[Anonymoose]

Oh! This is cool info. I haven’t done anything, just curious. Kudos to them for thinking about this.

[Podboy]

....SGIs have throttling fans for cooling!

I understood this for the Sony PSUs, but is that true for the NIDECs too?

[weblacky]

Both throttle, but they don't have the same curve profile. Basically it's been shown that the Sony's delay in even starting the fan let alone ramping it up to the speed you need. The Sony's are basically quieter because they don't run their fans hard at all until it's really trying to play catch-up and it's almost too late. So both power supplies have variable speed fans but they don't operate at the same curves. The Nidec runs its fan starting at lower temperatures, in fact I don't know that I've even seen one of these PSUs not running its fan.

Basically if it were a race the Nidec launches off the start line immediately and starts speeding up, the Sony doesn't. What we need is somebody who's willing to study the circuit that controls the fan on the Sony variant and find a way to shift the curve to the left, that is we needed to start sooner at a lower temperature. If we could do that the Sony would actually be a superior power supply based on how smooth the power is at a slightly better power factor correction. But not by much.  It's not a night and day thing.

People have suggested hardwiring the fans with a potentiometer but nobody actually wants this unless you just want to run your fan 100% all the time and you don't care. I haven't gotten into this and won't for quite a while. So if somebody wants to beat me to it they're welcome to do it. Eventually I think I'll get around to it but that's after all the major workstations have rebuilt power supplies available.

I understood this for the Sony PSUs, but is that true for the NIDECs too?

[Podboy]

Thanks weblacky,
I've never noticed NIDEC throttling up, even with XZ and 2 drives. Maybe because 2 drives, lol.

[weblacky]

With the Nidec it's maybe Fast and then REALLY FAST...never a whisper.

Thanks weblacky,
I've never noticed NIDEC throttling up, even with XZ and 2 drives. Maybe because 2 drives, lol.

[Anonymoose]

I have another question! Suppose it's beginner as it's hard drive related. Man, FX is harder than I expected. the auto feature is giving me a root folder of 25mb, a root of 40mb, and a user file of whatever's left. That doesn't seem right to me, as root can't fit anything in temp or dumpster. I assumed the fix was to repartition, which stumps me. Whenever I change something, it automatically resizes things. I can't seem to get the correct sizes I want. Also confused with the various phrases resize uses (base+size?). Any advice?

[weblacky]

What drive did you end up using (it's not said in the post), if it's a Zulu then what's it currently configured as?  From memory you need 3GB or more if you're taking a default Irix 6.5 full user install with desktop utilities.

Generally I don't use FX for any customization because the SGI disk label, partition table in other parlance, has some strict requirements and requires several partitions just to operate. It naturally tries to make the root file system volume (/) the largest as it can if you just default everything pretty much like Windows GPT EFI does if you just say "create".  FX works in block sizes which is going to be mentally odd.

The defaults have always been sensible. If you add additional drives you can mount them anywhere you want in the file system but I normally just take the default layout given to me as there's no reason to add additional partitions and it already give you the largest file system your root drive device can support.

All I normally do is simply say "create new label" as "root drive", "write label", "exit".  Nothing else... The install process automatically formats the swap base and the main route file system for you. FX does no formatting whatsoever similar to the old DOS/Win FDISK does not formatting.

If you're getting incredibly small values for your volume then your Zulu is not configured correctly.

[Anonymoose]

Yes, I've been using a ZuluSCSI, and for the moment just 5.3. I know the Zulu has a config file, but I didn't think I'd need to set it for the partitions? My thought was 1gb for root, 512mb for swap, and 3gb for everything else (no clue if software takes up that much space, rather be safe than sorry).

---

Yes, I've been using a ZuluSCSI, and for the moment just 5.3. I know the Zulu has a config file, but I didn't think I'd need to set it for the partitions? My thought was 1gb for root, 512mb for swap, and 3gb for everything else (no clue if software takes up that much space, rather be safe than sorry).

ok, I'm reading the manual now and I thought the zululog was the config! Are there any recommended settings to enable/disable?

[weblacky]

I can't give specifics on the config but just make sure you're running at least a 4 GB drive image file on your SD card or higher.

[legodude]

You shouldn't have to mess with the config file
Just make a disk image large enough