[Infiltratr]

Hi There

I am a complete newb when it comes to SGI and Irix. 

I have just bought myself  Octanes to play around with.  I have a few 70GB scsi drives to put in them and have an external SCSI CDROM drive on the way too so hopefully I can start installing IRIX and learn what these machines are like.

I'm sure I am going to run into some problems in the future but right now, I'm just thinking of stripping down these boxes and putting the best bits into one box.  

I don't really have any questions yet or anything like that just yet, I just wanted to say hi 

[gijoe77]

welcome! What sort of Octanes did you get a hold of?

[BrainStorm]

Welcome! A word of warning when dis/reassembling Octanes is to NEVER touch or blow compressed air into the carbon compression connectors on the XIO (gfx) boards or the frontplane where they connect. You can easily turn a good gfx module into wall art.

Other than that, enjoy the teardown, and an interesting thing to note if you get in this far, is the gargantuan 5v buses that run in a squarish U shape on the frontplane connecting the PSU to the XIO bus. You won't see anything like that in most computers that sit on your desk!

Be sure to ask about any hardware configs that seem confusing. SGI had a lot of ambiguous part and assy numbers that are hard to get a grasp on, although I think most were prior to the Octanes.

[TruHobbyist]

Welcome!!!

[Infiltratr]

welcome!  What sort of Octanes did you get a hold of?

Hi There

Nothing really special (although to me any SGI is special) but they are

Unit 1 is a dual 195Mhz R10000 with 256Mb ram, 4Gb HDD and IRIX 6.5.13f installed. It has a working copy of Maya 6 and appears to have Houdini 5 & 6 also, but the license keys are no longer current.

Unit 2 is a single 250Mhz R10000 with 512Mb ram, 18Gb HDD and IRIX 6.5.13. This system appears to have Adobe PhotoShop installed as well as Avid Marquee, Illusion and IFX.

Unit 3 is a 225Mhz R10000 with 512Mb ram, 18Gb HDD and IRIX 6.5.13. This system appears to have Piranha HD editing software installed.
The cases have a few light scratches but oak. Nothing was broken or anything.

It also came with a spare 250Mhz R10000 and SE graphics board with texture mem and 2 spare drive trays (one damaged but it still works fine for me).

The globes in light bars need replacing but that shouldn't be too much of an issue (I hope)

They didn't come with keyboards, mice or monitors but since I have been an IT manager for a long time now I have a fair few PS2 devices and old monitors laying around.

The biggest issue I had was getting the 13W3 adaptor.  The first ones I bought were the wrong gender but I found a guy on ebay that builds them and guaranteed his for octanes regardless of sync on green.  That sounded pretty good for me.   

Anyway, time for me to strip them down and rebuild them how I want (basically putting all the best bits in one and then working on down) and then installing a fresh OS install on them.

Next on my list is an external scsi cdrom 

[gijoe77]

welcome!  What sort of Octanes did you get a hold of?

Hi There

Nothing really special (although to me any SGI is special) but they are

Unit 1 is a dual 195Mhz R10000 with 256Mb ram, 4Gb HDD and IRIX 6.5.13f installed. It has a working copy of Maya 6 and appears to have Houdini 5 & 6 also, but the license keys are no longer current.

Unit 2 is a single 250Mhz R10000 with 512Mb ram, 18Gb HDD and IRIX 6.5.13. This system appears to have Adobe PhotoShop installed as well as Avid Marquee, Illusion and IFX.

Unit 3 is a 225Mhz R10000 with 512Mb ram, 18Gb HDD and IRIX 6.5.13. This system appears to have Piranha HD editing software installed.
The cases have a few light scratches but oak. Nothing was broken or anything.

It also came with a spare 250Mhz R10000 and SE graphics board with texture mem and 2 spare drive trays (one damaged but it still works fine for me).

The globes in light bars need replacing but that shouldn't be too much of an issue (I hope)

They didn't come with keyboards, mice or monitors but since I have been an IT manager for a long time now I have a fair few PS2 devices and old monitors laying around.

The biggest issue I had was getting the 13W3 adaptor.  The first ones I bought were the wrong gender but I found a guy on ebay that builds them and guaranteed his for octanes regardless of sync on green.  That sounded pretty good for me.   

Anyway, time for me to strip them down and rebuild them how I want (basically putting all the best bits in one and then working on down) and then installing a fresh OS install on them.

Next on my list is an external scsi cdrom 

very cool!  man its hard to say dual 195 vs single 250 - the system is just more "snappy" with dual cpus.  Is SE the only cards you have?  If so that's fine.  I would recommend getting a nicer newer drive such as https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-412751-016-3...2877971743

those drive sleds are gonna get damaged btw, be ready to glue them, and someone on the forums even mentioned they used vasoline or something on them - I never thought of that, but why not

[Infiltratr]

welcome!  What sort of Octanes did you get a hold of?

Hi There

Nothing really special (although to me any SGI is special) but they are

Unit 1 is a dual 195Mhz R10000 with 256Mb ram, 4Gb HDD and IRIX 6.5.13f installed. It has a working copy of Maya 6 and appears to have Houdini 5 & 6 also, but the license keys are no longer current.

Unit 2 is a single 250Mhz R10000 with 512Mb ram, 18Gb HDD and IRIX 6.5.13. This system appears to have Adobe PhotoShop installed as well as Avid Marquee, Illusion and IFX.

Unit 3 is a 225Mhz R10000 with 512Mb ram, 18Gb HDD and IRIX 6.5.13. This system appears to have Piranha HD editing software installed.
The cases have a few light scratches but oak. Nothing was broken or anything.

It also came with a spare 250Mhz R10000 and SE graphics board with texture mem and 2 spare drive trays (one damaged but it still works fine for me).

The globes in light bars need replacing but that shouldn't be too much of an issue (I hope)

They didn't come with keyboards, mice or monitors but since I have been an IT manager for a long time now I have a fair few PS2 devices and old monitors laying around.

The biggest issue I had was getting the 13W3 adaptor.  The first ones I bought were the wrong gender but I found a guy on ebay that builds them and guaranteed his for octanes regardless of sync on green.  That sounded pretty good for me.   

Anyway, time for me to strip them down and rebuild them how I want (basically putting all the best bits in one and then working on down) and then installing a fresh OS install on them.

Next on my list is an external scsi cdrom 

very cool!  man its hard to say dual 195 vs single 250 - the system is just more "snappy" with dual cpus.  Is SE the only cards you have?  If so that's fine.  I would recommend getting a nicer newer drive such as https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-412751-016-3...2877971743

those drive sleds are gonna get damaged btw, be ready to glue them, and someone on the forums even mentioned they used vasoline or something on them - I never thought of that, but why not

Lols.  Well, as I work in It and we have a medical clinic here, I just put the call out for some Vasoline or even just general style lube.

My email title was this ""The ICT department desperately needs some vaseline or general lube. If you can get us some before COB tonight it would be much appreciated!"

Now to see what the nurses come back with.