SGI Onyx 3000 General Maintenance

G-brick rear panel: InfiniteReality pipe 1 on the left and pipe 0 on the right of the Ktown2 board, the rear power switch at bottom left and the system controller connector at bottom right (SGI Owner's Guide, Figure 2-2)

Routine care, power procedures and the owner-replaceable parts of the SGI Onyx 3000, from SGI's SGI Onyx 3000 Series Graphics System Hardware Owner's Guide (007-4264-002) and owners' notes. The compute and I/O bricks are shared with the SGI Origin 3000; SGI's Onyx guide covers the graphics bricks and refers to the Origin 3000 owner's guide for the rest.

Safety

• The rack runs from 200–240 V AC. Turn the equipment off before connecting or disconnecting any power cord.
• SGI warns that the brick midplanes carry voltage even when the system has been reset or halted.
• SGI's guide says there are no user-serviceable parts inside the bricks, and limits owners to the outside of the chassis and the parts listed under owner-replaceable parts below.
• The NUMAlink cables are made of fine copper strands, and SGI left them to its own engineers; do not kink them, and use the cable bails to hold them.
• Wear an earthed wrist strap when connecting or disconnecting anything.
• The I-brick motherboard has a lithium battery. SGI warns that it can explode if replaced with the wrong type.
• Use two people to lift the 24-inch SuperWide monitors. A G-brick alone weighs up to 98 kg, and a graphics rack with two G-bricks up to 386 kg.

Environment

Each brick's L1 controller watches the air temperature at the brick inlet and acts at these limits:

Inlet temperature limits (SGI Owner's Guide, Table 6-2)

Level	Low-altitude setting	High-altitude setting
Advisory	above 30 °C	above 27 °C
Critical	above 35 °C	above 31 °C
Fault (brick shuts down)	above 40 °C	above 35 °C

The L1 env altitude high command selects the high-altitude limits for sites above 1524 m (5000 ft). Air enters every brick at the front and leaves at the rear, so keep both doors clear.

Powering on

Before switching on, check:

• Power cables between the bricks and the power bay, the power bay and the PDU, the PDU and the PDS, and from the PDU or PDS to the wall. Each G-brick has its own cord to a wall outlet, and a D-brick plugs into the PDS.
• The outlets for the G-bricks and the PDU are fed and earthed from the same breaker box. A ground difference of more than 0.5 V between chassis joined by NUMAlink or Xtown2 cables can cause severe damage.
• The rear power switch of every brick is On (1). SGI warns that the system can malfunction or fail to boot if one is left off.
• Any D-brick has its Run/Service key switch at RUN.

Then:

1. Turn on the PDU and PDS circuit breakers.
2. Check monitors and other peripherals for voltage select switches, set them, and plug them in.
3. At the L2 touch display, choose DEST and select the racks, slots or partitions to power, or ALL.
4. Press Power UP and confirm with OK.
5. Check that the L1 display on each brick shows it is running.

On a system without the L2 touch display, use a terminal on the C-brick console port instead. At an L2 command prompt the same is done with pwr u.

Powering off

SGI recommends powering off only for maintenance or repair.

1. Set any D-brick's key switch to Service.
2. Shut IRIX down.
3. At the L2 touch display, choose the bricks with DEST, press Power DOWN and confirm.
4. Turn off the printer, then the monitors, then other peripherals.

To remove all power, turn off the PDU and PDS breakers, turn off the rear switches of the G-bricks or V-bricks, then unplug the PDU cords and the G-brick or V-brick cords from the wall.

Owner-replaceable parts

SGI lists the front panels and L1 display housing, the G-brick L1 controller module and the system disks as owner-replaceable on the Onyx 3000, and puts PCI cards and storage modules in the Origin 3000 owner's guide. XIO cards and V12 boards are for SGI engineers only. Back up the system, log users off and power everything off before starting.

G-brick front panels and L1 module

1. The upper panel hooks in at the top and is held by two screws near its bottom edge and a guide pin beside the L1 display. It slides over the L1 On/Off button; take care not to break the button.
2. The lower panel sits in slots at the bottom and is held by two screws at the top.
3. recondas, on the IRIX Network forum, found one more screw holding the upper and lower panels together, behind the magnetic InfiniteReality badge; pull the badge off gently to reach it.
4. With the panels off, the L1 display housing bar comes away after four screws, two at each end. Unplug its cable at the controller end, not the display end.
5. The L1 module itself is held by four screws, two at the top and two at the bottom, and slides out of the chassis.

Racking a G-brick

SGI gave owners no procedure for removing a G-brick from a rack. jwhat, whose G-brick came without a rack, reports that it is held from the back, by a steel shroud on the rear rail of the rack, and slides into the rack from the front on rails. vvuk, who also had one out of a rack, found it heavy at the rear.

The G-brick of jwhat's InfiniteReality4 system came with a Hubbell HBL2621 plug. He fitted an IEC 60309 16 A plug to run it from an Australian 15 A, 240 V outlet, and notes that the colours of the cable inside followed the US convention (green earth, black live, white neutral). Have any plug change checked by a qualified electrician.

Firmware and software

• SGI's N-brick addendum calls for IRIX 6.5.13 or later and L1 firmware 1.6.0 or later on every brick before an N-brick is fitted.
• An upgrade to InfiniteReality4 boards needs IRIX 6.5.17 or later.
• sgistuff.net lists IRIX 6.5.15 to 6.5.30 as the releases for the Origin 3000 line and recommends 6.5.30.
• The L1 flash status command shows the two firmware images stored in each L1 and which one is the default.

Monitors

The DG5 monitor outputs are 13W3. If a monitor from another system has adjustable RGB inputs, set them to 75 ohms, or the colours will be wrong. Before plugging a monitor into the mains, check that its label matches the outlet voltage. Use setmon to change the video format.

Related pages

• SGI Onyx 3000
• SGI Onyx 3000 Troubleshooting Guide
• SGI Onyx 3000 Capacitor Replacement Guide
• SGI Onyx 3000 Documentation
• SGI Origin 3000
• SGI Onyx 350 General Maintenance