SGI's $250,000 Graphics Supercomputer from 1993 - Silicon Graphics Onyx RealityEngine²

[@Dodoid]

I'm back!

[@Dodoid]

4 AM here :)

[@superniall9995]

It's been a while...

[@mapesdhs597]

Perfect timing for me, breakfast telly. :D

[@tnaxpw]

10am vid nice :)

[@mbe102]

I just saw the notification in my e-mail and thought, "Oh nice, the SGI dude is back!" By the way, 20 minutes is relatively short. I've watched your SGI videos over and over, countless times, and in fact, after this, I'll probably head back and watch it again! Keep it up dude! You were missed.

[@jordanwharton6273]

He had to sell all his furniture and his shoes to pay for it.

[@NEWCASTLE.UNITED.]

Jordan Wharton , 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@joshuahuman1]

Nice

[@RozzmanLists]

hilarious :D

[@frechjo]

Those shoes sold for 250k$ in the 90's

[@jordanwharton6273]

fede Those some big purple shoes, lol.

[@The8BitGuy]

Wow.. that's a lot of computing power for 1993. Most machines were running around 25 to 66 mhz around that time with a single CPU.

[@thechosenone8808]

And graphical power compared to XGA or even VGA graphics of the time

[@AShifter]

Hey, neat to see you here.

[@TrueMathSquare]

I know. In today terms what graphics cards would compare with the power it had?

[@Dodoid]

Hi there! Yep, there's a reason it cost that much. It's a beast of a machine. I love your channel, by the way. Let me know if you ever want to do anything SGI-related in one of your videos. I'd be glad to help.

[@Gun4Freedom]

Mathcubes, that is actually not the easiest question to answer. The system is not just a graphics card equivalent. It would be a lot more comparable to a pc as a whole. The difficulty of comparing it to modern systems is that the chip architecture itself, and the way the parts and silicon are layed out on those pcb's, along with the os and software, are so much different than a pc. There are many chips on those boards that have been absorbed into other chips, or gotten rid of altogether. You can look at the storage, the ram, the speed and ipc of the processors, the different graphics processing engines, the caching schemes, the rasterization boards, and understand that they have all been condensed, miniaturized, and integrated into modern components. You would have to look up all those details in any given modern component, which can be hard to find sometimes, and then add up all the differences between them. Plus, many of the components that machine used, are not even used anymore, due to people figuring out simpler ways to do things with code.

[@Arcangel2992]

16 gb ram in the 90's is like sticking rocket boosters to a tricycle.

[@BillAnt]

Lol... great analogy xD ... been there done it... in '92 I have even installed a 1-Gigabyte ($2,000) full height HD monstrosity to my tricycle, it was like a huge gas tank with afterburners... he-he

[@YAP_1776]

Not with that SGI. You just saw the Demo's

[@stanleyperry]

i dont got 16 gb or ram on my 5k imac

[@dboy4ever]

In 1993 my PC (my first one, a 80386) had 640KB of RAM and 20MB of harddrive.

[@kenrickeason]

Hell Yeah!!!!!!!!!

[@SonGoku-mj5pq]

I don't know how I got here and why I watched the whole thing but it was very interesting and I don't regret it.

[@DaGaJbmKojJe]

Son Goku So you've cheated on Chichi with Kefla

[@Jademyheart]

It's very interesting, hard to believe this was a commercial machine, way back then

[@SilentTakeox]

Sane here

[@joeking4206]

I worked for SGI in the mid 90s at their Salford Quays office (Manchester UK). Best job I ever had. We all had an Indy on our desk and we had a very early email system called Z-Mail. It was the coolest place to work at the time and I was very lucky to get a job in pre-sales there. OpenGL, VRML, early HTML editor called Cosmo, we were years ahead. I still remember the day we got Quake running on an Onyx thanks to John Carmack's special port. We couldn't believe the smoothness and resolution. Then Nvidia came along.... Ah well it was fantastic whilst it lasted.

