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SGI Origin 350

m_thompson

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Joined
Jul 8, 2014
Messages
1,985
Location
Rhode Island, USA
My car is full of SGI Origin 350 parts. Looks like six compute chassis, two NumaLink chassis, an SGI RAID, and a bunch of supporting parts. It was originally assembled as two systems, but might be more interesting assembled as one large system. I need to open the chassis to see what CPUs and RAM are installed. It will probably take a lot of studying of the manuals to get this thing running.
 
Sounds pretty exciting. Post some pics if you can once you get things sorted out. I like that idea of one big system :cool:
 
I started reading the manuals. It looks like pretty complicated to get everything interconnected, powered up, and configured. I didn't get any disks with the system so my first project is to install a disk in one of the base chassis and see if I can get IRIX installed. Then I can add a single compute chassis and get that working. After that I need to connect additional chassis through the NumaLink chassis, so that gets a little more complicated. I have the L2 chassis, but I am not sure if I really need it.
 
I am interested in learning about it, getting it running, and not much more. Hopefully someone will offer me a reasonable amount for it once I can prove that everything works OK.
 
I have one of the chassis with the L1 controller powered up.
If everything works, and I can supply enough power, I could make a configuration with 24 1GHz IP35 CPUs and 24GB of RAM

001c02-L1>WARNING: power appears off, console unavailable
001c02-L1>l1
L1 command processor engaged, <CTRL-D> to exit.
001c02-L1>config verbose
:0 - 001c02 (local)
:1 - not connected (attached I/O)
:5 - not connected (attached C)
001c02-L1>* version
001c02:
L1 1.40.6 (Image A), Built 01/06/2006 13:16:50 [MIPS 2MB image]
001c02-L1>power up
001c02-L1>
entering console mode 001c02 CPU0, <CTRL_T> to escape to L1
Starting PROM Boot process


IP35 PROM SGI Version 6.210 built 02:33:51 PM Aug 26, 2004
Testing/Initializing memory ............... DONE
Copying PROM code to memory ............... DONE
Discovering local IO ...................... DONE
Discovering NUMAlink connectivity .........
Local hub NUMAlink is down.
*** Local network link down
DONE
Found 1 objects (1 hubs, 0 routers) in 5893 usec
Waiting for peers to complete discovery.... DONE
No other nodes present; becoming global master
Global master is /hw/rack/001/bay/02
Intializing any CPUless nodes.............. DONE
Checking partitioning information ......... DONE
No other nodes present; becoming partition master
Local slave entering slave loop
Local slave entering slave loop
Local slave entering slave loop
Loading BASEIO prom ....................... DONE

BASEIO PROM Monitor SGI Version 6.210 built 02:30:38 PM Aug 26, 2004 (BE64)
4 CPUs on 1 nodes found.

NVRAM checksum is incorrect: reinitializing.
Automatic update of PROM environment disabled
Graphics diagnostics

Installing PROM Device drivers ............
On-board (IO9) tigon3 1000BaseT interface
Base I/O Ethernet set to /dev/ethernet/tg0
Probing IOC4 ATA adapter 2
IOC4 RevId = 83
Detected Vendor id/Product MATSHITA DVD-ROM SR-8178

Walking SCSI Adapter 0, (pci id 3)
1- 2- 3- 4- 5- 6- 7- 8- 9- 10- 11- 12- 13- 14- 15- = 0 device(s)


Walking SCSI Adapter 1, (pci id 3)
1- 2- 3- 4- 5- 6- 7- 8- 9- 10- 11- 12- 13- 14- 15- = 0 device(s)

Initializing PROM Device drivers ..........
Initializing Base I/O Ethernet Interface...Failed. MII Status Register = 0x7949
Done.
---------------Interface Configuration Summary----------------
ASIC|Revision|MAC Address : 5701|B5|08:00:69:15:e2:d6
Link Negotiation|Advertisement : On|<H10 F10 H100 F100 F1000>
Link|Speed|Duplex|Rx/Tx FlowCtrl: Down|10|Half|Off/Off
--------------------------------------------------------------
DONE
Checking hardware inventory ...............
WARNING: hardware inventory is invalid. Reinitializing...
Writing 3 records... DONE
Updated new configuration. Wrote 3 records.

