Release Notes for the Silicon Graphics
®
550 Visual Workstation
Caution: Systems pre-installed with Windows NT Workstation 4.0 also include
the latest Service Pack available at the time of shipment. Should you need to
re-install Windows NT Workstation 4.0 on your system, please use the provided
Windows NTWorkstationNT4.0media.AlthoughaServicePack CD isincluded
in the Windows NT Workstation 4.0 media kit shipping with your system, please
DO NOT use this. Instead, please refer to the following URL
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/.
Systems shipped with Red Hat Linux 6.2 and ProPack 1.3-VW preinstalled may contain
patches to add support for newer revisions of hardware. For systems with VR3 graphics
cards manufactured after September 2000, patch 10002 allows the Xserver to initialize
properly on systems containing the VR3 graphics card.
This patch can be found at /usr/PATCHES 10002 on your preinstalled system disk. SGI
recommends that you backup /usr/PATCHES to a local server should you need to
reinstall your system software.
The patch can also be downloaded from the SGI Supportfolio site at
http://support.sgi.com/linux/downloads/patch10002.html. After downloading the
patch, follow the instructions in the README file for information on properly
reinstalling your system software.
1. If your system will not boot-up after unpacking it for the first time, the problem
may be an unseated graphics card. To properly seat the graphics card you should
turn off the system and unplug the system from the power source before removing
the side panel as described in the Owner’s Manual. Once the side panel has been
removed you should follow all electrostatic discharge (ESD) precautions as
described in your Owner’s Manual before gently pushing the AGP (Graphics) card
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Release Notes for the Silicon Graphics® 550 Visual Workstation
to make sure that it is fully seated in the motherboard. Once you have seated the
AGP card, replace the side panel as described in the Owner’s Manual, plug in the
system, and boot-up.
2. The SGI Resource CD for Windows NT only works with Internet Explorer 3.0 or
newer versions. It does not work with older versions.
3. The Windows NT Workstation 4.0 default installation from manufacturing will
install the FAT file system. To convert from FAT to NTFS file system, type the
following at the Windows NT MS-DOS prompt: C:\ convert c:
Note: The system will convert to NTFS when re-booted.
4. 10,000 RPM hard disk drives should not be installed in the 3.5 inch drive bay above
the floppy disk drive. You can install 10,000 RPM drives in any other available drive
bay.
5. A 3.5 inch hard disk drive can be installed in any available upper 5.25 inch drive bay
if you use the set of metal brackets and hardware provided to convert the bay.
6. The Windows NT system partition was created by SGI as a 2-gigabyte FAT
formatted partition. This allows the end-user to create a multi-boot system with
other operating systems and eases the emergency recovery of Windows NT in sites
with many systems. To address your system usage needs, use your favorite disk
utilities to create and manipulate the system disk.
7. The 450 watt power supply can auto-detect either 110V or 220V power sources.
8. For single CPU configurations on the Silicon Graphics 550 Visual Workstation, the
installed NT 4.0 kernel only supports a single processor. When upgrading to a
two-processor configuration, the Windows NT operating system must be
re-installed.
9. There is no built-in NVIDIA NV10GL driver from Red Hat v6.2. In order to use
graphical logon, temporarily select “NVIDIA GeForce DDR (generic)” with
maximum memory 16384k during Red Hatinstallation. After the installation, it is
highly recommended you to install SGI ProPack 1.3 for Linux – Visual Workstation
Edition.
10. The SGI Resource CD contained NVIDIA NV10GL driver v3.77 for Windows NT 4.0
workstation. The latest driver should be v.5.36-2. Please go to SGI’s web site to get
the latest driver.
2 46.AD139.004 007-3941-001
11. The system power button has two modes of operation, Turn Off Immediate and
LED Indicator Summary:
Green………………………..Power on
Flashing Green:……………..Suspend Mode On (which includes Standby and Hibernation).
Note: Note: Windows NT 4.0 did not supports ACPI feature. All suspend modes will be
handled by the system BIOS.
Release Notes for the Silicon Graphics® 550 Visual Workstation
Suspend. Although the system BIOS has an option for selecting one of these two
operating modes, the BIOS will initiate a power-down (Turn Off Immediate)
sequence whenever the power button is depressed.
• If you are using an operating system that does not support ACPI, all suspend
modes will be handled by the BIOS if the suspend mode was enabled.
• If you are using an operating system that supports ACPI or Suspend and Sleep
modes, the LED located in the front panel will flash when the ACPI modes are
initiated. To resume system operation, depress the power button once more and
the system will come back to the last known state. The LED will stop flashing
and will remain lit.
No Light…………………….System completely off.
Re-installing Windows NT from bootable CD-ROM:
To facilitate the installation of the Windows NT operating system on a blank SCSI hard
disk drive you should follow these instructions:
• Boot the system from the NT CD.
Note: Note: If the CD-ROM cannot boot up the media, Press F10 during boot-up and
choose CD-ROM as the boot device.
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Release Notes for the Silicon Graphics® 550 Visual Workstation
• As soon as the system starts to boot-up and you see this message, “Setup is
inspecting your computer's hardware configuration...”, depress the F6 key
immediately. When asked to specify additional drivers, insert the Adaptec Drivers
diskette provided and select the appropriate Adaptec U3 driver.
• Continue as you normally would for NT installation.
RIMM Configurations:
The Silicon Graphics 550 Visual Workstation has four RIMM slots and supports a
maximum of 512MB PC800 RDRAM per RIMM slot.
Please follow the rules listed below when installing memory modules.
• Memory must be installed in pairs. RIMM locations RM1 and RM3 must be used
together. Likewise, RIMM locations RM2 and RM4 must also be used together.
• The memory size for RIMM location RM1 must be equal to RIMM location RM3
(RM1=RM3). The memory speeds must also be the same.
• The memory size for RIMM location RM2 must be equal to RIMM location RM4
(RM2=RM4), if applied. The memory speeds must also be the same.
• When installing memory in all four RIMM slots, it is recommended that larger sized
memory should be installed in locations RM1 & RM3, and smaller sized memory
should be installed in locations RM2 & RM4. The memory size of RM1 must equal
RM3, and, RM2 must equal RM4.
• The CRIMM (terminator) must be used for empty RIMM slots.
4 46.AD139.004 007-3941-001
Release Notes for the Silicon Graphics® 550 Visual Workstation
SCSI Cable Routing:
If you have more than one hard disk installed in your system, we highly recommend you
follow the procedures, table, and configurations described below. In this configuration,
we are assuming that you use only one SCSI channel.
HDD configuration (# of HDDs) HDD(s) location HDD(s) SCSI ID’s SCSI connector attachment
1 Bottom of 3.5” drive bay 0 SCSI connector 2
2 Top of 3.5” drive bay 1 SCSI connector 3
3 Top of 5.25” drive bay 2 SCSI connector 4
4 Bottom of 5.25” drive bay 3 SCSI connector 5
12 453
SCSI Connector 1
Terminator
SCSI cable with terminator
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© 2000, Silicon Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved.
SGI and the SGI logo are trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc.
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