... the mouse stops responding. It stays lit up. But... doesn't move. I mean... it does for like 2 seconds.. then stops. 

Thought... maybe the mouse input fried... but... when I inserted either of my other two O2 drives... they both boot up normally and the mouse works fine. 
Back to GIJoe77's drive... and same thing. Mouse isn't moving. 

So I guess my question is... IS there a way to use the keyboard and some hotkey combos to force a terminal open and then force the mouse to start working?

[vishnu]

Nothing weird in the system log files? Do an ls -lt /var/adm to see which was the most recently modified..,

[robespierre]

It is obviously a software, not hardware issue.

My first suspicion is that the person you got the disk from used a mouse with a scroll wheel. IRIX does not automatically detect this.

You should boot to single-user (type "single" in the prom) and change the protocol level of the mouse back to its default, which is

Code:

# systune -f pcmouse_mode 0

[Intuition]

The mouse I am using has a scroll wheel. Perhaps that is the issue. My original SGI mouse stopped working a while ago. I kept it clean too. :/ 

Though my other two O2 drives worked with it right off. 

I am willing to try all of these suggestions... though, how do I navigate around without a mouse?

Could I do the same thing I did with my other O2 drive when I reset the password? 

Hook the drive up to the Octane and mount as a 2nd drive then modify some text file that would allow me to use the mouse?

Which file would I edit the "systune -f pcmouse_mode 0" into?

Or is this a remove all drives and use the system menus to reset the mouse in a terminal type situation?

---

Nothing weird in the system log files? Do an ls -lt /var/adm to see which was the most recently modified..,

How do I get to a terminal? Is there a keyboard shortcut for opening a terminal without a mouse?

[robespierre]

You need to use single-user mode (runlevel s) to get a terminal without using the mouse. Unix requires this mode for many system maintenance tasks.
The mouse protocol is not in a file or a script, it is written into the kernel itself. You said that the problem happens when you boot from your new drive, which means that the drive has its own copy of the kernel. Each copy of the kernel has systune parameters inside it.

The situation could be the opposite way, where your accustomed boot disks are set for mice with a scroll wheel and the new disk is not.
I actually don't understand why you boot from different drives. Why don't you just create a single root (bootable) drive and mount more storage from there if you require it?

[Intuition]

Ok thanks, the single user mode and mouse command worked. Thanks time to fiddle around with stuff and see how many vid ideas I can get from it.