**** System Configuration and Diagnostics Summary ****
CONFIG:
No. of NODEs enabled = 1
No. of NODEs disabled = 0
No. of CPUs enabled = 4
No. of CPUs disabled = 0
Mem enabled = 4096 MB
Mem disabled = 0 MB
No. of RTRs enabled = 0
No. of RTRs disabled = 0

DIAG RESULTS:
ALL DIAGS PASSED.
**** End System Configuration and Diagnostics Summary ****


System Maintenance Menu

1) Start System
2) Install System Software
3) Run Diagnostics
4) Recover System
5) Enter Command Monitor

Option? 5
Command Monitor. Type "exit" to return to the menu.
>> hinv
System SGI-IP35
4 1.0 GHz IP35 Processors
Main memory size: 4096 Mbytes
PCI IOC4: in slot 1, (adapter 0)
PCI Gigabit Ethernet (tigon3) Controller 1
Integral SCSI controller 2: Version IOC4 ATA
CDROM: unit 0 on SCSI Controller 2, (cdrom(2,0,7))
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version Qlogic 12160
Integral SCSI controller 1: Version Qlogic 12160

>>
 
Two chassis now interconnected with NumaLink...

>> hinv
System SGI-IP35
8 1.0 GHz IP35 Processors
Main memory size: 8192 Mbytes
PCI IOC4: in slot 1, (adapter 0)
PCI Gigabit Ethernet (tigon3) Controller 1
Integral SCSI controller 2: Version IOC4 ATA
CDROM: unit 0 on SCSI Controller 2, (cdrom(2,0,7))
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version Qlogic 12160
Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI Controller 0, (dksc(0,1,0))
Disk drive: unit 2 on SCSI Controller 0, (dksc(0,2,0))
Integral SCSI controller 1: Version Qlogic 12160
 
IRIX 6.5.30 installed. Both IBM SCSI disks that I installed are showing errors. The CDROM had trouble reading the original SGI CDs, but works OK with CDs that I wrote.

IRIS 1# hinv
8 1.0 GHZ IP35 Processors
CPU: MIPS R16000 Processor Chip Revision: 3.0
FPU: MIPS R16010 Floating Point Chip Revision: 3.0
Main memory size: 8192 Mbytes
Instruction cache size: 32 Kbytes
Data cache size: 32 Kbytes
Secondary unified instruction/data cache size: 16 Mbytes
Integral SCSI controller 2: Version IDE (ATA/ATAPI) IOC4
CDROM: unit 0 on SCSI controller 2
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version QL12160, low voltage differential
Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI controller 0
Disk drive: unit 2 on SCSI controller 0
Integral SCSI controller 1: Version QL12160, low voltage differential
Integral SCSI controller 3: Version Fibre Channel QL2310
IOC3/IOC4 serial port: tty3
IOC3/IOC4 serial port: tty4
IOC3/IOC4 serial port: tty5
IOC3/IOC4 serial port: tty6
Gigabit Ethernet: tg1, module 001c03, PCI bus 1 slot 2 port 0
Gigabit Ethernet: tg2, module 001c03, PCI bus 1 slot 2 port 1
Gigabit Ethernet: tg3, module 001c03, PCI bus 2 slot 2 port 0
Gigabit Ethernet: tg4, module 001c03, PCI bus 2 slot 2 port 1
Integral Gigabit Ethernet: tg0, module 001c02, PCI bus 1 slot 4
IOC3/IOC4 external interrupts: 1
 
I replaced the IBM SCSI disks with 73GB Fujitsu drives, and it fixed the disk problem. One of the chassis looks like the IP35 board is bad. It reports TLB errors if any of the CPUs are enabled. The inventory now is 2x compute chassis each with 4x 1 GHz IP35 CPUs. They can be interconnected with a NumaLink cable to make a 8x CPU system. Also 3x working and 1x broken compute chassis each with 4x 800 MHz IP35 CPUs. These can be interconnected through a NumaLink hub to make a 12x CPU system. It is possible to connect the 1GHz and the 800 MHz chassis with a NumaLink hub to make a 20x CPU system. I am not sure how well it would work having different speed CPUs. I also have a SGI InfiniteStorage FibreChannel connected chassis that holds 14x SATA/SAS drives. I have not tried this chasis yet.
 
Nice. Making a single system out of two might be tricky when it comes to getting the same system serial number on all nodes. No problem with mixing the different CPU speeds, IIRC.

There were various tricks to change a given brick's serial number, and this is where the L2 and/or the NUMAlink router(s) can help. I don't remember the details, they were all on the Nekochan forum and that's where I kept my notes - so they're all offline, post GDPR. Check the Nekonomicon, where a lot of the Nekochan forum content was revived as static pages.
 
Lots of people can help you real-time with getting that going over in the SiliconGraphicsUserGroup Discord: http://sgi.sh/ click on the microphone....

A number of users there have big o350 setups and have gone thru the pain of all the L1 and L2 configs to get it all to work as it should.
 
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