[@ralfbaechle]

SGI was a high end company and never failed to replace its market niche with an even smaller one. SGI did develop the custom graphics chips for the Nitendo64. When around '97 or so they spun out MIPS again, SGI said they'd not want anything to do with that gaming stuff. So they passed along the rights to the Nitendo graphics chips to the newly independent MIPS Technologies. And all the licensing that came from that. Right at a time when SGI started to lose money like there was no tomorrow. But it made MIPS Technologies a filthy rich small company. In like late 2005 or so MIPS had $120M in the bank and some 300 employees (from memory). The money to a large degree came from the Nitendo licensing fees and because it was so much - much more than the core processor business - was listed separately on the quarterly results. In the end not only SGI itself could have used that money - it even became the fuse on the bomb leading MIPS into trouble. Inside SGI engineering there were suggestions circulating to enter the graphics market. Management put them down "we don't want anything to do with that low-end PC graphics". Then nVidia came along. One of the things I was doing work on was porting Linux to the Origin 200/2000 series so scalability work on Linux could start before Altix hardware was available. We were the first to ever run Linux on a 128 processor system. For an Origin 2000 that's 9 full size racks. Plus one more for a "few more" disk drives. The first tests were on a 128 processor system with the console under a rotating disco ball. SGI was the king of cool. Ah well it was fantastic whilst it lasted. In like '95 SGI had crossed the 1 billion USD revenue, in '96 every employee from the cleaner to the CEO received a golden wrist watch worth a $1,000. in the 3rd quarter of '97 SGI was expecting to make 20 cents per share. Instead they lost 20 cents per share. The death spiral started picking up speed. The first thing cancelled to save money were the weekly Friday beer busts - which I'm sure were actually were a good investment since they got people talking to each other. Ever seen Google's cool headquarters in Mountain View? SGI built them around '96. Because SGI was the king of cool, of course. Eventually as the company shrunk SGI moved into two of the four buildings it had built on 1600 Crittenden Lane and leased the buildings to Google. It was a horrible deal for SGI, Google ended up paying a rent to SGI lower than the mortgage itself was still paying. Yet during the dark times as the revenue from the core business was dwindling that rent income was so much that SGI in one quarter had to say in its filings that it was a real estate business! I still have a bunch of Origin 200s, Origin 300s, Indigo, Indigo², Indy, O2 and Octanes.

[@cradeke]

I remember Zmail! It was a snappy Motif tool looking better at Irix because of the libSg.. but no one is remebering showcase - a very complete kind of slide presentation software. which some years later became popular in a package everyone knows today called power point (the only product I highlight as usable from MS) Many things worked in showcase are not easy to achiev in PP today. One could include 3D scenegraph renderings for expl and video of course.

[@markrung8051]

@@ralfbaechle interesting, thank you!

[@SuperSuperDon]

I worked with this machine and its relatives back in the late 80s and early 90s. Actually took a week long maintenance class at the SGI facility in Mountain View, CA. I have had that front ramp down so many times I hate to count. And usually had several people breathing down my neck asking how much longer it would be. Mostly, the machine just ran. Too bad SGI stopped innovating. I really liked their stuff. Thanks for the video. I am amazed at how much you know about this thing. It brought back a lot of memories.

[@davjaxify]

.

[@ryanirvine50]

I'm sure the repair bill was expensive lol

[@BillAnt]

Back in the late 80's early 90's the Commodore Amiga had similar graphics capabilities for a fraction of the cost... ahhh the good 'ol days.. :)

[@benbaselet2026]

The Amiga was definitely ahead of it's time and a great machine but the capabilities of AGA versus this is really not much a comparison, for obvious reasons.

[@BillAnt]

Well yeah, but the Amiga's price was just a fraction of an SGI, and while a stock machine couldn't do hi-res real-time ray-tracing, there were programs which took overnight to render it. Later on they had a bunch of turbo-cards and AAA (Amiga Advanced Architecture) graphics which were able to do it in real-time. They were obviously in different leagues (including price), but the Amiga was the closest competitor to SGI, while the PC couldn't even touch it at that time... sure that has changed too by the mid 90's ;)

[@kf1559]

I was 17 years old working as a level designer using this machine to build N64 games in 1996. From Dpaint to this was amazing. Happy days. Thanks for the great video. X

[@DavidHilgendorf]

As an SGI tech support employee from 1997 to 1999, I was trained on the hardware and software side of these systems and their kin, some of which could fill an entire server room. The owners of SGI machines were primarily Hollywood studios, game developers, University research centers, NASA and the U.S. national laboratories. They did run games (BZFLAG) and VR (DACTYL NIGHTMARE), all of which are primitive by today's standards. OpenGL (gfx api) and Irix (OS) were as ahead of their time as the hardware itself. SGI also owned Cray, who's supercomputers were liquid cooled, and exponentially more expensive. In 1999 I showed the 640x480, $200 Sega Dreamcast to one of my SGI engineers (also the first person to excitedly show me Google) and his complaint was that it didn't do Anti-Aliasing. Granted the Onyx was leaps and bounds ahead of anything else graphically, but the price to performance ratio eventually caught up to SGI, and the company didn't change fast enough to stay ahead of the market. RIP. Google now occupies the former SGI HQ.

