Sgi O2 - Irix 6.3

[Shodan]

Ok folks,

Knowing little about RH, someone saw fit to give me a 1997 SGI O2 to play with - literally - it has sat for over a year without being turned on...

So I start playing and the first thing I notice is that it is incredibly slow.......
I mean really slow.....
like 10+ minute boot times slow....
once it is up and running any icon I click on takes forever to come up. I sometimes forget that I clicked on it while I play in the shell.....

does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to improve performance... or how I can tweak the system somewhat.

I would also like to make this a dual boot with RH8.3 but can't figure out how to boot off the CD yet - help here is also appreciated.

THanks

[phil_patnude]

what are your hardware specs?

[Shodan]

video: MVP unit 0 version 1.4
AV: AV1 card version 1,
serial ports: 2
parallel port 1
200 Mhz IP32 processor
FPU MIPS 5000
CPU MIPS 5000
main mem = 256 MB
CDROM: unit 4 SCSI
HD: unit 1 SCSI
CRM graphics = installed
SCSI controllers: adaptec 7880

any help is most appreciated!!!!!!

thanks

[phil_patnude]

i don't much about SGI computers, but I have to agree that 10 minutes to boot is rediculous.

Can you boot straight to the console? If so, is this faster than booting to the GUI? Do commands on the console windows run anywhere near as slow as clicking icons on the desktop?

Have you checked the bios settings to ensure it matches your actual hardware setup? Is it a flash upgradeable bios? Try to get any availible uprgades for it if it is.

Are you sure the O/S is properly configured? If possible, ask the previous owners if they encountered similar performance.

Be sure to check SGI's website for technical support, see if this problem is/was common.

I know it's probably pretty basic suggestions, but thats all I can think of right now. I'll do some more research to try and help you out later

[Shodan]

i don't much about SGI computers, but I have to agree that 10 minutes to boot is rediculous.

agreed

Can you boot straight to the console?

nope or not really - I have to pass through a GUI no matter what....


once up and going the shell seems to be working fine and at a reasonable speed. I have no idea why the GUIs are so slow...

Have you checked the bios settings to ensure it matches your actual hardware setup? Is it a flash upgradeable bios? Try to get any availible uprgades for it if it is.

being new at all this I don't know how to do the things you mention...
the machine is not on the net and only has 1 media bay: CDROM maked getting simple files and such a royal pain...

Thanks for the help,

I am still working on the machine so any advice you can come up with is appreciated,

JD

[phil_patnude]

do you currently subscibe to broadband internet service?

from what i've read so far about your computer, it should have onboard ethernet. if you do have high speed internet, it should be no trouble to put it online for a little while to download the fprom upgrades (from what i've been reading, that's the flash bios). if you can get online with it, you should also see if you can't upgrade to Irix 6.5.

but maybe you don't have broadband, so if you have a cd burner on your other machine, you could (slowly) download these upgrades, put them on CD-R's and then bring them through the CD drive on the SGI computer.

Do you have the original O/S CD's? Is there any really important data on the hard disk right now? You could wipe the hd clean and start over with irix [or even with linux ].

I'll keep thinking and searching for info on your problem. In the meantime, let me recommend http://www.google.com. So far, it's turned up a lot of links about your type/model of computer.

[Shodan]

Phil,

thanks for all the help in this.

Yes the machine has ethernet capability. The only prob is that the IT guys don't want to give me an IP for it because of "security" issues. If it isn't a PC they are clueless.

I have tried a reinstall (have all the original disks - nothing important on the machine). Nightmarish... as I said I am rather new (but getting better quickly) in this - but man, IRIX is like talking two foriegn languages at once - only a few of the commands seem simialr to other flavors of UNIX. All installs are done from teh command line (no prob there really) but there is little indication what anything is - where it goes - how it gets there - or what the proper config is "supposed to be"... or how to resolve conflicts - and there are plenty of them... I cant even follow all of them...

Additionally, there are 'licenseing' issues.... apparently one has to have the proper license to 'execute' certain packages. The gcc compiler for example asks for the license code - I don't have it, and the guy who gave it to me doesn't have it... I can't even compile (using gcc anyhow)... Rooting around in the machine I have found what appears to be developer tools... but I can't make heads or tails of what is what... just a dir indicating that there are tool inside, but all the files are just acronyms - for what I have no idea...

