<div dir="ltr">That Supermicro board sounds like one of the boards from an ICE cluster, right?<div>I know Joe flagged up the BIOS - thinking out loud is it not possible to copy the BIOS from another, working, board of the same model?</div><div><br></div><div>Regarding SGI workstations when I worked in post production at Framestore we had lots of SGI big beats - including O2000 and I think an O3000</div><div>We got the new dSGI x86 workstations - superbly engineered of course.</div><div>However they had a low voltage PCI slot setup which meant you could not use normal off the shelf (read cheap) PCI cards</div><div>Clearly SGI made that decision from an engineering viewpoint - there must be an advantage with low voltage.</div><div>Sadly those workstations really could not compete in price terms  with commodity models such as Compaq</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, 23 Mar 2023 at 22:13, Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf <<a href="mailto:beowulf@beowulf.org">beowulf@beowulf.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
  
    
  
  <div>
    <p>Mentioning it to him was pointless. You know the serenity prayer?
      Well, I had the serenity to accept that his backwards attitude was
      something I could not change, so it was just a source of
      entertainment for me. <br>
    </p>
    <p>I did share my experience with my boss, who was the best boss
      ever, and she was like "Yeah, I figured".  That director of CADD
      talked a lot of game, but he couldn't walk the talk and was
      eventually let go, but not until he drove me out of the company,
      and cost them a lot of money in useless, outdated computer
      hardware. <br>
    </p>
    <p>I do have to say it did inspire me to name my Linux workstation
      "underdog", which was one of my favorite hostnames I've come up
      with ("bobblehead" being my all time favorite - honestly is there
      any better task for a system admin than coming up with good
      hostnames?) <br>
    </p>
    <p>--<br>
      Prentice<br>
    </p>
    <pre cols="72"></pre>
    <div>On 3/23/23 4:48 PM, Darren Wise via
      Beowulf wrote:<br>
    </div>
    <blockquote type="cite">
      
      <p>I nearly dropped my coffee lol, did you make note & record
        his face if you ever did in past tense mention such by chance
        the comparisons? -I'm just curious with wonder..<br>
      </p>
      <div>On 23/03/2023 19:08, Prentice Bisbal
        via Beowulf wrote:<br>
      </div>
      <blockquote type="cite">
        
        <p>Yeah, that whole situation was frustrating. From 2004 -2007,
          I was working for a pharmaceutical startup supporting their
          Computer-Aided Drug Discovery (CADD) team. Had I been hired
          before the director of CADD, it would have been a 100% Linux
          shop. Instead, as soon as he was hired he started insisting,
          and circulated a memo, stating that Linux was still a toy for
          hobbyists and "not ready for primetime" (he used that exact
          quote). So we spent tens of thousands of dollars on two
          Octanes and the 8-way Origin 350. I got a Linux workstation as
          a proof-of-concept, and that HP Workstation running Linux that
          cost only a few thousand dollars ran circles around those SGI
          boxes, and when cost was factored in FLOPS/$ was like 10x
          better than the SGI hardware at that point. And all of that
          hardware was bought used ("remarketed") from SGI, so new
          hardware would have compared significantly worse in terms of
          value. <br>
        </p>
        <p>Also, it turned out the director of CADD owned a nontrivial
          amount of SGI stocks, so not only was an he over-the-hill
          curmudgeon afraid of new technology, there was also a pretty
          clear conflict of interest for him to be pushing SGI, even
          though I'm sure our small purchase did nothing to improve SGI
          stock value. <br>
        </p>
        <div>On 3/23/23 2:58 PM, Joe Landman
          wrote:<br>
        </div>
        <blockquote type="cite">
          
          <p>They had laid off all the good people doing workstations by
            then, I think they outsourced design/production to ODMs by
            that time.  MIP processors were long in the tooth in 1999,
            never mind 2007.</p>
          <p>Having been at SGI from 1995-2001, I can tell you the
            reason MIPS sucked wind at that point, was the good ship
            Itanic sunk Alien and Beast processors.  Those design teams
            left, and we didn't have much for post R10k, other than
            respins and shrinks of R10k.  Which were renamed R12k, R14k
            ...</p>
          <p>Beast would have been relevant (near EOL though) in 2007. 
            <br>
          </p>
          <p><br>
          </p>
          <div>On 3/23/23 14:53, Prentice Bisbal
            via Beowulf wrote:<br>
          </div>
          <blockquote type="cite">
            
