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UltraHarry
n00b
Joined: 27 Dec 2003
Posts: 21
Location: Hamburg
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 Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 3:14 pm Post subject: SGI O2 netboot won't work... |
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Hi all,
I just got an old sgi O2 with R5k cpu / 128mb / CRM, Rev C Gfx / A3 V1 sound and irix 6.5-any installed.
Now i wanted to install gentoo on that machine. Therefore i downloaded the ip32-r5k-20040806.img from kumba and set up tftp to have the o2 load the image.
as from the mips-installation-guide i boot with "bootp(): root=/dev/ram0"
now the kernel stops booting after the keyboard-leds blinking with the lcd-screen flashing with weired colors...
there's no output from the box. just weired colors on the tft...
is there something i've been missing?
any suggestions?
regards,
Harry Siegel
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don't let the SUN go down on me (george michael) - www.hasipara.de |
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dj604
n00b
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 26
Location: milwaukee
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| Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Maybe i'm missing something from your post, but do you have the o2 connected to another computer via a serial connection? as far as I know, the o2's graphics card isn't supported in linux yet- maybe that's why you're not getting any output? |
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Kumba
Developer
Joined: 16 Jul 2002
Posts: 393
Location: Sigma 957
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| Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 1:32 am Post subject: |
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The O2 Framebuffer works kinda. It sounds more like the topic starter was trying to use the flat-panel adapter. I've heard from another person this seems to display something, but they got weird colors and such. It's better to either use a serial cable, or stick with a normal CRT monitor on thr DB15F port.
--Kumba
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"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic |
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UltraHarry
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Joined: 27 Dec 2003
Posts: 21
Location: Hamburg
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| Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 5:52 pm Post subject: |
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@kumba:
yeah, that was me. and after our little conversation at #gentoo-mips i was planning to install the needed toolchain for compiling my own kernel with more than 4mb FB. as i was able to see at least some rubbish on the flat-panel screen, i still hoped, that it was just a fb-ram-problem.
for that purpose, i installed 256mb on that machine, 'cause the 128mb weren't enough to have gcc working well.
from that moment the machine refused to boot at all. no lights, no hd-power-up. nothing. 
i'm still unable to figure out, what's broken.
regards,
harry
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don't let the SUN go down on me (george michael) - www.hasipara.de |
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UltraHarry
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Joined: 27 Dec 2003
Posts: 21
Location: Hamburg
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| Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:37 pm Post subject: power-up problem -> solved |
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hi folks,
after some weeks in agony, i found, that setting the jumper "pwr on" on the mainboard does the trick. afterwards the machine did an auto-power-on. after some seconds i plugged out the power cord and removed the jumper again.
now i was able to switch on the machine as usual. i don't exactly know why setting up the new ram confused the machine that hard. anyway. now i'm back again -> with 256mb installed 
regards,
harry
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Kumba
Developer
Joined: 16 Jul 2002
Posts: 393
Location: Sigma 957
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| Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 11:59 pm Post subject: |
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That's a rather odd incident. When I've added more memory to both of my O2's, they take several minutes longer to reboot for the first time, most likely because the O2 Prom is re-analyzing things and figuring out what changed, but it usually worked fine afterwards. It almost sounds like you static-zapped the the thing, yet it managed to recover using that jumper. Hard to say what really happened, but good to know your system isn't dead.
--Kumba
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"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic |
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poulpe
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Joined: 21 Oct 2004
Posts: 10
Location: France
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| Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 11:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | The O2 Framebuffer works kinda. It sounds more like the topic starter was trying to use the flat-panel adapter. I've heard from another person this seems to display something, but they got weird colors and such. It's better to either use a serial cable, or stick with a normal CRT monitor on thr DB15F port. |
The O2 framebuffer works fine with my flat panel, but not with kumba's kernel !
I use currently the one from Tuxus :
http://dev.gentoo.org/~tuxus/ip32-2.6.6-fb.kernel
or the one from milang :
http://www.tal.org/~milang/o2/vmlinux32
(The latter has even alsa support for O2 sound chip ! => I would like to know this guy, he seems to run the latest gnome on his SGI box)
You should boot these kernels with an initrd and the prom command line:
| Code: | | bootp(): root=/dev/nfs ip=dhcp initrd=/dev/nfs |
Kumba => you should document this boot method in the handbook, it works fine for the framebuffer. bootp(): root=/dev/ram0 command, aka mounting the root filesystem in memory seems to conflict with the framebuffer memory...
Note that you MUST have a PROM version >= 4.17 in order to make the framebuffer work (god knows why, I spent a week troubleshooting the pbm). Unfortunately the only way to update the PROM is to install IRIX >= 6.5.18
Kumba => this should also be documented in the handbook in the requirements section...
| Quote: | | i installed 256mb on that machine, 'cause the 128mb weren't enough to have gcc working well. from that moment the machine refused to boot at all. no lights, no hd-power-up. nothing. |
This happened to me also. After swapping the memory cards a dozen times, it suddenly worked again... O2 boxes seem to be very sensitive with memory manipulations.  |
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Kumba
Developer
Joined: 16 Jul 2002
Posts: 393
Location: Sigma 957
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| Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2004 12:47 am Post subject: |
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| poulpe wrote: | | The O2 framebuffer works fine with my flat panel, but not with kumba's kernel ! |
This is interesting to know. I personally can't test the O2 flat panel because I don't have one or even the adapter, and I tend to run serial consoles on all my machines.
| Quote: | | (The latter has even alsa support for O2 sound chip ! => I would like to know this guy, he seems to run the latest gnome on his SGI box) |
This guy's name is "onion" or "onion2", and he sometimes is found on #mipslinux on irc.freenode.net. He maintains his own Linux distribution, loosely based on a more BSD-like approach to Ports on linux (i.e., using Makefiles where Gentoo uses ebuilds). The level of support he has in his distro is quite amazing, given he seems to be the only developer.
As for the O2 Sound, I'm not sure on how well his implementation is. One of the more well-known linux-mips hackers, ladis, apparently has a completely re-written O2 audio driver, but last I inquired, it didn't fully work correctly, and he doesn't have much time to test it and fix the bugs. I probably should check again, and see if I can atleast get the source to the driver.
| Quote: | You should boot these kernels with an initrd and the prom command line:
| Code: | | bootp(): root=/dev/nfs ip=dhcp initrd=/dev/nfs |
Kumba => you should document this boot method in the handbook, it works fine for the framebuffer. bootp(): root=/dev/ram0 command, aka mounting the root filesystem in memory seems to conflict with the framebuffer memory... |
Another interesting oddity. I've kinda got an aversion to the NFS root thing, since it's a bit more annoying to setup than an embedded initrd. That said, I'm going to look into LiveCDs soon anyways, and see what kind of progress I can get on those. I think, after some guidance, I've managed to better understand how arcboot and O2 systems play together, but it's still odd.
| Quote: | Note that you MUST have a PROM version >= 4.17 in order to make the framebuffer work (god knows why, I spent a week troubleshooting the pbm). Unfortunately the only way to update the PROM is to install IRIX >= 6.5.18
Kumba => this should also be documented in the handbook in the requirements section... |
This is by far one of the most annoying aspects of O2 systems. My Octane and Blade100 (sparc64) can both upgrade their flash w/o having to install an entire OS. But the latest version of O2 PROM is 4.18, dated September 2002, so any IRIX release later than Sept '02 should function fine for upgrading the flash. I'll have to give some thought to making a mini-howto for this.
--Kumba
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"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic |
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