[@RRSYSinfo]

Epic, info David, what where you most recently working on.

[@RadiaUmbra]

You know since the biggest tech companies live in Silicon Valley, I aways wondered what happened to Silicon Graphics and I think I know now

[@jeremybevington7304]

Yeah I used to work in one of the old SGI buildings that had super low cable trays... SGI definitely didn't think that server racks/rooms would get as tall as they have.

[@Stratomacaster]

Ahhhh the gool ol' days. We used to eat lunch in the lab (when no one was around of course), sitting on our really expensive "red couch" (Y-MP8) updating UNICOS by hand and sometimes dragging over an Indigo workstation and marveling at the ability to "spin the corvette" in real time or watch the paper airplane demo everyone was so fascinated by. I miss those days. I printed one of those Cray Y-MP mini cases for one of my Raspberry Pi Zero's. Fitting, considering the computing power of both. Cool, but at the same time sad.

[@mapesdhs597]

David H., I remember your name. :D Spot on about the guy's comment re lack of AA on the Dreamcast, ironically I didn't like the PS1 for the same reason (terrible textures and wobbly geometry); I loved the N64, even though the AA still wasn't there, but the mipmapping was way better. However, the fact that the guy's immediate response was to note the lack of fidelity kinda foreshadowed where SGI went wrong eventually, they focused so much on image quality while ignoring demands for better basic raw performance.

[@ghostjaeger4326]

You know your pc is serious when you need a key to boot

[@nikitapisek2901]

Hahahaha

[@thetedmang]

You know the OP is a millennial when he doesn't know that ALL computers had keys at one time.

[@ghostjaeger4326]

thetedmang its a Joke bro

[@nickypass861]

@@ghostjaeger4326 Shut the fuck up

[@southpakrules]

@@ghostjaeger4326 We live in a post joke society now grandpa

[@timf4015]

SGI's were awesome in their day! As an artist & animator, not only did the 64-bit processor 's kick the shit out of Intel/Windows 32-bit options at the time, but the whole SGI Operating System was designed for artists to work in a specialized graphics-oriented environment. The File Manager was basically an image management application in its own right. Still, having to run several of these (not to mention the refrigerator-sized Onyx Reality Engine series) was way to expensive for anything except feature film work or scientific visualization.

[@ProjectILT]

so like 25 years from now they are gonna look back at our quantum computer prototypes and laugh while watching the video on their quantum smartphones with 16TB ram

[@hasanzainul10]

@@kentinousss6 man that's crazy 😂

[@pinaxl2]

@@kentinousss6 something like this kzbin.info/www/bejne/j3vKYWWfq76tidU

[@godofentity]

Actually, we're going to go down in personal computing power, and moving towards faster internet, using cloud servers for computing power. Kind of a shame if you ask me.

[@cestarianinhabitant5898]

there won't be RAM, there will just be storage. Non-volatile memory is the future, and what better way to do it than make the entire storage device double as memory?

[@rinne409]

16TB RAM? wtf lol

[@tcap112]

Imagine a 250.000$ computer today. It would have 16 TB Ram

[@provsalt]

sry 3tb for 250k maybe 250k for 16tb will be a great deal before 2018 end r/dreamer

[@MNB730]

@Nederlandse Uploads open chrome with 10 tabs maybe

[@bace1000]

@@Chrixio that's not how it works......

[@LogNote]

Chrixio are you being serious?

[@LogNote]

Chrixio that’s not how it works...

[@EricJacobusOfficial]

That's not a computer. That's a space station.

[@guyincognito7771]

what do you mean, it's to big to be a space..……...

[@BillAnt]

But space itself is big... reeealy big ;)

[@BillAnt]

@jolena auvuya < Your 2017 system may be more powerful, but this was 25 years ago when the internet was in its infancy, that's the whole point of this video.

