Seeking immediate rescue of full-rack SGI ONYX near Northbrook, IL

[JP Hindin]

On Tue, 19 Apr 2016, ethan at 757.org wrote:
>> They're something splendidly entertaining about a big honkin' graphical
>> workstation that you can roll up to and poke around the GUI on.
>
> Only the Onyx series has graphics :-) Most of ours at NASA were headless with 
> nothing but a serial console, and lots of CPUs. They crunched satellite data 
> all day. 96 Processors on Origin 3800, Normally 32 IIRC on the Challenge XLs.
>
>> I have one of the full rack 3-phase ones in Seattle which, like the one I
>> gave away, has the Audio option.
>
> I didn't know there was a 3 phase option. Was it an Onyx2 or Onyx?

The original Onyx ('Terminator') generally only had 3-phase if it had the 
VME backplane package added. Mine came from Boeing and had the VME cage 
(and a bunch of custom hardware of which I have no real understanding what 
it interfaces to), but it runs just fine on single-phase.

For convenience I, uh, replace all the honking great TwistLoks, et al, 
with NEMA50P oven plugs. Both the plugs and the receptacles are cheaper 
than dirt and easily sourced even in a town of 4,000 people in Iowa. So 
when I use the Onyx I have (which is in my office) I unplug the oven (in 
the kitchenette) and plug in the Onyx.

I'm reasonably certain that this is not what the engineers had intended, 
but due to their skill, it works a treat.

> My Cray uses 5 of the Sun E10000 style Pioneer Magnetics 5000 watt 48vdc 
> PSUs, and even it was single phase (although I had it sitting across 3 phases 
> just to get the power to it over a 30 amp cable.)

Yea, that's kind of my next trick. The J90 has some big-ass power cables I 
need to put NEMA50s on.

Which reminds me - what the heck is the trick to getting the two cabinets 
to interlock? I can get the front tabs hooked in between the two cabs, but 
for the LIFE of me I can't get the back to get it to sit the IOS cabinet's 
inner frame inside the processing cabinet's outer.

  - JP