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I can't seem to find any information on replacing the battery via google or google groups. Heck, I can't even seem to find much in the way of reports about people having this problem, except for one lone google groups post with no replies to it.

Is this a user servicable problem? Where is this even located? My first guesses would be the motherboard or frontplane.[/quote]

This is basically the same problem that appears on the Indy. The battery is another Dallas Semiconductor chip on the mainboard. Fortunatly, the MAC address is not kept there in the Octane. I don't remember the part number off the top of my head, but I'm sure it was discussed here before, so you might want to do a search on the forums.

*NOTE: Once you do get the part number of the chip, you can get a couple free from dallas semiconductor by requesting them as samples. I say this all the time, but some people don't seem to listen and insist on buy them. Oh well. (I've got all the chips I've needed free, from the ones for my 4D/70 thru my Octane)

**EDIT: On another train of thought, does the system boot? If it does, just try changing the date and leaving the system up for a while. Could be the battery has just gone low from sitting for a while.

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WolfLord -

"Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun" - Troy McClure

I'll keep that in mind. They still make the ones used in the 4D/70? Now that's a nice long product life.

I'm thinking of using this as an excuse to buy a new IP30, since I have a low rev of the 0887 model. On the other hand, I wish that some other questions were answered before sinking more money into this machine. Such as, is it the drives that are bad (you seemed confident that it was that), or the backplane or the IP30. Also, is it the PCI cage that is bad, or the backplane again. If I could find an Octane reasonably close to what I want (1467, Xbow 1.4, R12k, SE, PCI cage) for something other than reseller prices, I'd be highly tempted to buy it rather than try to work out the issues my current Octane has.



The system does boot. I don't know how the battery could have just gone low since until last night (Xsgi died three times in an hour, so I shut the machine down in disgust), the machine had been off for no more than an hour at a time for weeks

It really sounds like you're having hardware problems. If you weren't in Ozztrallia life would be easier, but you could

rhemix : Octane 270MHz R12K ESI graphics 512MB RAM - $125

That's the new motherboard, 1.4 xbar, dunno about cherokee or get

Octane2 360 for $400, less some $$ because you don't need V6 and probably don't need a cpu or

for $350 get a brand new in the shrinkwrap Octane 1 with media

OR we could trade my good-running Octane for your V10 card, straight across

I'd say the hardware prob is gonna be easy to solve and pretty cheap. The shipping problem will be harder

I think you have me confused with someone else. I'm in the USA, and I don't have a V10.

And I have been in contact with Miles Foster of 1stsourceusa about a Octane 270mhz. I'd like a faster CPU, but I can settle with 270mhz. It's an upgrade from my 250mhz module that I'm using now. It does have a Xbow 1.4. Shipping is reasonable. PCI cage is $100 extra. I don't know if I can afford that right now, however I'd like to do it now that that making sure it works correctly is his problem. I should ask him about installing a Qlogic 1080 or FC-AL card. No drives/sleds included. That's probably OK. I can't rule out my disks as one of the problems, but I can buy disks elsewhere quite cheaply. I need to get my wife to agree though. She probably will. She understands that the Octane is the main computer in the house. But, she might want to wait a few weeks, which is understandable, but I'm understandably (think) agitated about the Octane interfering with getting work done.

I think I need new media, but I think something older on ebay would work well enough. My 6.5.20F set (which came as CD-Rs from the reseller that sold the machine) works well enough to install, but I can't use overlay 1 to FX drives. So, as long as I have another working SGI I'm OK. And, my O2 (R5k 180) does work (albeit quite slowly).

I'm torn on the Vpro issue (but certainly can't afford it at the moment anyway). V6 or V8 would mean that I can't use my current monitor, and I'm rather limited in using a LCD. Plus, there is the EVO issue. On the other hand, they do look much nicer, and I don't know that I'll ever be able to afford/justify an EVO.

Rats ! who am I to give advice, I can't even get the person straight !

Guess that won't stop me tho, since I've been giving this exact problem some thought. The r12-270 is definitely the way to go if you wanna do it piecemeal and on the cheap. Since I'm a cheap bastard, that was the way I was leaning myself. You get all the good parts except for the blue skins. You can always use the ESI graphics for a dual head setup some day in the future. Everything else is non-redundant,.

Next choice if you wanted to blow a little more would be the 360. Faster cpu, VPro grafix (if that's suitable for what you want) and blue skins. You've got drives already. I'd pass on the shoebox as well until you can confirm that it's your cage, not the mainboard that was the problem. Except I'd check the shoebox and make sure there's no short in the connector, which might be causative in your current frontplane problems ? Get out the magnifying glass ...

Third choice would be kind of a luxury, but hell. $350 for a NEW Octane, damn. It's definitely a temptation. Not quite as sexy as the Octane2 but new. No, let's make that NEW.

Anyway, all the options are under $350 plus shipping, so this is a lot better than the situation was just a year ago. Hell, I was so excited when I got my r10k-195 with a big 4 gig drive and 256 megs memory for $600 bucks that i about shit. Soooooo .... no matter what you get, it'll be a pretty good deal. I don't think you could get a good new mommyboard for a peecee for the price of that r12-270 ....

now, who the heck is in Ozztralia with the V10 grafix ?

It is known in psyche study field as the V10/V12 patology...
the subject insist that every person he meets own a V10/V12, this is mainly produced by the need of upgrade of his Octane.

Cure: spend huge amount of bucks....

is this a hijack? i thout we where talking about clock battery's.

nah, I think he was *hoping* his problem was the clock battery, but that was actually just another part of the entire Octane's death rattle

btw, it's jWHAT who has the V10/12 and lives in Ozztralia. Sorry, jboyd.

Hamei,

Yep it is me who lives in Ozziestralia and ironically my Octane booted with that exact same message about dead battery yesterday .
It went into a tail spin of requesting new passwords over and over again when I tried to log on. Very strange behavior indeed.
I rebooted into single user mode and reset clock via "date". I am going to give it another go tonight to see if this is terminal or not.
I also got failure of XTALK IO as well and my FC disk array went beserk. Seems now that I have finally got to dual 600 the entire lot has decided to play up and just when I disposed of spare chassis of extra parts.
Proves that Octane happiness is very transitory indeed.
Cheers from Oz.

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jwhat - ask questions, provide answers

JBoyd,

not sure what you did about your battery problem, but my machine seems to be up and running again.
However since installing 2nd 300 GB disk into FC Array it has crashed twice (I have never experienced an OS crash before...).
Strange indeed.

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jwhat - ask questions, provide answers

I don't recall with certainty, but I believe that I fixed it by aquiring a low end system and adding my RAM, TRAM, CPU, and disks to it. I still would like to sometime again buy an entire new system that would be vpro compatible sometime, but it isn't a priority at the moment,

Heh - that's a great error message

I always liked BeOS' haikus, or the Amiga's "Guru Meditation"... or even the dead Mac logo (which'd make a really neat tee-shirt!)

well, if the dallas chip is in charge for that, for what is that tiny exchangeable battery/accu on the inner side of frontplane for?

greetings

That's the Number In a Can (NIC) and holds the SysID.

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