A Hardware Tour of The SGI Tezro

[@BenoSaradzic]

Sgis multitasked better 25 years ago than current computers can. Irix was too good and rock solid. Impossible to crash.

[@BenoSaradzic]

To touch one in the 90s,was like touching divinity. I was so privileged to have experienced the magic of Sgi first person, as an animator and visualisation artist on Indigo2 Extreme between 1993 to 1999. SGIs were really something else. I particularly loved the multitasking windows which became active on mouse hover. I really missed that when i switched to Windows NT. I kept on forgetting to click inside the window or title bar to make it active. And it wasn't the only thing I lost when I stopped working with Irix. Thanks for this video. This is one monster of a machine

[@Irinikus]

It's a pleasure! :)

[@aliciaamerson7658]

Arm pcs should be able to run irix through a vm.

[@HPPalmtopTube]

@@aliciaamerson7658 No they won't. Irix runs on MIPS CPUs not ARM CPUs. Also, you wouldn't have the myriad of drivers and HAL for the ultra niche hardware in the system such as the numa/crossbar architecture and Vpro graphics subsystem...

[@FrikinOSM]

​@@Irinikusof dis n plesier ? Is jy van Suid Afrika ?

[@FrikinOSM]

Owner of Octane2 dual 600mhz V12, O2 400mhz, Indigo2 R10K max impact. Had to sell my Fuel 900mhz V12 recently 😔

[@Mor5ives]

This is so damn cool! A real piece of computing history live and working. Really nice that you made this video. Few have probably even heard of SGi these days. Really enjoyed seeing this.

[@Irinikus]

I'm glad you enjoyed the video!

[@lukasjozef1774]

Each kid from the 90s was dreaming about this machines, just to touch one of SGIs computers could be the best. Its a shame SGI disappeared.

[@markarca6360]

It went bankrupt several times and was bought by HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise). They already discontinued their workstations lineup.

[@hanniffydinn6019]

Sgi is literally Nvidia now, most of people in sgi ended up at Nvidia! 🤯🤯🤯🤯

[@lukasjozef1774]

@hanniffydinn6019 yes I remember, many of the engineers went to nVIDIA, ATi and some founded 3dfx.

[@hanniffydinn6019]

@@lukasjozef1774 it’s fascinating, there’s an article somewhere I read, where a guy said working for Nvidia was exactly like SGI, since he was working with exactly the same people! I mean there is some solace that Nvidia are highly influential! 😎👍

[@JayTheComputerGuy]

I dream about these even though these are beyond my time ❤

[@techvigator]

One of the most beautiful computer case ever made. It's design still remains contemporary and up to date despite how old this beast is.

[@johnny14794]

Wow late catching this video but still impressed on how those machines were capable of dealing with graphics. Thanks for sharing!

[@Irinikus]

It's a pleasure! :)

[@sb77de]

An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age

[@misn100]

before the dark times... before the PC/MS empire....

[@noth606]

@@misn100 eh not really, these things, while cool, are incredibly restrictive one trick ponies, you *can* do things other than 3D graphics work on them but if you do, you'll quickly find out why no one ever did use them for anything else. They pretty much suck at it. I've had several SGI machines Onyx and Octane mostly, I did once briefly have an Indy but it was dog slow back when it wasn't very old. The Octanes were OK as far as unix systems go but it was always a bigger pain to get something running properly on those than a SUN or IBM. HP I only had a brief encounter with, not enough to form much of an opinion. But of all those the one that was the best in terms of using it, getting the things I wanted running on and all that jazz was the Onyx - which at least to me is funny in that it was the biggest and least handy of them all... It was a deskside RE2/4RM 2x10k 512mb and it felt fast, did all I wanted it to quickly etc. Aside from being the size of a small fridge unit and the fan being loud as f*ck it was a really good system, until one of the RM's crapped out and gave a low grade snowstorm in all 3D viewports. t-ram crapped out I think. Sold it to a visual effects studio who had a specialist dude keeping all their stuff running who said he could fix the bad RM - ookay sure, not like it has 30-40 ram chips on it to try to hunt bad cells in lol.

[@toebeexyz]

Love the detail you go into about everything, thanks for showcasing such a beautiful machine :o

[@Irinikus]

I'm glad you enjoyed the video!

[@BF-in6mc]

Wow! This machine is fast! Not just the graphics, but the login and the whole UI is fresh. I used Indigo (the green one) with IRIX5.3, that was much lazier. Most of the demos was there as well.

