OpenBSD Journal

Hardware wanted: SGI O2's for Calgary

Contributed by grey on from the scour garages, basements and ebay dept.

There is apparently some movement on a port to the sgi architecture; but before it ever sees the light of day, the appropriate hardware will be needed by more developers. If you can help out, please do, more information as well as some specifics may be found in this misc@ post.

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Anonymous Cowturd (144.132.235.177) on

    Why bother?

    Comments

    1. By Brad (216.138.200.42) brad at comstyle dot com on

      What a stupid question. Not everyone wants to run IRIX or l00nix on their SGI hardware.

      Comments

      1. By kris (67.168.80.252) on

        yeah no doubt, i love sgi's, but irix is retarded in concept + design (IMO).

        Comments

        1. By Ralph Siegler (4.15.105.114) admail@rsiegler.org on

          oh yeah, the free Unix-like OS can do everything better than IRIX, like 1 to 2048 processor SMP, ccNUMA, support of 16 TB RAM, drivers for the most advanced graphics engines........heheh, actually there is a version of Linux that can do this, with code ported from IRIX, of course

          Comments

          1. By tedu (68.122.125.136) on

            you have a 2048 processor O2?

          2. By Gimlet (64.218.87.23) on

            Heh. Nearly every SGI I've ever across has been an old machine running an ancient version of IRIX that has never been patched, sitting in a chem lab or other science department. Usually being used as nothing more than a freaking X terminal. Getting even some of those systems running a more secure OS is a major victory.

            Comments

            1. By Brent (66.122.62.34) buescher@tiki-lounge.com on

              Except, of course, that an SGI running an unpatched installation of IRIX probably still makes a better X terminal than it would running some free OS and Xfree86. And really, workstations should be firewalled off anyway.

              Comments

              1. By Bill (69.76.76.45) on

                Like every attempt to crack a machine comes from the outside. Yeah your firewall is going to work great in that instance.

                Comments

                1. By Gimlet (128.252.229.164) on

                  I actually broke into several IRIX boxes at a University that I used to work for (with permission, of course!). The head of computing wanted to bash the Chem department over the head with the fact that a student worker was able to root their systems. For all I know, the same Indys are still sitting there to this day, with the same vulnerabilities...

            2. By Anonymous Coward (203.217.30.86) on

              Don't forget the awful compiler that was an expensive addon to the OS.

              Comments

              1. By danimal (209.130.193.226) on

                what awful compiler? It was better than gcc. Faster, tighter code. Not the greatest development environment, but it worked.

                Comments

                1. By Miod Vallat (212.234.41.17) on

                  The MIPSpro compiler suite produces excellent code, and there were a few gems with IRIX (such as cord). Though the user interface could have been better - cc would complain with "catastrophic error" if the input file did not exist...

    2. By tedu (68.122.125.136) on

      yeah, why bother reading the linked to post? it'd take a whole mouse click of effort.

    3. By Anonymous Coward (130.233.220.23) on

      The post says they're doing this to find more bugs. Not just ordinary bugs but MI bugs, which are the most important. Another plus is that an O2 looks a little like a vacuum cleaner. If someone wants to do that, why not, it doesn't cost any.

  2. By Anonymous Coward (67.85.211.199) on

    When can I run OpenBSD on my cell phone?

    Comments

    1. By j0rd (142.173.12.80) on

      A lot of cellphones are ARM which is one of the lastest OBSD archs. So soon!?

  3. By j0rd (142.173.12.80) j0rd.spam@gmail on http://j0rd.ath.cx/

    I've got two SGI indies. They may be of help to someone.[PICS]They're the blue ones.I don't know much about them...or even if they're the same arch. Email me if you think they'd be of use.

    Comments

    1. By Sean (68.147.170.205) on

      Well I know that I would like one of them.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (67.71.119.129) on

        And i'll take the other... :)

    2. By tedu (68.122.125.136) on

      indy is a 32bit machine, which won't be supported by this port. so for now, there's no need for them.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (62.65.148.234) on

        Eh? 32-bit? Indies use R4Ks and R5Ks and are definitely 64-bit.

        Comments

        1. By Brad (216.138.200.42) brad at comstyle dot com on

          R4k is 32-bit, R5k is 64-bit capable. I personally do not see the point in supporting MIPS processors for the SGI port that are NOT 64-bit capable.

          Comments

          1. By Anonymous Coward (172.198.199.244) on

            R4K is a 64-bit CPU.

          2. By Anonymous Coward (64.122.103.201) on

            R4K is 64 bits

        2. By tedu (67.127.55.173) on

          oh, hmm. i think netbsd and linux both run it in 32 bit mode (or did when i installed on an indy). maybe that's where i got that impression.

          Comments

          1. By Anonymous Coward (62.65.148.234) on

            While R4K,R5K,R8K,.., are clearly 64-bit, consider the following excerpt from "The Mandate of Application Compatibility in SGI IRIX 6.5":
               Because of hardware limitations, some of the desktop workstations
               supported by IRIX 6.5 cannot run 64-bit applications. These are the
               Indigo, Indy, Indigo2/R4000/R5000, and O2.

            Comments

            1. By Anonymous Coward (172.197.151.249) on

              That's because those systems can't support more than 3/4GB of memory.So SGI just decided to stick with 32-bit IRIX on those systems. That doesn't mean you can't run a 64-bit OS on them though.

    3. By sthen (81.168.66.229) on

      I know someone who used to run an ISP on one of those.. :-)

  4. By Anonymous Coward (64.122.103.201) on

    GREAT! I wish I could run openbsd on this 600Mhz SGI O2!

