[geeks] Re: O2 with weird ram (Joshua D Boyd)

[roosmcd at dds.nl]

> OK, an ebay dealer who sells lots of O2s and has excellent feedback, keeps
> listing O2s and saying that the machines only have 39.9 ir 41.9 megs of
> Ram. To my understanding, there was never anything less than 64 available.  He
> does show the machines booting though, and they were originally sold as
> RIPs.

 There were also 16Mb dimms available (O2 memory comes in pairs, so that's 32Mb 
minimum). I doubt it that that O2 really has 39.9 Mb and 41.9 memory in it; if 
it used some special simm, the two amounts would probably be the same. Most 
likely is that the RIP software creates a RAM-disk or something like that, 
which is then subtracted from main memory. 

 Is there a difference in memory between the hinv in Irix and the hinv in the 
PROM? My guess would be that these machines really have 64Mb.

> So, do I assume that the deal is good based on the feedback and get the 
> machine for less than $200, or do I pass?  If it is legit, more ram is
> pretty cheap.

 I don't see any real problems with it, it's just an O2. The RIP software will 
probably not be usable, on my motorola RIP it keeps asking for a dongle. The 
RIP interface is supposedly some sort of scsi, but I don't really have any hard 
info on that.

  Michiel