[Xav101]

So back around Christmas I purchased an HP J5600 off mopar, and unfortunately I didn't have much time to play with it then. However, now I have a bit more time, so I decided to poke around the hardware a bit more, and in the process I've uncovered a few interesting things. However, I can't seem to find any sort of information about these in HP's manuals and documents, so I've decided to ask and see if maybe you guys know a bit more.

   



Mystery #1:


Here's a datasheet from 1999 with specifications for a lower-end J5000

Here's a later datasheet from 2001 with specs for the J5600


Mine has the 552MHz processors listed in the 2001 datasheet, but has two of the HP fx6 graphics accelerators (with texture boards) from the 1999 datasheet. Of the two OEM drives in the system, both are 9GB 7.2k drives which aren't listed in either datasheet, with the closest being the 9GB 10k drives listed in the 1999 datasheet. It also came pre-loaded with HP-UX 10.20 and configured to not run an X-server. One possibility is that it was a later model that was special ordered with fx6 GPUs and HP-UX 10.20 to act as a compatible replacement for an older machine (perhaps as a rendering server?) Unfortunately any useful information had been scrubbed off the drives and all that was left was the OS. The other theory I had was that it was an early model of the J5600, but I've been unable to find an earlier version of the J5600 datasheet.



Mystery #2:


On the very back of one of the FX6 cards, there are two RJ45 jacks underneath a sticker that says

REMOVE LABEL FOR COVE MODE
Do not use ports for normal operation.

This is on the secondary texture accelerator board that plugs into the main graphics accelerator. The only reference I've found to "Cove Mode" is a brief mention on the PA-RISC linux wiki on the page "VisualizeFX"; however this only mentions it in passing and doesn't provide any information as to what it does. A quick search of the FX6 manual revealed no information, nor did a search of the J5600 manual. Perhaps of note is that this only on the card that was installed in the "primary graphics" slot. My second FX6 gpu does not have it. Does anyone know what "Cove Mode" is, what these connectors could do, or how you could interface with them?


   



Mystery #3:

The J5600 has 8x 64-bit PCI slots. Of these, slots #4 and #7 are faster 66MHz 3.3V slots, with slot #7 being the primary graphics slot, and slot #4 being either the preferred slot for secondary graphics or for a high bandwidth IO card (such as a 1000-base-T ethernet card). However, slot #1 is mentioned as being "Power Only", and in most places that the J5600 manual mentions PCI slots, there's a warning

Slot 1 is reserved for power only. An IO card should not be installed in Slot 1.

My initial theory was that this might have been intended for texture accelerator boards that connected to the main FX cards, as they would get their data from the card but still need to draw power. However, the texture accelerators are placed in the slot below the main PCB, although there are connectors on the top of the fx6 that perhaps suggest you could put another board of some sort on top of it. However, even if it was for a board card that went above an FX card, the secondary graphics slot is slot #4, not slot #2, so there wouldn't be a way to put a card in it anyways. So, does anyone know of a PCI card that only drew power from a PCI slot? (perhaps as some part of a multi-card assembly?)


   


Here's a picture of the FX6 with the connectors on the top of it.



Any input with some of these would be appreciated, as I want to know more about this machine but can't seem to find anything.

[jan-jaap]

So back around Christmas I purchased an HP J5600 off mopar, and unfortunately I didn't have much time to play with it then. However, now I have a bit more time, so I decided to poke around the hardware a bit more, and in the process I've uncovered a few interesting things. However, I can't seem to find any sort of information about these in HP's manuals and documents, so I've decided to ask and see if maybe you guys know a bit more.

I don't know much about HPPA systems, but did you try openpa.net? They have a page on the J5600 : https://www.openpa.net/systems/hp-visual...j7600.html

It has links to a user guide and a service manual.

[Xav101]

I looked through the site, and although I did find some new manuals, I couldn't find anything that mentioned "Cove Mode" for the FX6 or anything in the service manual about what goes in PCI Slot #1.

[lunatic]

I am not sure if there is any mystery going on. HP9000s really aren't that complicated with graphics. Contrasting SGI, a graphics card is just another regular card. You can mix and match (within certain constraints...) , just make sure HP-UX has the drivers installed. Drivers came either with the HP-UX base release or with extra support CDs.
The Visualize FX family comes in two generations. Old: 2/4/6 and new: 5/10. An FX10Pro ist commonly the fastest thing you will find in a machine like that, even though, I think HP released a variant of some ATI FireGL 64bit PCI card as a last upgrade for the faithful. I would generally recommend getting an FX5 or 10, because they are just better. The old cards all need this adapter cable to connect a monitor. But just saying this isn't really helpful. It's like saying you should throw away your Maximum Impact, because it's old. As far as I remember the FX6 is still faster than a Max Impact anyway.

HP-UX 10.20 will run just fine on a J5600 if you have a later revision of the install CDs. HP usually had long product life cycles. Unless you feel a special connection to 10.20, you should install 11.11.
In the end, you have something like an Octane, just a little bigger and better. But not blue...

[commodorejohn]

There are two things about 10.20, from what I've gathered in my brief HP-UX experiments: A. it's generally lighter-weight (probably not an issue for this machine,) and B. AFAIK, it's the latest version for which there's easily-findable license-free copies of the layered-products CDs. That said, yes, 11.11 is more conformant with modern-ish standards and open-source software support is better.