Hi there !
As a new owner of a nice SGI o2 tower, I have a little strange problem that I can't sort out even while browsing the web for hours, that's why I dare to ask you if you can help me sorting out what's goin on :-)
I can start my o2 and reach the boot menu without problem, all is displayed well on my monitor. But each time I try to load something on the CD-Rom or on the system, the o2 begin to load the system and sudently the monitor goes black, no video anymore. I tried to reset the PROM password, I checked the variables and they looks correct to me (i put a picture of it at the end of this post).
This machine has a flat pannel monitor adapter card installed, therefore I'm asking me if this is not related. I pulled the card out, but I don't know if there is something else to do to tell the o2 to use the VGA output instead the flat pannel one, I have the feeling the the machine still think that this is the case.
Or maybe I'm totally wrong and this is another problem...
Mmm.... siliconimage doesn't look to work well right now, as I can't register me (I get an empty box, tried with Safari and Firefox). It is ok to use another hosting service like imgur instead ?
It's probably outputting at resolution that your monitor doesn't support or it it trying to output through the plat panel connector. The funny thing with IRIX is that you can easily mess up your resolution settings. And if it's setup to use the flat panel connector, removing the hardware won't automatically reset IRIX, it's not that intuitive.
Confirm that you are getting a graphical output in the prom?
If it's not a clean install of IRIX, I suggest that you carry out a clean install, to make the system your own.
This video that I made will help you with this task:
Thanks for your reply.
Yes, This is what I think. And I was sure that removing the hardware wasn't enough. And I confirm that I have a perfect video output on the prom menu. I can see what I do until I launch the installation from CD, then the video output shut down.
The problem is that there isn't any system installed on the machine, and even when I try to launch the installation from the local CD rom, the files are copied on the hard disk, but the output goes to black. I was wondering if there is a way to reset the video initialisation, it's probably stored somewhere in the pram chip. I heard about the "ireeprom" command, but I really don't know if this is relevant or if this is what I have to do.
I've been in similar situations with several Indigo2s. I've bought a few where the PROM works fine, but the moment you boot into ANYTHING it results in a weird image or blank screen (including the OS install miniroot!). If you actually have an installed OS (I didn't) you MAY have access to the resetenv command to reset ALL settings to factory defaults while in PROM (which would fix it).
I found I HAD to install Irix, then it reset the variables (I previously tried manually doing "console g" and such...nothing worked). Since I couldn't see out the screen I made a serial cable and hooked to a laptop as a terminal. Then used that to fully install Irix. Once installed, ALL variables had been reset and the screen worked fine in graphical mode!
So that's my only recommendation, you may have to install Irix headless to "undo" the previous owners BS. Not to rant too hard, but I don't understand why some people aren't happy at 1280x1024. If you have a SOG monitor, it's likely 4:3 aspect. Just let the machine do what it wants and stop forcing it. Makes maintenance and such really painful when the graphics setting are set to something weird.
Hi weblacky
Thanks for your answer.
Ok, I understand what you mean, this make sense. I will try to make a serial connection and install IRIX headless.
Is the reset happening really automatically then, or do I have to use some specific command for that ?
By the way, I didn't changed the resolution, I got the machine in this state, with the flat pannel card installed (but without the flat monitor). But now I know that I don't have to try to change the resolution later :-)
NEED -> 