SGI Indido R3000 Elan

Upgrading an SGI Indigo R3000 - an 18 year old machine - is not without risks: the Magick Smoke already escaped once, forcing me to replace the z-buffer board. However, I have sourced an alternative, and coupled with an extra 3 GE's, should be able to take my XS24-Z up to an Elan. Well that's the plan.

Big thanks to Ian Mapleson, for his help sourcing the parts: http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/

I also have plans on trying to get a newer version of PERL on IRIX 5.3, so I can possibly run Webmin. The guys at work think im crazy. You know, they could have a point. =)

Thank you, Jamie Cameron http://www.webmin.com

watch this space!!

update: 24/04/09 - the parts have been despatched via special delivery! should arrive soon. Who put the idea in my head of getting Mozilla FireFox to run on Irix 5.3, eh, Ian - Who indeed? Damn you, there goes my social life this year. Oh well, no great loss =)

update: 04/05/09 - Finally succeeded in booting the machine, but not able to restore the IRIX 5.3 OS yet, due to SCSI CDROM trouble (SCSI bus reset). I've swapped drives, and cables, to no avail. Was hoping to avoid this grief, but since my last update, I've lost 5 servers. (Its been a tough week). The 13 year old SGI O2 which I was hoping to become the network CD share / mount point decided to blow the PSU with a tremendous explosion, the resulting electrical power surge causing a fair amount of collateral on that circuit.

However, I'm back up and running now, limping along on a spare PC server, and an Octane with a dodgy graphics card - at least one of those should help me get the CDROMs online. I might even get around to installing the upgraded hardware, soon!!

Oh, well... looks like Im going to end up installing a BOOTP server again - so look out for the post on that!