[rescue] SGI Crimsons and Challenge L found a new home

[Sheldon T. Hall]

 Francois Dion says ...

> Hundreds of lbs of SGI hardware are now in my house. I forgot the
> camera, so I dont have any pictures of the rescue operation. I'll take
> some of the machines once I set them up.

Congratulations.  I dunno about Crimsons, but having a Challenge L is fun.

> I will need a few parts to get the Crimsons up and running. In
> particular, I need 50 pin SCSI drives.

Try http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2791872781 ... I've
bought disks from him.  He let me cancel one auction and buy some other
disks I hadn't noticed.  Then, those disks were oddly formatted, and, when I
discovered that, he offered an exchange immediately.  I actually formatted
the disks and they now work fine, so I didn't take him up on the offer, but
he was great to work with.

In my Challenge, I have 18 GB SCA Fujitsus with converters.

> I'd love to get my hands on CDROM drives for these also,
> but I understand that they are extremely rare.

What's apecial about the Crimson's CD-ROM drive?

> Network is 10mbit w/ aui adapter. I do have the adapter, but 10mbit is
> not the fastest, particularly to do an install from the Challenge. Were
> there any 100mbit available for them?

There's an FDDI board for the Challenge on eBay right now.  There exist
100baseT boards, but google and google.group "sgi vme vfe" and "challenge
vfe" and other similar topics before you decide to spend the money for a vfe
board.  Seemingly, they actually run about 50baseT speeds, and half-duplex,
at that.  I have one, but haven't actually gotten it to work yet.

> The Challenge L is mostly in need of some cosmetic pieces: one of the
> bottom side trim and the back panel were missing.

I'm also missing the side skirts on mine.  I wonder where they go?

> I'd also would love to
> add another 4 cpu board to make it complete but at any rate it's ready
> to be put back in service.

I'm in the midst of swapping the quad IP19 in mine for a dual IP25.  I'd
love a quad IP25 or two, myself.

I have a spare IO4 board with dual HVD, and a spare MC3 board with 4 SIMMs
if you need that sort of thing.

-Shel