            <p>Between 2003 and 2007, I worked with a lot of O2s,
              Octanes, an 8-way Origin 350, and even a Tezro. I don't
              miss those days. <br>
            </p>
            <p>I always felt like the design of their workstations was
              done by the same people who design Playskool toys rather
              than professional hardware. <br>
            </p>
            <pre cols="72">Prentice Bisbal
Senior HPC Engineer
Computational Sciences Department
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Princeton, NJ
<a href="https://cs.pppl.gov" target="_blank">https://cs.pppl.gov</a>
<a href="https://www.pppl.gov" target="_blank">https://www.pppl.gov</a></pre>
            <div>On 3/23/23 1:08 PM, Ryan
              Novosielski via Beowulf wrote:<br>
            </div>
            <blockquote type="cite">
              
              Seriously. I have an Indy and an Octane2 laying around.
              That’s not even an SGI. :-P
              <div><br>
                <div>
                  <div dir="auto" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none">
                    <div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px"> --<br>
                      #BlackLivesMatter</div>
                    <div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px"> ____<br>
                      || \\UTGERS,  <span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span> |---------------------------*O*---------------------------<br>
                      ||_// the State<span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span> |
                              Ryan Novosielski - <a href="mailto:novosirj@rutgers.edu" target="_blank">novosirj@rutgers.edu</a><br>
                      || \\ University | Sr. Technologist - 973/972.0922
                      (2x0922) ~*~ RBHS Campus<br>
                      ||  \\    of NJ<span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span> |
                      Office of Advanced Research Computing - MSB
                      A555B, Newark<br>
                           `'</div>
                  </div>
                </div>
                <div><br>
                  <blockquote type="cite">
                    <div>On Mar 23, 2023, at 13:07, Michael DiDomenico <a href="mailto:mdidomenico4@gmail.com" target="_blank"><mdidomenico4@gmail.com></a>
                      wrote:</div>
                    <br>
                    <div>
                      <div>ack, irix flashbacks... :) fortunately, this
                        machine isn't quite that<br>
                        old, circa 2013<br>
                        <br>
                        On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 1:02 PM Darren Wise via
                        Beowulf<br>
                        <a href="mailto:beowulf@beowulf.org" target="_blank"><beowulf@beowulf.org></a>
                        wrote:<br>
                        <blockquote type="cite"><br>
                          Hello,<br>
                          <br>
                          I don't personally have such myself but
                          anything SGI even with today's<br>
                          exotics Ians about the most knowledgable I
                          know of globally and<br>
                          seriously dying out within this sector, I
                          hazard a guess your SM board<br>
                          would be considered quite new compared to
                          other systems.<br>
                          <br>
                          <a href="http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/" target="_blank">http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/</a><br>
                          <br>
                          <br>
                          Kind Regards,<br>
                          Darren Wise<br>
                          Research Engineer, Mechatronics<br>
                          <a href="https://wisecorp.co.uk" target="_blank">https://wisecorp.co.uk</a>,
                          .us & .ru<br>
                          <br>
                          On 23/03/2023 16:51, Michael DiDomenico wrote:<br>
                          <blockquote type="cite">does anyone happen to
                            have an old sgi / supermicro bios for an<br>
                            X9DRG-QF+ motherboard squirreled away
                            somewhere?  sgi is long gone,<br>
                            hpe might have something still but who knows
                            where.  i reached out to<br>
                            supermicro, but i suspect they'll say no.<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
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                          </blockquote>
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                      </div>
                    </div>
                  </blockquote>
                </div>
                <br>
              </div>
              <br>
              <fieldset></fieldset>
              <pre>_______________________________________________
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</pre>
            </blockquote>
            <br>
            <fieldset></fieldset>
            <pre>_______________________________________________
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</pre>
          </blockquote>
          <pre cols="72">-- 
Joe Landman
e: <a href="mailto:joe.landman@gmail.com" target="_blank">joe.landman@gmail.com</a>
t: @hpcjoe
w: <a href="https://scalability.org" target="_blank">https://scalability.org</a>
g: <a href="https://github.com/joelandman" target="_blank">https://github.com/joelandman</a>
l: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelandman" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelandman</a></pre>
          <br>
          <fieldset></fieldset>
          <pre>_______________________________________________
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</pre>
        </blockquote>
        <br>
        <fieldset></fieldset>
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      </blockquote>
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    </blockquote>
  </div>

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</blockquote></div>