[@Irinikus]

The Tezro definitely offers you the best and speediest IRIX experience.

[@linoxyard]

Nice! It would be funny to see how my dual 550MHz PIII based HP Visualize X550 handles multiple graphic-intensive tasks running simultaniously in Win2000

[@HPPalmtopTube]

A Dual MIPS R16000 @ 1GHz CPU based system such as in the Tezro would be comparable to a Dual 4GHz Pentium 4 with an insave amount of L2 and L3 cache added. Also, due to the way the backplane works in Octane/Octane2/Tezro workstations, the Tezro will be much snappier than a period PC. (snappier = responsive, especially graphically). You really can't compare these systems it's like comparing a McLaren P1 vs a Subaru Impreza.

[@ecoonreworks1957]

Thank you for your work, I wanted one of those as badly as i couldn't afford it during uni, I guess now is a good time to finally get one.

[@Irinikus]

It's a pleasure. Go ahead and get yourself one of these machines, as they're really great to play around on, and they give you the best possible IRIX experience!

[@kivanckaranisable]

Tears dropped... Aaaaaah... SGI... Indys, Octanes.... Aaaah... Couldn`t afford at those moment... I wish I was holding my Intergraph TDZ-2000 for historical purposes also but nothing compares to an SGI... At least, emotionally...

[@Shiunbird]

Truly excellent video. Thanks for documenting history.

[@Irinikus]

It's a pleasure! :)

[@FrikinOSM]

​@@Irinikussad thing about most sgi's is they used an internal clock chip that had an internal battery that wasn't changeable. Either a Dallas clock chip or a Snapchat. If you buy an old sgi now the clock chip will give a random date/time because the battery has run out. You can change and get a new one but it requires soldering

[@noraretrouciech]

Great movie showing what is unseen for mortals! Thanks once again!

[@Irinikus]

It’s a pleasure! I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@irisfailsafe]

I would love to have one like this one!

[@hicknopunk]

The insides look normal when put next to earlier SGI computers.

[@Irinikus]

I agree that the PCI-X bus does make it seem more generic than older SGI’s! It’s definitely the one to have though!

[@jackberry3559]

Always been curious about the innards of these machines, great video!

[@Irinikus]

I’m glad you enjoyed the video, and I sure hope that it helps to inspire you look into getting one of these machines! :)

[@yellowblanka6058]

A very good demonstration of the capabilities of the SGI Tezro....pity it's about 20 years too late ;)

[@CorentinHarbelot]

thank you for sharing the SGI love :)

[@Irinikus]

My pleasure!

[@antwerp-s1e]

Stunning power!

[@billermanthegreat]

Very cool hardware design.

[@Irinikus]

Splitting the unit into separate IO and CPU sides was a good design choice!

[@pacman2k1]

you show mostly 3d performance (done with the v12) quake even runs in sw_mode. that can be done with an octane. the tezro plays its cards when it comes to video editing/effects.

[@Irinikus]

At the point when I made this video, I hadn't got Flame up and running yet. I have made a start on Flame, which I show in this video :kzbin.info/www/bejne/nWOUdHiYftBoZ6M , but there are still some problems, so I thus can't use it as a performance demonstration yet. I've also since got Quake 3 up and running on the machine, which definitely makes use of OpenGL: i.imgur.com/RiMEjbr.jpg I demonstrated Quake 3 in these videos: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oInXgn6KZ7WVqqs kzbin.info/www/bejne/rJfcn5eLhNl_ma8 I will in future try to demonstrate the machine's video editing/effects performance, once I get things up and running properly.

[@pacman2k1]

@@Irinikus nice! :) i just got my octane working and since 2 days i sit in front installing software. maybe i'll do a demonstration video too ;)

[@Irinikus]

Nice!

[@OfficialiGamer]

Do you still have this? I would look at replacing that aging power supply, looks like a cheap standard ATX PSU

[@Irinikus]

I do still have it, and the power supply is unfortunately proprietary.

[@Shiunbird]

Quick question, Irinikus - I came back to this video to look into something... Would the same serial boot procedure work with my Octane? I use it every second day or so and I could well just boot it up from the computer that sits next to it.

[@Irinikus]

It won’t unfortunately, as with the Tezro, you initially access the L1 controller, to which you issue the command: “pwr u” and from there, the L1 controller powers the machine up. The octane doesn’t possess an L1 controller unfortunately!

