20 Nov
2000
20 Nov
'00
9:40 a.m.
I've played with a number of SGIs over my career, both at home
and at work. I put up a web page a while ago with most of the info I've
gleaned ("This Old SGI", http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/2258)
Unfortunately, the web page is woefully out of date as I haven't
had time to go back and restructure it the way I'd like.
I am still quite interested in SGIs, but I've broadened my interests
to include DEC (PDP-series) and SUN (both old and new) stuff as well.
BTW, I agree with the approach below... although you can do quite a bit
through the serial console, getting the graphics console up would be
much better. The 4D/35 keyboard/mouse is proprietary, but should be
available from places like www.reputable.com, www.mce.com and www.mashek.com
(and many others who's name escape me at just this moment) The mouse
might be fudged using an old Sun mouse and some mods, but I would still
recommend getting a "real" SGI mouse as the modified sun mouse doesn't
work as well as the real SGI version.
Just as in the comments below, I recommend going with Irix 5.3. It will
run reasonably on this machine (with sufficient memory), and provide quite
a bit of functionality.
One thing I _strongly_ recommend... Use an air gun (or canned air) to blow
out the dust throughout the entire case (including air plenums, power
supply and e-module(where the circuit cards are)). I disassembled mine
(including removing the power supply and popping it cover) to clean it.
This critter acts just like a vacuum cleaner and will suck dust and dirt
up from the bottom airgrate faster than you can imagine. At work, we
mounted these things on small (6") pedestals to try to cut down the
amount of internal dust they sucked up. I imagine the accumulated dust
might contribute to the fire problems mentioned below.
BTW, as far a CDROMS go, SGI used Toshibas (I think the models were
3401 or 3501)for quite a while. The important thing is to make certain that
they are jumpered for 512K bytes/sector. I believe some of the older Texel/
Plextors will work also. The recommended SCSI ID for SGI CDROMs is ID 4.
Another Gotcha... SGI uses scsi ID 0 for it's controller ID, so you should
jumper all your scsi drives/devices for id 1-7.
...Good Luck!...
-al-
-acorda(a)1bigred.com (also acorda(a)geocities.com)
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Green [mailto:mark@cs.ualberta.ca]
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2000 2:47 PM
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Need SGI Classic Cmp Help
I posted this earlier but never received any
response or a
return message
myself so forgive me if this actually made it to
the list and I am
re-posting........
I hadn't seen it either, otherwise I would have replied.
Just got 2 SGI Personal Iris's 4D/35's today (Thanks again
Tom) and no
KB,
Mouse, monitor for either. Finally got dumb
terminal
hooked & working, and
was pleased NOT to find boot password protection,
HOWEVER....
I have about 6 PI's, covering most of the models and options. The
4D/35 was the top of the line. There are basically two generations
of PIs. The first generation is the 4D/20 and 4D/25. The 4D/30
and 4D/35 were added a few years later. There is considerable
difference between the two generations. For example the memory
architecture was changed rather drastically. The 4D/30 memory is
the same as Indigo memory (but not Indigo2). There were also several
changes in keyboards. In addition, there was an upgrade path from
the 4D/20 to the 4D/30 models, which didn't quite produce an off
the shelf 4D/30. There are a number of very interesting bastard
configurations out there due to the different upgrade paths. Some
of my answers will be kind of vague because of this.
I would strongly advice getting the console working. The monitor
part is easy, most VGA monitors will work. Depending on the graphics
option that's installed in your machine you should have either a
VGA or BNC connectors (some of the later graphics options used
13W3 connectors). I've had success with a wide range of monitors.
The standard resolution is 1280x1024 I believe (they came standard
with 19 and 21 inch monitors), but I've used 1025x768 monitors, a
bit fuzzy, but it works.
The keyboard and mouse is much harder. There were several models
of keyboards used on these machines. What type of keyboard
connector to you have? The popular ones were DB9 and PS/2 (note
I don't think a PS/2 keyboard will work, but I haven't tried).
I can look up the part number tonight when I get home. The keyboards
are not that common, but I have seen them on eBay. The mouse attaches
to the keyboard.
The easiest way to get these machines running is through the
console. There is a way to set a terminal to be the console,
but I'm not sure how its done on the PI. On some SGIs there is
a hardware mechanism, but on others the console must be use (this
won't help you much).
1 of them still has a working OS, and the other doesn't. I
do not have any
OS media for them at all, and the one that IS
working has
(Of Course) a root
password which I do not have. What I really need
here is a
copy of the
installation media here. Pleeeaaaasssee Contact
me if you
can assist in
getting these systems running. I believe the 1
with the OS
problem has the
OS, but has no scsi disk label. Perhaps if
someone were to
have a root/boot
disk they could copy off for me, I could get them
working.
I believe they
run Iris 4.0.somthingorother.
Its difficult to do much without a console, since all the installation
and maintenance procedures assume that you are working through the
console by default. What devices do you have? There are two forms
of the OS media. The older systems were on tape, and the newer ones
were on CD. A may have IRIX 4 tapes at home, which could get you
started. The 4D/35 will run up to IRIX 5.3 (something I recommend),
and the CDs can be found regularly on eBay. Note that these machines
are a bit picky about the CDROM drives they use, older ones are
better.
It sounds like the previous owner on your second machine wiped
the disk. The lack of a disk label is a good indication that there
is nothing on the disk. Note, these machines can be network booted,
so you could boot from the other machine.
Do you have access to any of the accounts on the first machine?
Quite often the guest account had no password, so you could
try that. If you are successful, run hinv to get your machine's
configuration.
If you have a console the easiest way to change the root password
is to boot a mini-root (this may be on partition 8 of your disk).
From there you can modify the /etc/passwd file.
SGI tended to use there own file system structures, so you may
not be able to read the disks on other UNIX systems.
Let me know if this helps you. My machines are at home, so I
can provide any detail until tonight. One word of warning the
4D/30 series machines had a habit of catching fire. The CPU
used in the 4D/30 machines generated much more heat than the
4D/20 machines, and the cabinet really wasn't designed for them
The upgrade included an extra fan. If any of the fans fail the
system overheats. Also run with all the skins on for better
heat flow. One of the 4D/35s I had a work caught fire one
day, filled the room with smoke.
PS: Are there other SGI collectors on the list? I have a fair
amount of documentation on the early systems, I also have a
working 3130 at home.
--
Dr. Mark Green mark(a)cs.ualberta.ca
McCalla Professor (780) 492-4584
Department of Computing Science (780) 492-1071 (FAX)
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H1, Canada