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Shoebox
A 3 slot PCI to XIO expansion module sometimes found in SGI Octanes and SGI Onyx2 or SGI Origin 2000 machines.
Note that the location of the screws and the location of the XIO connector is different on the Octane compared with the Onyx2/Origin 2000. The Octane, the PCI cards are left to right and the O2K/Onyx2 its up and down.
See Octane subsection on case and expandabiity.
PCI slot IDs (in Hinv )
Octane without "Shoebox" PCI module
Adding/removing PCI cards.
The external screws in the O2k/Onyx2 one are above the PCI slots not off to the side like the SGI Octane one in the above diagram.
The Origin 2000 and Oynx2 ones are straight up and down with the screws on the bottom.
The Octane ones are sideways with the screws on one side.
The orientation of the compression connectors are also incompatible between the two shoeboxes.
Some users have reported a problem on Onyx2 desksides with mechanical interference between a rivet in the chassis and an ear on the bracket that's part of the shoebox. This rivet can prevent the shoebox from seating completely and fully engaging the XIO connector with the midplane. A simple and effective modification to fix this is to cut a corner off the mounting ear of the shoebox as shown in the picture to the right.
It was a mechanical defect preventing good compression despite the XIO latch: after noticing it was harder to push than other XIO cards, I found the bracket of the bottom lid (stamped with 040-1358-001) was not parallel to the bottom of the chassis because there is a rivet near its corner. This bracket holds the knurled screw that tightens the cage to the chassis but the sheet metal is too thick to bend if the chassis is not flush.
After a few cuts with a hand shear, the cage could be perfectly inserted, the XIO PCI adapter appeared in hinv, and tg2 appeared in ifconfig -a