[BitAnnihilator]

I just came into an Indy (R4600SC 133mhz 96MB ram) running Irix 5.3. I know they're supposed to be slow, but is it normal for them to take a minute+ to load the logins off the disk or to load the applications folder?

[Raion]

Yes.

[CiaoTime]

Back in the day, contemporary reviewers called the Indy an 'Indigo without the go'. The R5000 chipset certainly helped matters, especially on the higher end, but even a 150MHz Indy lags well behind the performance of a low-end O2.

What you've got is a low end Indy, unfortunately. It doesn't have the R5K, your amount of system RAM is definitely a limitation, and even with an older version of IRIX I'm afraid it can only do so much.

[radiance]

It's indeed a slow configuration, but can you be more descriptive with? more than one minute to load the applications folder, that sounds extremely slow... especially with irix 5.3
maybe you've got a damaged hard drive full of bad sectors ? Maybe the previous user installed a lot of background/server software that's eating all your memory ?
"load the logins" what does that mean, starting up/booting the system to the login screen ?

It's difficult to say without details
Can you describe in detail what takes very long and provide accurate time measurements ?

Terrence

[BitAnnihilator]

So I pulled out the stopwatch on my phone and took some times:

Power-off to Login screen seemed normal, no issues

From the login screen popping up to showing the accounts on the system and letting me login: 2m43s
From logging in to getting the toolchest: 1m32s
From clicking find>applications to the applications catalog coming up: 11m45s
From clicking on Photoshop 2.5 to the program fully running: 3m2s
Total: 19m1s

Throughout the whole time though, the UI is totally responsive and there's no lagging or anything of the sort.

[radiance]

That does sound unusual...
Is this the original old hard drive ?

Can you start the program gr_osview or use the top command to see if all you're memory is full or see if there is something eating a lot of memory or processor use ?

Radiance

[dexter1]

This sounds like either a hardware failure, like a dying harddisk, or timeouts during boot about missing disks, dhcp issues, or faulty DNS configuration.

IRIX 5.3 is very responsive on an Indy, even in the default installation setup with all extra services 'chkconfig'-ed.

First, try benchmarking the disk with:

Code:

diskperf -W -D -n slowindy -t 10 -c 100m testfile

The maximum SCSI transfer speed is 10 Mbyte/sec on an Indy with the standard SCSI controller WD33C93B. Typical early harddisks transfer data at 4~6 Mbyte/sec. If it is much lower, replace the disks.

Second, check '/var/adm/SYSLOG' for any problems with services, like nfs or mount daemons not able to locate disks or the network. Also have a look at '/etc/fstab' and output form the command 'chkconfig'

[netfreak]

Before my upgrade, my Indy was an R4600/133 with IRIX 6.2 and I don't think it was THAT slow.

[jan-jaap]

I just came into an Indy (R4600SC 133mhz 96MB ram) running Irix 5.3. I know they're supposed to be slow, but is it normal for them to take a minute+ to load the logins off the disk or to load the applications folder?

This happens if the DNS is not configured properly. Make sure the Indy can resolve it's hostname, and that it's IP resolves to it's hostname. Also inspect /etc/nsswitch.conf and make sure the 'hosts:' entry doesn't try to use NIS if you don't have it. But it's probably just misconfigured DNS.