[@gideonkloosterman]

This is actually quite funny, the first space flights had on-board computers comparable to pocket calculators!

[@HavenMarches]

This computer still holds up decently in comparison to computers today tho, besides the price

[@kamapuaa666]

Man, this takes me back. Working at SGI was the most fun job I ever had.

[@moabt.frican7163]

Any cool stories/memories from your time there? That's so cool... :)

[@drumspleasefab]

Imagine spending $250,000 on a Computer and not being able to play Crysis.

[@ahgagf9902]

İbne Piçin Tekiyim That’s because crysis came out in 2007

[@drumspleasefab]

@@ahgagf9902 HOLY SHIT! SERIOUSLY?

[@siralfrednobel]

try something new and creative.

[@drumspleasefab]

@@siralfrednobel Your wish is my command!

[@drumspleasefab]

@@kos4225 go learn some fucking English before you correct someone.

[@rflarson]

I actually used one of these when they first came out. The company that I worked for bought it to do analysis on plastic parts. The spinning jet and the buttons brought back a lot of old memories!

[@joythought]

I used one as well for special effects in a post production studio. Was state of the art in its day and the suite was something like $750 per hour to clients...

[@kalidecraw7108]

Dang he legit sold everything in his house to buy the pc.

[@crisbowman]

Quality commenting 👌

[@nickypass861]

200000$ in house decorations means you are beyond rich. Maybe a billionaire. Most people don't even have 100000$ so 250000$ in decorations would be insane. Most people also only have 2000 - 5000$ of furniture in their house

[@Esskay_]

@@nickypass861 whoooosh

[@khenudae1158]

Esskay you would expect someone with the suicide emoji to be funny ;-;

[@chinowolf3767]

poor guy even lost his socks :)

[@MichaelandCathy1999]

15:50 That “thick pink paper “ is anti-grounding insulation. Helps prevent static grounding in case of a close contact.

[@ianf123]

Yeah, SGI used that in several systems. In early versions of the Power Indigo 2 (R8000 version), it got so hot that the paper would smoulder. They had to respin the processor module to fix this. But that was SGI: already releasing hardware before it was actually finished. "Throw it over the wall, let support fix it."

[@JohnDoe-mv4ks]

@@ianf123 Vulcanized paper.

[@varnlestoff]

Hey bro let's do a lan party! "Sure man, lemme grab a uhaul!"

[@fierrza1845]

Flatl1ne you could always portfoward : ]

[@SkeeveMagick]

Fun thing is: I did lan parties with SGI machines. in the 1990s I worked for SGI Germany and every now and then friends and I met in the office to play some rounds of BZFlag.

[@LukeFaulkner]

5:58 What I really admire about the Oynx is how quiet it is. I'd only slightly notice it when practising the drums in a small reflective room along to Megadeth booming from my Rokit 5s at 110dB.

[@badcrcz]

When I was getting my CS degree I saw these machines and at the time it was incredible. I hope you appreciate what you've got there and how jealous I am. To me it's one of the coolest things to see young people appreciating old school tech, especially sgi, which was absolutely unreal at the time. You do a great job on these videos but you dish out info like a machine gun. Amazing work. Even though an Onyx is completely impractical, I would love to have one to play with. Glad you got one and an can fathom what it meant to people like myself at the time. I would like to see a video of how you repaired it and got it running, you're an amazing kid to even want to do that.

[@obsoletegeek]

I love how it basically has a startup sequence, like a dragster.

[@Trannymaxxed]

The Obsolete Geek Its nice see you in here

[@Semparo]

More like a Jet if you Account for the Sound! lol

[@metsrock15]

Obsolete Geek Nice to see you

[@MMedic23]

Don't all computers have a startup sequence?

[@Semparo]

@@MMedic23 Yea, it's just not as apparent as it is in older hardware like this. Some server computers still start in similar fashion. Such as a lcd with post messages and such. Otherwise most computers start up so quickly now days it's as if they no longer have a startup sequence!

[@machiii7394]

16 GB of RAM. In the 1990s. h o l y s h - -

[@WoodysAR]

Exactly, I remember being very excited about upgrading from 2 to 4 MB of RAM! Running 3D Studio for DOS! Being amazed the first time I pusged open on a CD drawer! LOL

[@outsideworld76]

In those days my AMD 486DX ran at 66MHz and only had 4Mbyte of RAM and a wooping 210Mbyte hard drive.

