SGI IRIS Indigo R3000 (IP12) Restoration

Restorations
1

This stub is to tabulate data learned during my own SGI Iris Indigo R3000 restoration. The restoration was for a friend and as part of a arrangement, I will gain a unit myself.

IMG_5428.HEIC
IMG_5428.HEIC2856×2142 1.48 MB

The original IRIS Indigo was released in 1991 with a starting price of $15K USD.
The unit is based on a MIPS 3000A 33Mhz processor known as the IP12 model.
There was later 50mhz and 100mhz units in the R4000, and R4400 series.
All units effectively look the same, however the later models have higher amperage power supplies for the 5A rail apparently.

The unit is quite lean, a CPU card with 12 special RAM slots, 3 banks of 4 chips. This board cna have two expansion cards (like an additional ethernet card)

Then there is a Graphics card, there was 4 different graphics card options from lean basic 8bit colour (LG1) to the high end ELAN card.

These two cards slot into a rear system plane, which accepted 3 x3.5" SCSI expanisions on a proprietary sled and connectors.

The system disk is installed in the bottom slot. The System drive is always SCSI ID1. (SCSI ID 0 doesnt exist)

The “Middle and upper” slto are accessible from an openable front door. These were designed for a SCSI 3.5" Floppy drive option or a 3.5" DAT Tape drive. You can also install expansion hard disks.

The unit although capable of booting from an NFS drive seems to not be able to do so without a scsi device plugged in.

There is several audio ports on the Main CPU Board, 2 Apple styled 8 pin mini din serial ports and a special SGI Keyboard connector. The mouse connects via the keyboard. It is NOT a PS2 keyboard and apprently a PS2 keyboard will damage the unit.
There is a DB-15 AUI port. (thick ethernet)

There is a single DB25 Parrallel port on the rear with a 50 PIN Centronics SCSI interface. A Terminator is plugged into this as standard.

Power-up of the unit should lead to a green and then amber LED which then flickers AMBER with a startup tone. The Amber light will turn green after the unit passes POST. A flashing green light indicates a RAM issue, a power LED staying amber indicates that diags are being run or are failing.

TAR / ISOs of OS sites used
https://jrra.zone/sgi/index-with-ids.html#pg-7

Important notes:
CD Use on SCSI Emulators.
Sector size fix (very common on SGI/Sun systems): CDx_512.iso instead of plain CDx.iso. Default is 2048-byte sectors, but some older systems (including certain IRIX setups) expect 512-byte for boot/install media. Some older SCSI CD Rom drives have a physical jumper for “Sector Size”

2

I utilised this site sean caron > IRIX 5.3 on SGI Indigo R3000

irix 5.3 on SGI Indigo R3000 installation notes
Here’s one for all the retrocomputing enthusiasts out there! Back when SGI was a going concern and the R3k Indigo was still nominally used, they always claimed that IRIX 5.3 was unsupported on IP12 and just would not work. Inspection of my IRIX 5.3 discs, however, shows differently: undocumented support for the IP12! With just a bit of hacking around in SASH and the PROM monitor, your Indigo R3000 will be booting IRIX 5.3 like a champ! The performance isn’t too bad either, so long as you’re packing plenty of RAM… Just follow the steps below to make it happen.
Note that you can use this same general procedure through step 3 to prepare any SGI system for loading where the installed hard disk does not already contain a SGI disklabel. Simply substitute “IPnn” or “ARCS” for “IP12” in all examples to be consistent with the system that you are loading. Once labelling and formatting is done manually, many newer SGI systems will permit you to continue loading IRIX through the “Install System Software” option in the start-up menu.
As well, you can also follow the procedure all the way through, substituting “IPnn” or “ARCS” appropriately, to perform a completely manual installation of IRIX on any SGI system. This may be required on older models where the “Install System Software” start-up menu option is not available, or if some trouble occurs while performing the more automated installation.
What you’ll need for this project: (1) A functional R3000 Indigo with graphics head (monitor, keyboard, mouse) or a serial console with the appropriate cable (I’ve done it both ways). An old Mini-DIN-8 serial cable from a Mac substitues perfectly. (2) One SCSI hard disk of at least 500 MB or so capacity. (3) One SCSI CD-ROM drive; I don’t think 512-byte sectors is required. (4) IRIX 5.3 installation media on CD-ROM (sorry, I can’t help if you have a tape…)

  1. Boot the IP12 SASH from the IRIX 5.3 CD-ROM from within the PROM monitor with the following command. Assume X is the SCSI ID of the CD-ROM drive.
    boot -f dksc(0,X,8)sashIP12
  2. Once you have started SASH, you need to run the fixed disk formatter program, FX, to prepare the hard disk for installation. Again, X will be the SCSI ID of your CD-ROM device.
    dksc(0,X,7)/stand/fx.IP12
    In FX, specify that you would like to label the disk, and have FX throw a default label with all partitions on the disk. Sync the changes to the disk, then exit FX.
  3. Now that the disk has been properly prepared, you can write the installation miniroot to the swap partition on the disk using the cp command from within SASH. Here, X is the SCSI ID of the CD-ROM device and Y is the SCSI ID of the hard disk drive.
    cp -b 32k dksc(0,X,8)mr dksc(0,Y,1)
    After you have finished writing out the miniroot, reboot the system and drop back into the PROM monitor.
  4. Now that you have written the miniroot to disk, you can boot the installation kernel. However, before you do this, you first must specify the partition that will be used as miniroot by the installation kernel. This is the same partition we wrote to in step (3). Again, Y is the SCSI ID of the hard disk drive.
    setenv root dks0dYs1
  5. Now that the miniroot is ready to go, boot SASH again from the CD-ROM (for some reason, the PROM will not boot the miniroot directly) using the same command as in step (1). Once SASH has started, boot the miniroot like so. Substitute the SCSI ID of the hard disk drive for Y.
    boot -f dksc(0,Y,1)unix.IP12
  6. Once you issue the command in step (5) the installation kernel should begin to boot. It will ask you about formatting some partitions; just say yes at this point and it will set everything up for / and /usr.
  7. Once the installer has started up, you first must drop out to a shell, set up a mount point for the CD-ROM and mount it manually before you may proceed. To begin:
    Inst> sh
    From within the shell, create a mount point for the CD-ROM. It really can be anything, but I like to use /mnt.
    mkdir /mnt
    Now, mount the installation media. Again, X is the SCSI ID of the CD-ROM device. Note that the installation disk is formatted SGI EFS, not ISO9660 (this is actually printed on the disk, if you happen to notice it).
    mount -t efs -o ro /dev/dsk/dks0dXs7 /mnt
    This operation should complete fairly quickly without any errors. If you go look in the /mnt directory, you should be able to see the installation files at this point.
  8. Exit the shell and return to the installer.
    exit
  9. Once back in the installer, tell it to look in your newly created mount point for install sets (the sets are in the “dist” directory on the CD-ROM).
    Inst> from /mnt/dist
  10. Then, I just like to tell the installer to install everything; quick and easy.
    Inst> install all
  11. Finally, kick off the installation.
    Inst> go
  12. After the installation is complete, quit the installer.
    Inst> exit
  13. After you have completed the installation, there is one more step before you will have a happy running system: you must tell the machine where it will boot IRIX from. Type the following commands in the PROM monitor to set the relevant environment variables. As usual, Y is the SCSI ID of your hard disk.
    setenv bootfile dksc(0,Y,8)sash setenv root dksc(0,Y,8)
  14. The installation process is complete! Go boot up your Indigo and have some fun. Just one more command in the PROM monitor and you’re off to the races.
    boot
    home