New Tezro owner

[marshallh]

I picked up this Tezro from a recycler on eBay. May have overbid on it since there was no indication of its condition but I lucked out.

Turns out it does boot to Gfx Cfg Err fine as I am currently lacking enough PS/2 to USB adapters - I picked up a set of Sun type 6 stuff without realizing it.
Apart from some scuffing and UV damage ,the case is in good shape. Some of that can be fixed, and it needs a good cleaning.

DVD and drive caddies are all missing. Whoever decommissioned it (appears to be in 2016) taped the DVD drive rails inside so they can be re-used.


1. I need a couple drive caddies, are they the same as Origin 350?
2. Looking for a DVD drive as well, should I stick to the main 2 Toshiba units or will any SCSI unit work?
3. Need a 15k rpm HDD as well, size doesn't matter much, ideas?


Pics following:

Great packing, no shipping damage whatsoever

Missing all drive caddies

Not sure if this is a quad board, or all boards have this sticker. 6/8 slots populated, so 1.5, 3, or 6gb ram?

[Irinikus]

Nice one!

You can tell if it has two or four CPU’s by the number of heat sinks present underneath the metal shroud covering the CPU’s.

The board number should be found just below the top RAM Bank, under the top most VRM, if you google this number, you can find out what type of CPU’s the machine has.

Here’s where to find it:

[japes]

Drive trays were used by some Intel case and I believe some gateway server at least. So they're a bit easier to find on eBay and you don't have to pay SGI collector premium. Yes they're the same as the Origin/Altix 350.

Optical drive is standard PATA/ATAPI and I think any old DVD reader/CD-R or DVD burner will work. They're easy to find at recyclers near me.

For drives I usually use decommissioned HP 10k or 15k drives in the 36, 72, or 146 sizes. Mostly because I had a bunch after wiping them at an old job. Hard to go wrong with most of the 140ish and 300ish sized ones. Drives were pretty much a solved problem in the late days of scsi as sas was pushing them away. Thankfully sgi boots off any scsi drive the primary controller can talk to unlike IBM.

Once you have working PS/2 keyboard and mouse you'll have to report back. I suspect you can get a console now with a null modem on the console port. 38400 n81 is the settings. The console port is the l1 controller.

If the l1 controller needs a new clock chip, sorry they're out of production and distributors are empty. If the IO9 needs a new battery for the system time, no problems there. System time is kept with a ST micro snaphat and the replacement battery/crystal is still available.

[marshallh]

Yup, with some old PS/2 accessories it came right up.

2x 800mhz, 4gb ram.

Thanks japes for that info. I have a 4x 700mhz node board on the way as well. I thought that a SCSI DVD drive was necessary, but if IDE drives work that'll make things much easier!

[mopar5150]

Nice purchase! I have the DVD drive, cable, caddies and bootable 15K hard drive to get you started. I am interested in your dual 800 IP board as well.

PM me your address for a shipping quote.

Thanks,
John

[marshallh]

Thanks John for the offer. Before you posted I made a big ebay purchase for a bunch of this stuff. Picked up a 146gb 15k and 300gb 10k.
The 4x700 is working fine in the Tezro, 8MB 350MHz L2 instead of 4MB 400mhz L2. Might want to offload the old nodeboard once things are running and I can do some comparisons to see which will work better, but I dont expect any surprises.


Bonus pic:

[japes]

That photo is great!

Mopar beat me to it, I was going to say the 2x800 is interesting, but I have a 2x600 in an Origin 350 that fills that interest (lower power for install and misc server).

[foetz]

hi marshallh and congrats on the tezro!
please attach large pics or resize them if you link them in directly. they kill the layout

[Intuition]

Oh, I'd love to have a tezro 4x cpu for running old Irix Maya or Softimage.

[marshallh]

Left it running for a few hours one day with a GL demo running. Ever since then it's been seriously flaky.

It posts thru console now but is completely unable to find Odyssey or IO9! So it can't do anything. Am I missing some setenv (I did resetenv already) that will allow it to bring those things back?

I completely disassembled the entire machine and back again, no change.

After swapping in the original 2x800 IP53 board, that one just immediately spews pci sanity test errors, or io self test errors.
Switching back to 4x700 that one boots but can't see anything in the system.
Ideas?
L1 reports no power or fan problems.

