Notes on using Third Party Memory in SGI's

Maximum Memory in Indigo's

The Indigo's have 3 banks of 4 SIMM's. The largest SIMM's the R3000 model can take is 8MB, for a total memory size of 96MB. The largest SIMM's the R4x00 model can take is 32MB, for a total memory size of 384MB.

Maximum Memory in Indy's

The Indy's have 2 banks of 4 SIMM's and can have a maximum of 128MB/bank (4*32MB SIMM's) or 256MB of memory.

Maximum Memory in Indigo2's

The Indigo2's have 3 banks of 4 SIMMs'. All the R4x00 CPU's can have a maximum of 128MB/bank (4*32MB SIMM's) or 384MB total. The R8000 & R10000 CPU machines can have a maximum of 256MB/bank (4*64MB SIMM's) or 768MB. Some SGI engineers have said that one can put a maximum of two 256MB banks in these machines, because of cooling requirements. This would limit an Indigo2 to 640MB. I've two reports that 768MB works fine in an Indigo2 R10000 (3*256MB).

New 1GB limit on Indigo2's

The following URL shows where people have installed and used 1GB of memory in R10000 Indigo2's.

http://www.futuretech.vuurwerk.nl/i2gigaram.html

Maximum Memory in Octane's

The Octane's have 4 banks of 2 DIMM's. They will take at least 2GB of memory, may be 4GB, not sure. Octane's with a mother board with a part number of 030-1467-001 will go up to 8GB. One does not need R12K CPU's to get to 8GB. I have an Octane with the 030-1467-001 mother board and dual R10K 195Mhz CPU's with 2GB, 512MB, & 128MB DIMM's installed for a total of 2.625GB. The 2GB and 512MB memory kits are Kingston memory purchased from Impediment. Octane Personal Video (EVO) will not work in systems with more than 1.5GB. Trying to find a fix or work around for this problem. However, the rest of the system works fine with the extra memory.

Other Notes

  1. Some one said they tried Hitachi SIMM's in a Personal Iris and they didn't work. Toshiba 4MB SIMM's seem to work in 4D25's. Others may work if Toshiba SIMM's are in the first bank.

  2. Indigo, Indigo2, & Indy systems with R4x00 or newer CPU's use `standard' 72 pin PC-style pop-up SIMM's, 36-bit, with TRUE parity (9 chips), must support page-mode access, 60-70ns. EDO memory will NOT work. Also some memory labelled 70ns may actually be 72ns or more, so be careful. Memory must be installed in WHOLE banks at one time or in other words in groups of 4 SIMM's. A bank must have all the same type of memory.
Brent Bates' other notes on installing third party hardware on SGI's:

Working CD-ROM Drive Poll , DAT's,
Hard Disks, Joysticks,
Magneto Opticals, CDR's (Writeable CD-ROM's)

If you have any additions, corrects, or updates to the above information, please email me at: blbates@vigyan.com, thanks.

Total number of accesses to this page since its creation :

Last update: August 6, 2002