[Shiunbird]

Hey everyone!

The Octane has arrived. Less than 24 hours from London here was very impressive. Kudos to DHL.
It was very well packed, ready to survive a nuclear war. The machine is in a beautiful condition.

I managed to resist the urge of connecting everything. Photos attached. Besides what's included, there are some extra hard drives. The original 9GB one and a double height barracuda, capacity unknown.

The tutorials are very helpful. Thanks for arranging them.

My questions are:

1. What's the best way to attach the front panel without causing damage?
2. What's the extra graphics card?

And before I try to boot it up:

1. I was thinking about net booting Linux and then dd -ing the original disk away to my NAS via NFS. Any tips?
I so much regret I donated my SCA to 68-pin adapter. I could use it to easily back it up using my C8000. =\

2. Is it ok to disconnect it from the power outlet when I'm not using it or better to keep it always powered up?
The reason why I ask is... I've heard that the clock batteries (is it the Dallas thing?) is not easy to maintain, so if it helps preserve it, I'd rather have it connected to the outlet all the time.

3. How's its performance when it comes to repeated cool-downs and heat ups?
If I'm going to use it 3x for one hour each timeduring a day, should I just keep it up and running or its fine to power cycle?
I wish to save power, but not at expense of the machine.

I look forward to start enjoying it and improve my cross-platform coding skills.
Thanks to all who have helped me so far.

[Raion]

Welcome to the club.

You have the widely known to be more reliable PSU, "The Cherokee" so as far as reliability goes it should be rock solid.

1 The front panel has little notches that line up with the bottom of the case. Gently align them, then rock the front of it back until the two tabs on the sides lock in. Everything should look even, panel fitment on these is perfect in 99% of cases.

2. I leave mine connected, no problems here, but feel free to go the extra mile and use a PDU or power strip to shut it down.

3. Both of those look like SI cards. You can add the second one to the carrier likely and get a second head.

4. Don't boot GNU/Linux for this, as GNU/Linux's XFS tools can't support IRIX versions anymore, but there's an XFS tool called xfs_dump, and its corresponding equivalent, xfs_restore. The Ian Mapleson guide works perfectly: http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/disksfiles.html#CLONE

Looks like you're rearing to go.

[Shiunbird]

Thanks!
I really appreciate the support.

1. Super. Thanks!
2. Thanks again.

3. Oh - that's super. I actually have two monitor adapters so down the line I will try running two displays.

4. I was thinking of using dd and do a block-by-block image, instead of going on the file system level.
I'll check the man file of xfsdump once I have it up.

I just wrapped up my last work meeting and I will boot her up.

[Raion]

dd does not work as well as you think it does here. It can work, but xfs_dump is less error prone

[Shiunbird]

We are up and running!

It looks VERY good next to my C8000.

[Irinikus]

Very Nice!

[Shiunbird]

Quick question:

I am colourblind AF.
Are my colours right?

[Jacques]

Quick question:

I am colourblind AF.
Are my colours right?

Do you mean on the screen? If yes then yes, they look fine

Nice Octane, they are very machines, even the slower R10k / R12k ones are fast, thanks to the super duper design.

[ishani]

Great to see she survived the trip and is up and running

Some notes:

* "Are my colours right?" - that HDMI adapter is convenient but will def make it over-bright / off-contrast; better if you can find a VGA monitor to connect it direct to the sync conversion cable

* the installed ESI graphics card has the Texture RAM upgrade - that second uninstalled board was the original one.

* that bulky double-height ST136475LW is a 36gb lump

[Shiunbird]

Cool!

Yes - I'm now connected directly to VGA and it is much better indeed.
The monitor has very fine adjustments for the input and can do 4:3, so I will be able to adjust it.
I'll use HDMI if I ever need to capture the screen.

About the card without TRAM... can I mix both?

I think I will use the 36GB disk to make a mirror then.

I already spent some time on it. I will definitely keep using HP-UX development tools, they seem much better than the ones that came on your IRIX installation. I already managed to cross-build so I think I am good to go.

Quake 1 is corrupted, but I think I will re-play Quake 2. It has been a long while. =)
Noise is not a problem with my noise-cancelling headphones! =))

And the search for a Sun and an IBM box begin...