[marshallh]

serial all

Code: Select all

001c01-L1>serial all

Data                            Location      Value
------------------------------  ------------  --------
Local System Serial Number      NVRAM         P1002550
Reference System Serial Number  NVRAM         P1002550
Local Brick Serial Number       EEPROM        NDW523
Reference Brick Serial Number   NVRAM         NDW523


EEPROM      Product Name    Serial         Part Number           Rev  T/W
----------  --------------  -------------  --------------------  ---  ------
INTERFACE   WS_INT_53       NDW523         030_1881_007          A    00
IO9         IO9             NFV343         030_1771_005          A    00
ODYSSEY     ODY128B1_2      NCK996         030_1884_002          D    00
SNOWBALL    no hardware detected
NODE        IP53_4CPU       MVX791         030_1812_002          C    00
IO DGHTR    CHWS_IO_DAUG    NBR565         030_1875_003          A    00

EEPROM     JEDEC-SPD Info           Part Number        Rev  Speed  SGI
---------- ------------------------ ------------------ ---- ------ --------
DIMM 0     CE000000000000000C135400 M3 46L6423DT2-CA0   2D   10.0  N/A
DIMM 2     CE000000000000000CD05300 M3 46L6423DT2-CA0   2D   10.0  N/A
DIMM 4     CE000000000000000CC95300 M3 46L6423DT2-CA0   2D   10.0  N/A
DIMM 6     CE000000000000000CE15300 M3 46L6423DT2-CA0   2D   10.0  N/A
DIMM 1     CE000000000000000CD35300 M3 46L6423DT2-CA0   2D   10.0  N/A
DIMM 3     CE000000000000000CD85300 M3 46L6423DT2-CA0   2D   10.0  N/A
DIMM 5     CE000000000000000CDB5300 M3 46L6423DT2-CA0   2D   10.0  N/A
DIMM 7     CE000000000000000CD95300 M3 46L6423DT2-CA0   2D   10.0  N/A

power up on 4x700 nodeboard

Code: Select all

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 NUMAlink connectivity .........
Local hub NUMAlink is down.
*** Local network link down
DONE
Found 1 objects (1 hubs, 0 routers) in 5887 usec
Waiting for peers to complete discovery....             DONE
No other nodes present; becoming global master
Global master is /hw/rack/001/bay/01
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.
****************************************************************
*       WARNING:  No BASEIO board found -- the system         *
*                  will not be able to boot.                  *
****************************************************************
WARNING: Did not find an IOC3 or IOC4 NVRAM base address
WARNING: Did not find an IOC3 or IOC4 UART base address

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

WARNING: Did not find an IOC3 or IOC4 NVRAM base address
WARNING: Did not find an IOC3 or IOC4 UART base address
Installing PROM Device drivers ............
Installing Graphics Console...
graphics install: searching for pipe 0
klgraphics: System has no GFX
Initializing PROM Device drivers ..........             DONE
Cannot connect to keyboard -- check the cable.
Cannot open /dev/input/ioc3pckm0 for input
Cannot connect to keyboard -- check the cable.
Cannot open /dev/input/ioc3pckm0 for input
cpu_get_tod: Did not find an IOC3 or IOC4 NVRAM base address
Checking hardware inventory ...............
WARNING: hardware inventory is invalid.  Reinitializing...
Writing 1 records. DONE
Updated new configuration. Wrote 1 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?

[Irinikus]

Have you checked the seating of the BASEIO card? (removed it, cleaned the contacts and reinserted it?)

The fact that it can't see the BASEIO card could be the reason why it's not detecting the graphics hardware, but I'm not sure of this.

I know that other members here may disagree with doing this, but the first thing that I did when I received my Tezro was to disassemble it completely (all of the boards out, including the node board), cleaned everything (all of the contacts) and reassembled the machine.

They are old, rather complex machines and a bit of oxidation on one of the contacts can cause problems.

[japes]

reseating the IO9 makes sense. Just pulling it out and plugging it back in might be enough if it got dislodged or had some oxidation.

I've been running one of mine a bunch - It's gotten cold, needed some electric heat I hope I don't have any of the same problems. But speaking of, did you put any other cards in? I had a red pcb Adaptec FireWire card in my Fuel and moved it to my Tezro - it was very angry, L1 controller powered down the machine within about 10 seconds with a voltage low error.

[marshallh]

Yup, reseated several times.

Now that you mention it, I did plugin a NEC USB PCI card which was working somewhat before I had trouble. I am running the barebones configuration now.

I neglected to mention, in the process of finding the initial issue, I was getting dumped to the exception handler randomly usually during PROM boot, though sometimes it would manage to boot irix before eventually panicing.
POD> why revealed "Data bus err". I checked the node board connection and there was a pin bent over, so I fixed it. Now I am getting no more of those errors but now it won't see anything else on the system.

Interestingly, L1 has no problem reading the IO9 eeproms, or ODYSSEY stuff. Only the node can't see 'em.

[Irinikus]

Maybe try setting the system up with the dual 800MHz node board that you originally received with the system.

Which side of the node board connector had the bent pin? the node board side or the IO side?