Any SGI fans?

[MiAmigo]

Sorry for my absence, I've been busy working as a datacenter tech and unfortunately it's been taking up a lot of my time.

Anyways I picked up an SGI Fuel with 4GB RAM, an R14000 at 600mhz, three SCSI drives and a DVD drive. I also have an Octane and a Personal Iris. These all run IRIX which is probably the best variant of UNIX of its time. Not only was it used in a lot of computer animation in movies but the MIPS architecture seems to be the most efficient architecture in terms of mhz vs Flops. According to some bench marks the SGI Fuel with a 700mhz R16000 is equivalent to a 3Ghz Pentium 4. Yes I know that's old hardware but SGI stopped production of these machines in 2006 so it fits.

Yes, I am a huge fan, both figuratively, and literally speaking. While I was building my Beowulf Plateau (http://contest.techbriefs.com/2013/entries/electronics/4254), I also acquired and restored an SGI Altix 3700 to working order. As this is a truly monstrous beast, I had to have my entire workshop rewired to feed it power. (I installed 2 220v outlets.) Currently I'm replacing one of the R-Bricks and rigging it up to output video directly to a monitor instead of just accessing it by way of dumb terminal.)

[MiAmigo]

Sorry for the late-ish response everybody, but the Forum Gods forgot to tell me there were new posts related to my post.

The system I purchased (on EBay, of course) came with a Debian Linux disk, and three big fat system manuals. (Two were different versions of the same book).

I also took pains to download every bit of info I could find on the system, which resulted in over 100 PDFs at last count.

I ALSO queried SGI for a service contract quote, just out of curiosity. The first quote they gave me was hysterical - over $44K! Once I explained to them that I was merely a poor schmuck who had rescued a derelict system from EBay, they gave me a 'much better' quote of only $4K.

If I wanted to have them send a guy out to give the system the once over, I would have to pay to fly him to Chicago, since they have no local office in the Midwest (!), then pay at least $500.00 for him to step into my door, and about that much per hour to inspect the system, minimum amount, 2 hrs. worth! (I'm presuming I wouldn't also have to get the guy laid, but who knows?)

The system itself was in decent shape, once I removed the crate, which weighed over 300 lbs all by itself. (It has a door with a built in steel ramp for unpacking and installation.) There were some dings and bruises, and some of the plastic port grills (that cover the power bays and such like) had been loosened and shattered.

The system had been in storage for about 3-4 years, and originated from Wichita State University, where it was called 'Jupiter'. I renamed it 'COLOSSUS', a fitting name, considering the size.

The first hurdle was getting it delivered. It required at least 8ft of overhead clearance, and the garage door to my workshop ('Utopia Planitia') has that and maybe a half an inch to spare. It also required a certain amount of floor space, front, back, and sides.

The first week it was supposed to be delivered, we had three blizzards, and I (eventually) had a death in the family, which resulted in over 3 weeks of re-schedulings and aborted delivery attempts by the freight company.

When the delivery guy finally showed up, he 'chickened out' and refused to delivery. (The crate was much too big and heavy at well over 2000 lbs, and HE was really old and frail. And his boss said he was a chronic complainer.)

Finally got the thing delivered when the weather cleared up, and after my family obligations were completed, and the freight company sent their best guy - a wiry old dude whom I dubbed the 'Rambo' of delivery guys. He slung that monster crate around as deftly as a really big carton of eggs, slid it into the shop, right into place, and drove off into the sunset! :laughing: (At one point we had a scary moment as he was using a pallet jack to roll it to the lift gate. He came so perilously close to the edge, I thought he'd dump it on myself and my son for sure! Doing the fatherly thing, I pushed my son out of the way, even though we were both supposed to 'walk our hands up the crate' as the driver lowered it, to make sure it didn't prematurely tip off the truck. Needless to say, I survived!)

I spent the next several weekends getting the crate open (sans the 'official uncrating instructions'), inspecting the system, contracting an electrician for the system's massive power requirements (and having him think I was either crazy or working with the NSA), and assessing what the system needed.

I also spent many nights reading documentations and working on my other project, the Beowulf Plateau.

Right now I'm shopping for that R-Brick replacement, and finagling the system into direct video output in addition to using a dumb terminal. I also have my eyes on a couple of other 'supercluster' machines, an SGI, and a (gasp!) Cray!

[MiAmigo]

@ MiAmigo

Great! I say some references to Debian for Itanium, but I didn't know if it would support something this complex.
I really wish I had a spare two grand (plus a huge amount for shipping from the wrong coast).
Over 300GB of memory and 72 cores?
Sheesh!

Any photos of the native display?
What can you run on it?

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the display, as I have pulled the system apart to service a few issues, chief among them the replacement of one of the R-Bricks.

The thing to keep in mind about purchasing these systems pretty much 'sight unseen' from EBay is that usually, they have not been stored correctly (temperature, space, and dust-wise), and may have sat in these environs for months, if not years. (Unless you get lucky enough to get your hands on one 'fresh' from the lab or server room, as it were.)

So, even though the seller (who knew nothing about these systems, other than he had one he desperately wanted to get rid of!)  assured me it was in 'perfect working order' when he got it, I assumed the worst, and knew I had my work cut out for me.

What entailed after the uncrating (an adventure it itself!), was a complete inspection of all the 3700's subsystems for damaged or worn parts, potential electrical issues, and just missing 'stuff'. Believe me, I found plenty of all of those, but nothing insurmountable.

Once I finally did get it up and running, I was glad to find that all of the processor cores worked, there were no RAM failures, and at first, no communication issues between bricks, that is, until the R-Brick failure, which was caused by a bit of rust, metal and electrical fatigue.

Because of that, the system is currently down, with the offending R-Brick pulled. (The system still has one functioning R-brick, and can actually run at half its capacity.)

Right now I'm considering the best route of repair, either fix it myself (a little bit of soldering), or replacing the entire unit.

These so-called 'brick' components (which are very BIG and HEAVY) can be ludicrously expensive on EBay, unless one is patient, and waits for the right vendor with a burning desire to just 'get rid' of the thing. (I actually picked up a $500.00+ C-Brick, fully functional and chock full of Itanium cores, for fifty bucks - the price of shipping it to me - simply because the seller just wanted to get rid of it!)

When it is all back up and running, and Debian is percolating along, I have a number of ideas for my own personal applications and projects, just to see what I can make it do and/or use it for. I have even entertained the idea of interfacing it with my 'other' supercomputer - the Beowulf Plateau - for a few joint computing projects which require massive computing power.

(Speaking of power - another thing to remember is that these systems do require a lot of dedicated cooling in an enclosed, controllable space.)

[MiAmigo]

Cool stuff!