[@eudatux23]

Such an awesome machine!

[@metroidfannumber1234]

I love those sgi demos but they never made sense to me. Is there a way to run those demos on windows?

[@Irinikus]

Unfortunately they don’t run in Windows.

[@cradeke]

Many of them where opensourced late 90th or came as binary eos' directly downloadable from sgi. For example perfly and some other cool demos. The fortune of source codes was that Irix is 64 bit what Linux was not those times. But later around 2005, Linux grown-up to 64bit as well and compilation/porting of source code between Linux and Irix was always much easier than between AiX or HP-UX. I used the SceneViewer heavily in 2019 again for particle simulation viz. But time is over. The GL version in Irix lacks shader support for example. Many other cool features kept alive through NVidias heritage are never improved. In 2000 you could render GL models in hw through remote X sessions etc… or you could c&p the whole scene into an empty window and proceed with that scene graph. I had people standing mouth open next to me when I showed whats possible! But that was already under linux and with thanks to Nvidias driver effort which allowed seemless transition when pro graphics is on board. To whome who like the vizual experience of the 4Dwm desktop, I recommend the 5Dwm MaxxDesktop project where I contributed some eye candy (gr_osview and gmemusage) in the early stage 2002).

[@BeesonsCars]

I'm curious how this would compare on video editing performance to the PowerMac G5 dual 2.0Ghz that came out the same year?

[@Irinikus]

According to Blender tests I’ve run, they have very similar CPU performance.

[@제갈식]

sgi가 저때 GPGPU에 눈을 떴더라면... 지금쯤 딥러닝이 돌아가는 sgi O2++++, sgi Octane9, sgi Onyx9 이 돌고있을텐데!

[@lemagreengreen]

Fascinating machine!

[@Irinikus]

It is rather awesome! A true mini-supercomputer, as it's built on an Origin 350 super compute node!

[@Bepnm]

Sounds like someone is reading the Wikipedia article on the SGI Tezro one on one.

[@cradeke]

Given his experience, he might have written the wikipedia articles.

[@sgtunix]

If you're looking for excitement, wait for the demo at 11:00 - it's pretty mindblowing what this machine could do

[@Diamond_Tiara]

Impressive machines as always. Hey! Are you going to animate CGI ponies on softimage xsi with that chonk?

[@cyberjack]

not bad specs , even by today's standards .. very impressive

[@Irinikus]

Not too shabby for a 17-year old machine!

[@铉铃木]

It's my dream computer!

[@Irinikus]

It's an awesome machine!

[@Revelator2025]

Back in the day a fully-loaded SGI Octane would go for $70,000-$100,000…today on ebay there’s one for $1,700.00 amazing how cutting edge tech is now used for door stoppers! Lol

[@xyzzy3000]

Beautiful machine.

[@Onyro]

Allways wanted one of these, had a 320 and an intergraph back in the day... can’t find any on ebay... and ideas where else to look?

[@Irinikus]

These systems have unfortunately become rather rare and don't tend to show up on eBay that often, and when they do, they don't go cheap. If money is no object and you want one now, then you can buy one from Doug Mashek, who runs Mashek Systems in the US. Here's the link to his site: mashek.com His current price for a quad 700MHz system is the following: (This looks expensive, but the last Tezro that sold on eBay when for a similar price, and when you buy from a person like Doug, you'll definitely get a working system!) Tezro 4x700 Workstation 4x700MHz R16000 processors w/4MB Secondary Cache per processor 2GB Memory 73GB Hard Drive DVDROM Drive V12 Graphics IRIX6.5.27m installed $2800

[@videosuperhighway7655]

A large number were crushed/demilled due to classified material these machines were used for.

[@videosuperhighway7655]

A 700 usd mac mini with m1 cpu complex will outperform by a large scale at the fraction of the size.

[@rtljaja]

Isn't a regular (current) desktop computer more powerful than this? I'm asking out of ignorance. Thanks.

[@Irinikus]

Modern Desktops are significantly more powerful than this machine.

[@cbvisualdesign]

Could you make a tutorial to explane how to use Serail Tools, please ? I would like to use it with my Mac and my Octane 2.

[@Irinikus]

I'll make a tutorial for you, but I do need to know the content you'd like to see regarding Serial Tools for Mac?

[@cbvisualdesign]

​@@Irinikus Thanks a lot ! I just want to know how it works, how to connect a MacBook Pro with my Octane (RJ45 or USB to Serial or something else ?). As I can see on this video, you can power up your Tezro and display Irix desktop on the screen connected to your Mac or I'm wrong and I missed something ?

