[indy99]

Indy99, if you can check the part number on the one from that Prism, I can check the one on my Onyx4 so we can compare notes.

030-1872-006 Rev A. Printed on the typical SGI white stick on label, which is stuck on over a screening on the PCB that begins Assy. O3(obscured by label) followed by "Made in Canada". Right below that the PCB is marked "Copyright 2003 Silicon Graphics, Inc". Might have even been a spare, no obvious indications of insertion wear on any of the connectors, and came to be in what seems to be a purpose suited box.

Now that it's been freed from the very far end of the SGI storage repository, let me know if you need any better res photos - before it goes back into hibernation. (-:

[kaigan]

030-1872-006 Rev A.

Looks to be the same part. Mine's slightly older - 030-1872-005 Rev. A. Presumably the boards are interchangeable between the systems, then. That would allow someone to convert an Origin 350 over to an Onyx4 G2N if they had an AGP riser. They probably wouldn't have the ImageLink cables and backplate, but I doubt that's strictly necessary for operation.

Edit: On eBay, there is a seller who also has a Prism AGP riser with part number 030-2053-001. This is listed as a "Dual TIO AGP Riser". The TIO is an Altix-specific I/O ASIC used as a part of SGI's efforts toward reconfigurable computing. Maybe that version is designed to provide higher bandwidth for specialty applications?

[hamei]

Looks to be the same part. Mine's slightly older - 030-1872-005 Rev. A. Presumably the boards are interchangeable between the systems, then. That would allow someone to convert an Origin 350 over to an Onyx4 G2N if they had an AGP riser.

Eeeuw, stinky ! How about changing an Onyx4 back into a nice O350 ? 

The TIO is an Altix-specific I/O ASIC used as a part of SGI's efforts toward reconfigurable computing. Maybe that version is designed to provide higher bandwidth for specialty applications?

Since you're here and we're talking interchanges, would you consider swapping the IO9 in your O350 for the IO10 from the Altix to see what it does ? I remember that the SATA interface on the 10 wasn't that great, but still, it'd be an interesting parts-swapping experiment to see if you could get an all-in-one sata interface (maybe for a dvd-rom ?) into the O350 ....

You nudged my memory on the G2. Plan was, two more boxes, just i/o, riser, and v12 in each, two numalinks between a pair of compute modules with v12's, and two xio links between the computes and the additional graphics bricks. Should work, no n-brick required.

All to drive one monitor, but still might be fun.

Anybody running an Onyx4 want to report in on how well it works with SGI graphics ? Reports at the time were, lots of glitches and stuff that wasn't quite right. But you know people, if it was just a flash when changing windows or something, a single O4 would do this job much easier than a four-box pileup.

[jan-jaap]

Since you're here and we're talking interchanges, would you consider swapping the IO9 in your O350 for the IO10 from the Altix to see what it does ? I remember that the SATA interface on the 10 wasn't that great, but still, it'd be an interesting parts-swapping experiment to see if you could get an all-in-one sata interface (maybe for a dvd-rom ?) into the O350 ....

I forgot the details, but this was discussed @ Nekochan and it won't work. The SATA ports are not on some well known chip (e.g. LSI 1064) but probably integrated as a softcore in the IOC4 ASIC. The O350 firmware only knows the IOC3 and will want to boot from Qlogic SCSI. For a while I considered putting an IO10 in the secondary unit of my dual-module O350. I went with an LSI SATA card instead. I've been very happy with that one.

NB: The DVD ROM in the O350 isn't anything special, is it? Other than that little piece of sheet metal needed to mount it and the fact that it's IDE, thus old? I bought onw from my O350 and I think I used it exactly once: when I installed IRIX. There are other ways to install IRIX.

Anybody running an Onyx4 want to report in on how well it works with SGI graphics ? Reports at the time were, lots of glitches and stuff that wasn't quite right. But you know people, if it was just a flash when changing windows or something, a single O4 would do this job much easier than a four-box pileup.

I think the problem with the Onyx4 wasn't so much with the ATI cards, but with the fact that they changed X servers. SGI spent 20 years developing their own Xsgi which was probably derived from MIT X11R3 or X11R4, and then in the end they ditched it for XFree86 for this one product in their lineup, which was also replacing their most prestigious graphics hardware (Infinite Reality), used by their most demanding customers. These customers were of course using software tweaked for many years for Xsgi.

And then you wonder why you've got 'glitches' 

[kaigan]

Anybody running an Onyx4 want to report in on how well it works with SGI graphics ? Reports at the time were, lots of glitches and stuff that wasn't quite right. But you know people, if it was just a flash when changing windows or something, a single O4 would do this job much easier than a four-box pileup.

