Hello Richard.

I just purchased a Compaq Proliant 8500.  It is an eight-way capable 550MHz=
 P3 Xeon datacenter server from 2001 that uses a Compaq SmaryArray Raid con=
troller, Ultra2 SCSI disks, and supports 16GB PC-100 Sdram.  I'm currently =
waiting on new disks so I can't test it out with BSD, Linux, Windows, etc. =
 I've ran Knoppix on it and currently am, but will probably try out one of =
the BSD's when I get the Raid/Disk issues solved.  I personally think I mig=
ht encounter the same problems, maybe less, as this machine is primarily re=
igned by Windows.  The funny thing is that in its so called bios, it has an=
 option to chose what OS is on the system.  Among these is Windows, Linux, =
SCO Unix, OS/2, OS/2 SMP, and a bunch of others.  Obviously this machine wa=
s intended for other operating systems, although most of its advanced featu=
res, such as the menu on the front are Windows specific.  I don't know too =
much about SGI's, but I do own a Sun Ultra 2 Enterprise workstation (2x 400=
MHz USII, 512MB, Ultra2 SCSI's, CGthree FB, etc), and from what I've notice=
d with other Sun hardware (Newer), is that when SGI and Sun started introdu=
cing machines based on the PCI bus and Intel chips, problems arised in qual=
ity assurance.  That SGI you have is Windows only, although with fudging, L=
inux and most likely BSD will run on it. I mean, my Sun ran Debian, Splack,=
 Gentoo, OpenBSD, etc, fine, although they didn't have nearly 20% of the pe=
rformance Solaris provides.  Anyways, keep poking around, you might find so=
mething about getting BSD on that box, I mean it essentially is an IBM PC/C=
ompatible computer with an SGI logo.  Nothing is impossible.

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Rauch <rkr@olib.org>
Sent: Apr 3, 2005 2:33 PM
To: port-i386@netbsd.org
Subject: SGI 540 (Intel Xeon SMP box).

I have a short-term chance to poke a little bit at an SGI 540.
These are SMP systems built around 500MHz Xeon CPUs.  I don't
expect to run NetBSD much on one of these, but thought that it
might be a good thing to try to boot with NetBSD.  (For one thing,
the system has a MonopolySoft OS installed.  I thought that it
would be interesting to swap with a NetBSD-installed drive and
see what happens.)

There are two problems:

I couldn't swap drives since I was initially told that I would
just be examining this system, and assumed a cheap PC clone.
I didn't bring a SCSI drive, which seems to be what the thing
wants.

I could not see how to get it to boot from anything but the
built-in hard drive.  (I wanted to run memtest86+, for example.
A "Live" type of CD would also be nice.)


Does anyone have any personal experience with these things?
The person that currently has it picked it up second-hand
and doesn't seem to know a whole lot about computers.  He's
more of a digial media person.

I checked around on the Internet some.  Someone gave some
instructions for installing GNU/LINUX over the MS OS, but
I don't want to wipe out what's there---so I'm reluctant
to follow the instructions given.

Also, some sources suggested that a generic PC clone kernel
wouldn't run ont (not for GNU/LINUX, anyway).  Though it
apparently has been ported.  (Someone summarized the
thing's PC compatibility as ending at the CPU pins...(^&)

Any useful insight would be appreciated.

--=20
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr=
/