[@Irinikus]

I'm only using serial tools as a serial terminal and not for X forwarding. The IRIX GUI on the Tezro wasn't displayed on my Mac. The way to setup this service on a Mac is to use xQuarts, but I haven't as yet seen anyone successfully implement this.

[@cbvisualdesign]

@@Irinikus Thanks. Is the serial terminal works only before you are logged in your user account ? About XQuartz I found this : kzbin.info/www/bejne/qWfIZJaneK6Gl6c EDIT : I'm going to open a new post about that in IRIX Network forum.

[@Irinikus]

@François Deretz Today I played around with XQuartz and got this far: forums.irixnet.org/thread-3076.html

[@abdulazizalserhani7625]

Is it true that by the time the SGI Tezro came out in 2003, AMD's 64-bit Opteron was on the horizon, ATI's FireGL and NVIDIA's Quadro cards already existed years earlier, Not only that, Windows and Mac versions of Maya were already available

[@Irinikus]

The Tezro was purely a Flame machine. SGI wasn’t developing Graphics System anymore at that point! The Tezro should have actually been running the R18k (a dual core MIPS chip, but that CPU was cancelled due to Itanium, the biggest heist in computer history, in my opinion, pretty much resulting in the death of the RISC CPU architecture at the time!

[@cradeke]

That was the killer of Sgi, the software run similar fast on much cheaper hw. First, the engineers and managers joked at me when I demoed some stuff on a Geforce256 because there were some flaws in the graphics and Linux that days were 32bit, they even concerned the gcc as non thrustworthy… two years later all UNIX staff was fired but the port went to NT and OpenGL/Nv not Linux/Nv. I could do so and many software is available for Linux and Windows today but it is enough to by an expensive Graphics card to get it running. No specific Viz Workstation is needed anymore. But one observe the bottleneck of the internal IO restrictions via PCI. This will overcome when the concept of latest Nvidia hopper modules trickels into pro hardware: Common memory, sonthat the graphics ram is not any longer separate from CPU memory.. a concept which was already employed in the O2 afair. So everything is coming back. Similar to the vector processor mainframe arch which is now in GPU Streaming Multiprocessors, the Intel Processor will be obsolete in large viz&compute systems. An Arm will do the boot and schedule and the GPU the power tasks.

[@cradeke]

Revenge is dish best served cold! I predict that Intel will fail at large and the IA64 desaster was their Cernobyl moment. At least I was an Eye witness to it. We had an Altix system equiped with those Madisons but one year later, an Opteron outperformed already the highly overngineerd Itanium. Would have SGI survived using this chip? No. HPC was already a workaround to compensate Viz problems. From the soul of 3D vizual computing, OpenGL and some outstanding graphics hardware SGI lives further in Nvidia. Interestingly they make the same moves that SGI did, bought Infiniband company to own strong fabric, starting now to assemble own HPC racks… lets see how this ends.

[@cursedfox4942]

what can you do with usb have you ever used those crystal eyes glasses?

[@Irinikus]

I personally haven't used the USB at all, and I've never used crystal eyes glasses.

[@cursedfox4942]

@@Irinikus why not since it’s already installed in your system?

[@Irinikus]

@@cursedfox4942 IRIX doesn't support mass storage devices, and from what I understand you can just about only use it to interface a USB keyboard and mouse with the machine and even that isn't plug and play!

[@cursedfox4942]

@@Irinikus what a pain but I guess it is a 97 device lol. I’m suprised nobodies ported it from the Linux distros that have been built for our mips machines to irix

[@cursedfox4942]

@@Irinikus what is the serial number and info on that usb option card, and do you know what the driver is called that controls it

[@markarca6360]

That was Maya before it was ported to Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS and acquired by Autodesk.

[@Irinikus]

Indeed!

[@ojbeez5260]

There is a Granite SGI monitor on eBay at the moment for only £250! These things are rare as anything and real expensive... if only I had the room for it - it's a 30kg monster! :(

[@dudblock4201]

How much work would be required to replace the guts with modern hardware?