Being in Norway makes getting in touch with SGI a bit difficult. and as IRIX is proprietary, I am doubtful that they would be overly helpful as I now have a hand-me down of a machine and nothing to tell them how I got it... when it was purchased the first time or have any of the documentation that came with it.. All I have is a machine (a pretty one) with a bunch of disks and a mandate to "get it working"...

I have been through google also, and you are right there is plenty of stuff out there. but with my inexperience - making sense of it takes time. I wanted to put RH8 on the machine, but as it has the MIPS chit set - I dont think that is possible... I cant even get to the BIOS to change the boot order... (not that it is impossible - I don't know how to access it...). In fact, if I can change this to a RH machine - life would be a whole lot easier becuse eventually it will have to be linked to a RH machine so that machine 2 can use the resources of the blue box to process data...

let me know if you come up with anything and I will keep searching too.

Thanks I really appreciate having some one along for this ride...

J

[phil_patnude]

Why are these IT guys afraid to put your machine on the network with your own IP address? What do they think is going to happen? Don't they realize that it's going to be on the company network sooner or later anyway (like once it gets assigned to someone as a workstation or server or whatever)? I guess you'll have to deal with that later

For one thing, if you call or e-mail SGI, i wouldn't bother telling them where or how you got the machine other than that your boss lost the manuals and needs you to fix it. By the way, I did some searching the other day and I'm fairly certain you are in charge of a MIPS R5000 based computer.

you are saying now that it's ok if its any unix box instead of irix? There are a hanful of other unix-like OS/s that you could put on your box, although i don't know how to change the boot up sequence either. Let me recommend Google again, and Ask Jeeves as well.

I've seen that NetBSD can run on a variety of platforms, including mips. There are also some Linux distros i've found that work on ps2 (has a mips processor), there are definately at least one of each for your SGI system.

here are some links in that area...

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-...inux-mips.html
A must read on Linux and MIPS processors

http://www.debian.org/ports/mips/
Debian's MIPS port

http://www.europe.redhat.com/documen...O-4.php3#ss4.1
Has some links to different Linux-Mips projects

ftp://oss.sgi.com/pub/linux/mips/redhat
Possibly an SGI-supported RH-based Linux for it's machines???

http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/sgimips/
NetBSD for SGI O2 workstations

hope those point you in the right direction

[ZAmodeo]

Did you ever get that O2 working? (I hope you did)
When you had or now have it working, did you notice if there was a demo of a game called egghead on it? It's a weird snowboarding game which I for some reason am addicted to. I played it on an O2 at a workplace once. I'd love to have it somehow but idk if it'll work with Linux (or maybe some of the really cheap 02s on ebay that people don't know how they work.)

[phil_patnude]

wow, i almost forgot all about this thread. I'm curious as to what luck you've had over the past 2-3 months with that SGI.

I started thinking today, and depending on what the machine will be used for, a Linux-Mips distro would be your best bet (if you haven't got it settled already). That stuff about the compiler sounds like a mess. I really like not having all these liscencing problems on my Linux box. (GPL for me, thanks)

Well, good luck with it in the future (or if you still haven't 'fixed it' yet)

ZAmodeo, have you only seen Egghead on O2? Which machines and OS's?

[ZAmodeo]

I've personally only seen it on an O2 (at the local GE family day or something like that.) I went to SGI's website and I found out Egghead also came as a demo on Octane computers. I think it was Irix 6.5 that it mentioned on the site but I can't find the same one again. There was a list of the programs that came with Irix 6.5 on each of those computers and Egghead was on both of them.
Thanks for the help!

[Shodan]

Well....

truth be told....

there are/were so many dependancies...
that the machine is still collecting dust...
Imanaged to get another box up and running in the mean time RH8

I will check on the game.
I haven't seen it yet so it might be fun to play with.

All in all the only thing I am gonna be able to do with that blue box is tinker.

I don't know IRIX from a hole in the ground and from what I could tell - a clean install seems just beyond nightmarish...

thanks for all those who helped over time.

rest assured I haven't given up on it - its just not at the top 'o the priority list any longer...

JD