[rescue] IRIX and USB

[Joshua Boyd]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 03:44:16PM -0500, Kevin wrote:
> Given that this was something i came up with off the top of my
> head last night and not anything critical, i think i'll ditch the
> idea.  For some reason, i thought people had added USB cards to
> Octanes before, but i was probably mixing it up in my head with
> the 1394 stuff.
> 
> I love my Octane but i am tempted to swap back to the linux
> workstation as my main box these days.  I've been suing the
> Octane for about two years now, but if i swapped back to my linux
> box i could have:
> 
> 1. easy access to my flash drive
> 2. 1easy Palm access (without having to buy a serial cable from
> Treo) 
> 3. i could use my recently acquired Wacom tablet
> 4. i could use the 24" SGI monitor at a decent resolution
> 5. i could utilize the three SATA drives (although these get used
> enough via NFS so i guess this one doesn't count)

All of those are solvable except #3 with a little money and/or shell
wizardry. 

1 and 2 can be done with scripts and a handy U5 with USB card (or PC
running linux).  

4 can be done with a better graphics card.  MXE maybe? V8 maybe?  If you
must have 2k, obviously something other than an affordable Octane
upgrade would be needed.  Perhaps an affordable Onyx IR instead? I kid.

5 can be done with NFS as you mention.  Alternatively, you use FC-AL and
a PC running FreeBSD with the SATA drives and a a QLogic 2300 FC card.
Thus you can use the FreeBSD machine as a hardware raid unit (I haven't
tried this, only seen that FreeBSD supports FC-AL target mode, and have
heard of people using FreeBSD as a U160 Hardware RAID).

However, a simpler and more realistic way to fufill wish number 5 is via
Acard AEC-7730s.  Again, I haven't tried these, but their older IDE
cousins work well.  These cards are SATA->SCSI converters.  Attach and
your SATA drive looks to the Octane like a U2W or U160 drive (I'd have
to double check to see which it is).
 
> All very tempting..... then again, it would probably all get
> moved downstairs again the first time some PC BS started showing
> up... nvidia drivers crashing, CPU fans rattling and burning out,
> BIOS deciding that all of the sudden there are no hard drives in
> the system..... SCREW IT.  I'm sticking with my trusty Octane :)

PCI Sun.  A cheap simple way to get the geegaws working next to the
Octane.  Then, the network is your friend.  Why should you ever have to
realize that they aren't directly connected?
 
> I have done some data backups using pilot-link and some USB Palms
> before under linux with no problems.  I could be wrong, but
> doesn't jpilot use pilot-link for all it's communications?  I
> don't really see how the GUI would affect communications, USB,
> serial or otherwise... 
> 
> Exactly what issue are you having with jpilot and USB stuff?

jpilot didn't want to accept /dev/ttyUSB1.  However, I made /dev/pilot a
symlink to /dev/ttyUSB1, and then set jpilot to use /dev/pilot, and
jpilot was happy.  Only potential problem is that sometimes I need
/dev/ttyUSB3 instead of /dev/ttyUSB1.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/