[@Irinikus]

The price of these machines in their original condition is starting to increase exponentially. I wouldn't suggest placing modern hardware in such a machine, as the modern "generic" hardware will be worthless in a year or so. That being said, it would probably be one of the easier cases to mod. you would just have to work on aligning the expansion slots on the motherboard with those on the rear of the case. (It's not a very tall machine, so you'll be limited as to the size of the motherboard you can fit.) I really don't suggest this though! (Collectors will want to murder you!!!) In my opinion, the only new machine worth buying is the new Mac Pro. It's my next machine anyway! (PC in no way compares with Apple!)

[@dudblock4201]

Irinikus oh for sure. Just curious in case there is a broken, non-functional one out there. Looking at the performance, I feel like BeOS would have done a better job if it could run in this hardware.

[@Irinikus]

Cool! :) You'll really battle to get your hands on a Tezro, be it functional or non-functional. (The supply has largely dried up over the years.)

[@SimonTekConley]

Does the backdoor lp account still work?

[@Irinikus]

Why do you ask?

[@SimonTekConley]

@@Irinikus just curious. Password is lp

[@Tyler.i.81]

Oh yeah look at that hard drive

[@fabiolakochenborger484]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/opeplZuYZ918aK8 Hi, I did several tests rendering with Power Animator 9 and none of the renderings were like the link I posted here on KZbin. Is this type of rendered image only obtainable in versions prior to 9? If anyone gets an image like the one in the video I would like to know let me know. Thanks.

[@caioaugusto2301]

Run a crysis?

[@Irinikus]

Unfortunately not, as the Tezro’s hardware’s too old.

[@jolesco]

I think this is the coolest looking workstation SGI made....by the way, do you have a "Fuel" WS in your collection?

[@Irinikus]

The Tezro's awesome! (it offers a great IRIX experience) I aim to acquire a Fuel at a later stage when the opportunity presents itself.

[@jolesco]

I bought a refurbished Octane SE back in 2003 with R12k 300 inside, so I got a little taste of the "IRIX experience"

[@mehmetpinarci1456]

Oh Babe you are beautiful. I did have Maya 6.5 Love it. Hey a quick question... Can you use that MAYA commercially ?

[@Irinikus]

I certainly wouldn't recommend using this version of Maya commercially in this day and age!!!

[@mehmetpinarci1456]

@@Irinikus I dont do wild stuff. Only models and sell them at Turbosquid. So is Maya ready for commertial use ?

[@Irinikus]

@@mehmetpinarci1456 It was commercial software, so it is ready for commercial use, but if you want to avoid trouble you will need to properly licence the software with Autodesk! (Or work out an agreement with them!)

[@mehmetpinarci1456]

@@Irinikus Oh man, yes sir, I agree. Only question will Autodesk honor or could honor this ! True Tool, that is what I am after I suppose. Have a nice weekend.

[@michaelluster2694]

Ya ima get this put xp on it and game, I wonder how the drivers would work though.

[@lewds8551]

this is a mips workstation. you cannot run windows on it.

[@Irinikus]

Correct!!!

[@liquidmandotcom]

I would have liked to have actually watched this video but the blur dissolves are making me nauseous.

[@jtsiomb]

I lost count of the fans :)

[@Irinikus]

There are 12 fans in total, if you include the one in the power supply!

[@aarongreenfield9038]

And now this wouldn't even run roblox.

[@Irinikus]

That's technology for you!

[@MRTuning704]

But can it run crisis?

[@Irinikus]

Absolutely not, but if it wasn't for the developments driven by SGI in the 80's and 90's, nothing would be able to run Crysis, as even Nvidia's CEO was and SGI employee!

[@MRTuning704]

Irinikus I know, I know just jokes lol But it’s definitely a amazing pice of equipment! I’m starting my hunt for something in the lineup.. I really enjoy 3D and graphic animation capability of the system for the time and some kind of nostalgia I can’t explain

[@Irinikus]

I highly recommend that you do! :) I also recommend that you join the IRIX Network forum, that would be the best place to start if you seriously want to get into the hobby of Silicon Graphics! :) As far as retro computing goes, very few machines have the coolness factor that these things have. You have some of the most interesting and expensive graphics systems ever produced to play with here. In the near future I'll be making a video of my Onyx2, which I've recently upgraded to Infinite Reality 4 graphics. The IR4 board set (consisting of a GE16-4, two RM11's and a DG5-8) cost somewhere around $150 000 back in 2003, making it one of the physically largest and most expensive graphics solutions ever produced, and it was scalable, so at it's maximum configuration, it cost well over $1000 000 back in the day. (So these are extremely interesting machines to play around with, which were well beyond our reach when they were current, economically speaking!)