Once I have a working O350 module (it's on the way), I'll be able to fire up the Onyx4 setup and run some tests against the old SGI demos and such. It'll be interesting to see how much of it even works.

NB: The DVD ROM in the O350 isn't anything special, is it? Other than that little piece of sheet metal needed to mount it and the fact that it's IDE, thus old?

Yep, that's exactly right. Both the IO9 and IO10 have IDE controllers and a separate cable is used to connect to the IDE DVD-ROM drive. The drive works pretty well in my experience, but we definitely do have better ways to install IRIX. For random old Linux versions on an Altix, it works well, though.

[hamei]

NB: The DVD ROM in the O350 isn't anything special, is it? Other than that little piece of sheet metal needed to mount it and the fact that it's IDE, thus old? I bought onw from my O350 and I think I used it exactly once: when I installed IRIX. There are other ways to install IRIX.

I guess you don't watch too many movies on your O350 :-)  Looks like that is going away, which is quite upsetting. That was one of the things a laptop was really good for. I hate Jonny Ive :(

I did discover that you can slide a regular ide cable onto the IO9 and connect to a normal CD/DVD drive. Might be interesting to try a disk, just for fun. I might have one around here somewhere ....

Oh, the main point of using an IO-10 would be to connect to a sata dvd, which is easier to find these days. The LSI card is much better, agreed.

[jwhat]

Well to keep this topic going, maybe another valid question is, does anyone know what IC the PROM’s flashed image is stored in? 

I assume it’s on an IO9?  Could one desoldered the working IC, place in a socket on the IO9, dump contents of desoldered IC using some kind of programmer, then if anything goes wrong- restore IC contents from previous backup and keep trying?

I know the older stations had a single chip for the PROM.  While I’d imagine the IO9 to be more integrated, if you backup your own IC and restore it, I’d imagine everything else on the board would be in  sync?

Any thoughts?

Hi Weblacky and others,

I am providing some feedback on "how to get Fuel CPU clock setting" fixed here, as the threads appears to track off onto something completely unrelated.

First some comments:

1. The Fuel does not have an IO9 board so any suggestions relating to IO9 board will not work
2. The Fuel does have L1 so you can use this to get into POD/DEX/CAC mode by setting the debug flags just like you do with O350

So you could possibly reset the CPU speed by first setting debug flag and then booting into POD/DEX/CAC mode.
This avoids the PROM boot sequence, so might provide a way to fix the problem with CPU speed setting.

Here are the basic steps:

1. Connect Fuel to L2 via L1 USB Port
2. Connect to Fuel console port via serial cable (null modem etc, on my Fuel I had to connect at 9600, others have reported connecting at 38400)
3. Set the L1 debug flag via L2: "debug 0x10d"
4. Power up the Fuel via L2: "power up"
5. Put L2 into console mode (Ctl-d)
6. Via the Fuel Serial Port (#1) and terminal emulator you should now get the CAC console prompt: "POD SysCt Cac> "
7. Enter your POD magic command (as mentioned by INDY99 at the start of this thread) ... I do not know what this is for the CPU speed reset, but typing "?" gives a list of valid commands
8. Return back to the L2 and get prompt back (Ctl-t)
9. On the L2 set the L1 debug flag back to 0: "debug 0"
10. Now back to the serial console and do reboot via POD command: "reset"

Your Fuel should now reboot and go into standard boot sequence. If the "magic" speed changing command worked then all is ok.

If not then you will have to do what Hamei says and do some physical CPU swapping to return the Fuel to a useable state.

Please note: I have not tested any "magic" POD speed change command, but I have verified that you can put the Fuel into POD debug mode just like an O350/Tezro.

More happy hacking and testing should anyone end up with bricked Fuel as a result of misconfiguring the CPU speed.

It would be great is someone could help with the "Magic" POD command, at that could prove to be very helpful in future,

Cheers from Oz,


John.

[weblacky]

Sorry, but I reread this thread, twice. No example is given. Mystery commands, parameters for hub, cpu speed, etc - still unexplained. Nothing actionable.

Can you provide any additional information that makes what’s hinted here actionable? Otherwise, I’m missing how we’re any further along?

[jwhat]

Sorry, but I reread this thread, twice.  No example is given.  Mystery commands, parameters for hub, cpu speed, etc - still unexplained.  Nothing actionable.

Can you provide any additional information that makes what’s hinted here actionable?  Otherwise, I’m missing how we’re any further along?

 
The reason I posted was I assumed that if there was a CPU speed issue then you would not be able to boot to PROM, hence suggesting the "debug' method,

If you get get into POC/CAC mode you can see the set of available commands you typing: "?"

So just guidance to those who have never gone into POC/CAC mode.

Cheers from Oz,


John.

[chulofiasco]

Let’s revisit this... does anyone know how to do this?