  5. By Anonymous Coward (64.122.103.201) on

    If a SGI port makes it to the CD (bootable of course) I'll buy one for sure!

  6. By Anonymous Coward (80.142.191.75) on

    The addition of a new architecture to OpenBSD seems pretty good to me, moreso if it really helps squashing bugs in other architectures as hinted in Theo's mail.

    But the tiny little stab at netbsd in his announcement, was that really necessary?

    Comments

    1. By Nate (65.95.24.245) nate@my-balls.com on

      I don't really see what Theo said as a stab at NetBSD, because honestly there are only so many developers working on NetBSD. You cannot say that each platform is getting an equal amount of work done on it.

    2. By tedu (68.122.125.136) on

      see also: http://releng.netbsd.org/ab/B_HEAD/arch.html
      or make it your homepage ;)

    3. By Janne Johansson (217.215.73.21) on

      Perhaps it is related to the fact that netbsd-vax was so good at having source for it crosscompiled that they stopped compiling the source on the vaxes themselves, and at one point (perhaps still?) they couldn't compile their own code anymore due to bugs and bitrot in various parts of the vax code. OpenBSD seems to value the fact that each platform needs to be able to perform a "make build" on its own, not just to drive maintainers mad (I maintained amiga-68k for a while) but actually stresstest the system by having it build the complete OS and binaries over and over. That's why they would want to have a couple of extra O2's around Theo, just to build stuff all the time. The one(s) that pefo makes the port on would be used to write code on and port things, not for continous rebuilds.

    4. By Anonymous Coward (64.122.103.201) on

      Yes, netbsd is rotten

  7. By Anonymous Coward (64.122.103.201) on

    Hey Theo: mips64emul: http://www.mdstud.chalmers.se/~md1gavan/mips64emul/

    Comments

    1. By Ralph Siegler (4.15.105.114) admail@rsiegler.org on http://www.rsiegler.org/

      Heh, the funkiness of writing an OS for SGI machines is all the undocumented stuff, not the MIPS processor: I/O maps, PROM, disk controllers, ethernet, graphics subsystems. That emulator won't emulate any SGI box for the purposes of writing an OS

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (64.122.103.201) on

        It's obvious that you have no clue what you're talking about, the Octane linux port was written entirely using this emulator, then tried on a real Octane, oh joy, it worked just fine.

        Comments

        1. By Ralph Siegler (4.15.105.114) admail@rsiegler.org on http://www.rsiegler.org

          oh really? please provide URL to fully functional Linux on Octane developed on emulator. In the meantime, I have been following the linux-mips.org efforts on Octane and O2, they use real SGI machines but only get partial boot thus far....

          there's more than this out there?

          Comments

          1. By Anonymous Coward (64.122.103.201) on

            Why don't you simply ask the guy who provided the octane linux patch? or come on our irc channel where all the linux mips gurus hang out.

          2. By Anonymous Coward (64.122.103.201) on

            ralph sieger, you have no clue what you're talking about, please drop it.

    2. By tedu (67.127.55.173) on

      the big problem with emulators is statements like "This is a spare time hobby project, and many things are not implemented yet." I'm not knocking the emulator, but it's a real pain to develop an OS and the emulator at the same time. How do you know which component has the bug in it?

      Comments

      1. By Miod Vallat (212.234.41.17) on

        You don't have to know - the answer is obviously ``both''.

      2. By Anonymous Coward (213.119.4.16) on

        That's right, but obviously it can do quite a lot already:http://www.mdstud.chalmers.se/~md1gavan/mips64emul/20040803-openbsd-sgimips.png

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (213.119.61.141) on

          Where did you get that snapshot from?

        2. By Anonymous Coward (64.122.103.201) on

          Yep, no scsi emulation yet, no ethernet either, so you can't pass ramdisk, but it's way enough to start/test/debug the port.

        3. By Anonymous Coward (68.55.156.87) on

          there is no 180 mhz R10k O2 ... the only 180mhz o2 is r5k. the only r10k in that speed range is 175 mhz......

      3. By Anonymous Coward (64.122.103.201) on

        the Octane linux port was written entirely using this emulator, then (and only then) tried on a real Octane, oh joy, it worked just fine.

        Comments

        1. By Stanislaw Skowronek (150.254.31.46) thesis@elementy.pl on http://www.et.put.poznan.pl/~sskowron/ip30/

          Of course not! I'm regarding mips64emul as a very useful tool, but before I started reverse engineering the Octane there was little known about its internals, and even the PROM wouldn't boot on the emulator.

          It's done like this:
          * reverse engineer something on the real machine
          * feed your knowledge into the emulator (making it a bit more like the real machine)
          * run something on the emulator, see where it crashes
          * now you know what you should be looking for, so...
          * wash, rinse, repeat!

          In this iterative process you get to know more and more about the machine, and you have a more and more complete emulator. My local mips64emul copy boots PROM and loads Linux from its internal virtual Ethernet board, and starts booting Linux as well.

  8. By Anonymous Coward (64.122.103.201) on

    Hey Theo: mips64emul: http://www.mdstud.chalmers.se/~md1gavan/mips64emul/

  9. By SubAtomic Toad (68.147.218.218) subatomic_toad@yahoo.ca on http://www.subatomictoad.com

    While I don't have any SGI O2's to spare I do have a couple of dual processor SGI 320's which are ARC based proprietory equipment. If I could get one of them working with OpenBSD I would be laughing. Anyone interested in taking one and getting it going? :)

  10. By Anonymous Coward (68.55.210.151) on

    I got an Sgi o2, how do I give it to you guys?

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