[kaigan]

In what is becoming increasingly common practice for me, I'm doing something dumb and definitely not originally supported with one of my SGIs!

Through a trade with KayBee, I've recently acquired an Octane Digital Video module. The dumb part is that through a small modification of my VPro carrier to route the flex cables, I've managed to install it alongside an ESI board and my V12. From the documentation I can find, SGI cautioned against installing the Digital Video option in a dual head system, and they certainly never would have intended it to be installed in a system along with a VPro. I'm assuming that heat or power draw were the primary concerns behind keeping it out of a dual head system. That said, it does physically work and the board shows up in the hinv of the system. Also, I do have the later Cherokee PSU in my machine. If power was the concern, I imagine that a dual-V12 machine would draw more power than this does.

However, I'm not yet able to get the Digital Video board to actually work in IRIX. When trying to load the Video Panel, I get the error message common to a machine without a video option, that "[t]his machine has no video daemon." I've read that it can be a bit tricky to get the board to operate under standard conditions, and I'm wondering if I just don't have the right software packages for the board installed.

Does anyone happen to know which software packages are required to get this board to run and where they're located?

Thank you!

[jpstewart]

Ian Mapleson's SGI Depot Resources page at http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/depot/ has what you'll need.  Apparently the Octane Digital Video and Impact Video options use the same software.  I don't have that board/software myself, but if it's like the Personal Video option (which I do have) the software wasn't on the original IRIX CDs and only came with the hardware itself.  Which means Ian's site is about the only place to still find them these days.  (Thanks Ian!!!)  Installing that software should get you the necessary video daemon.

[kaigan]

Ian Mapleson's SGI Depot Resources page at http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/depot/ has what you'll need.

Fantastic! Thank you for the link, and thanks to Ian for maintaining the resource. I'll try it out tomorrow and see if I can get this strange configuration of mine to work.

[kaigan]

I decided to take a few minutes to try this out tonight, and I'm finding that the drivers appear to be incompatible with eoe.sw.base on IRIX 6.5.30.

Would anyone be aware of newer drivers or another way to get these installed, or do I need to revert to an older version of IRIX to get the drivers installed?

Thanks again!

[kaigan]

I got it working! There are a couple of items needed to get this installed on 6.5.30:

• The Octane Digital Media CD (octane_iv_6.5.tar from Ian's site)
  
• The 6.5.30 Overlays, specifically Disc 2's unbundled folder, located at dist/unbundled.
  

Loading these two distributions into inst, I was able to install the impactvideo and impactdm packages. I then had to run through some conflicts as inst also wanted to install some development software as well as drivers for the Octane Personal Video option. After clearing those, the packages installed. After a reboot, the Video Panel works!

Once the analog to digital converter I ordered arrives, I should be all set. I'm very happy to see that this unusual configuration appears to work!

[Raion]

Oh man. That's amazing.

I'll need to research how to incorporate this into my catalog.

[chulofiasco]

The dumb part is that through a small modification of my VPro carrier to route the flex cables, I've managed to install it alongside an ESI board and my V12.

How did you accomplish this?  Can you post some photos?

Thanks !

[kaigan]

How did you accomplish this?  Can you post some photos?

Thanks !

I'll get some photos up when I have a bit of time. The simple explanation is that I removed a plastic arm and a bit of the associated plastic that would hit the cables when the XIO tray is installed. That arm provides reinforcement but is not actually necessary for the compression connectors to lock into place. There's plenty of solid metal that does the actual work.

In my case, the plastic actually snapped fairly cleanly when I began to cut it. After that, I just had to remove two screws holding the arm in place and put them back once the plastic was out of the way. The piece is broken in a single place and I could easily replace the arm and attach it with some super glue and it would be good as new.

[kaigan]

No pictures quite yet (gotta have the time to disassemble the carrier a bit to show things), but I received my analog to digital converter box and I can confirm that the Digital Video option does work in this configuration. It appears that the output can only be viewed on the card the Digital Video option is connected to, though. On my V12, I just received a GL error.

[chulofiasco]

No pictures quite yet (gotta have the time to disassemble the carrier a bit to show things), but I received my analog to digital converter box and I can confirm that the Digital Video option does work in this configuration. It appears that the output can only be viewed on the card the Digital Video option is connected to, though. On my V12, I just received a GL error.

That was my next question !  I figured you would need a dual head setup to see the video coming in though the video option.. 

when you have a chance please post more about this..