[@TheMustafa0815]

and 12 years later in 2005 my pc had 64mb ram while this one can have 16gb...

[@Krisztian5HUN]

thats RAD dude!!!

[@TheValentineEnemy]

Even my laptop has half the RAM....so unfair...

[@SteveThinman]

Thanks for bringing back old memories! I used all sorts of SGIs in those times for computer animation and I loved them. System administration on IRIX was a joy compared to Windows nowadays and even if everything was slower than now, we had much more fun at work. It's great to see that here are still enthusiasts keeping these machines alive!

[@aseerose5684]

I used to go to Comdex and stand at the SGI booth with an aching heart. Years later when companies were unloading them, I got my own Indigo with software. It has been idle for a while but I am putting it back into commission. It will be so sweet to hear the startup chimes again.

[@5kulld]

Fun Fact: This exact workstation was used to create Nintendo 64 games when Silicon Graphics partnered up with Nintendo.

[@Tinnesa]

Know if it created OoT?

[@michaelopnv634]

The Onyx was much more powerful than the N64, meaning most games had to be downgraded in order to run on it. Some games like Mario 64 were made on their Indie workstation, which closely matched the N64's power.

[@5kulld]

@@michaelopnv634 i'm saying n64 games were designed using the onyx

[@5kulld]

@@Tinnesa i'm not sure, but the most popular game it created was super mario 64 and also pilot wings

[@4strokeperro949]

He literally said that in the video -.-

[@dj_paultuk7052]

Little known fact. Terminator Two was done on a SGi machine. The famous scene where the liquid terminator morphs out of the floor.

[@mapesdhs597]

Most movies from that era used SGIs, it was the main platform for IFFFS apps. Star Trek VI, The Abyss, The English Patient, Jurassic Park, the list is very long. Personally, I helped a bit with the productions for JP2 Lost World and SW Ep. II.

[@Manueljlin]

mapesdhs Oh wow, that is so cool Man I LOVE these machines!

[@louistournas120]

+angjoysnow: They probably film the scene, import it to the SGI computer. Then design the 3D models. Add the textures. Do the animation. Render the animation on top of the film and export it back out to VHS or something. I heard that for Jurassic Park, the modelling software used was SoftImage. They call such software CAM = Computer Aided Modeling.

[@sir_john_hammond]

Whoosh.

[@HipsterBlackMetalOfficial]

Its a widely known fact lmao. Jurassic Park as well. Hell Donkey Kong Country sprites were made on this thing, then pre rendered for the SNES to handle.

[@wisdomcube7789]

"What did it cost?" "Everything"

[@robertohaaij9157]

hahahaha

[@Hud_Adnan]

hahahahaha funny one

[@terrymartin4234]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/m5nGoZKifpp2d8U&t=55

[@jeffvlastoff5533]

Is there a word for someone who feels nostalgia for something before their time? This guy is doing great things.

[@accountname-tu2om]

zoomer

[@defalt45]

16 gigabytes of RAM In 1993 My PC has half of that

[@theskeletonboi]

It's incredibly slow RAM though.

[@nonenothingnull]

Baffled

[@zackburkhart6521]

skeletonboi faster than what you have

[@maxheim3802]

@Zack Burkhart nope. Current standart for ddr3 is 1600MHz and 2666MHz for DDR4. DDR4 is coming up right now with >4000MHz. Back these days the ram was at a few 10 or 100 of MHz but i dont hv Numbers.

[@dageek1000]

was it SDRAM?

[@joemiller7541]

That was a really great and informative video! I worked on an SGI Indy back in 1996 (Yes, I am old!) when I was a Animation student. I never knew what it looked like inside (Obviously, they were not going to let students peek inside such an expensive system.) At the time we used Soft Image as the 3D software. It was a great learning experience and I now teach 3D graphics and game development. Excellent work, I wish you much success with your channel, keep it up!

[@srfrg9707]

Nice electric radiator for cold winter days. Adequate settings. I used to work on SGI workstation back in the days when 3D animation was = to Softimage and the Onyx was always set alone in a large room where 'the expensive stuff no one had the right to touch' used to stand. It's funny to see a kid (no offence) playing around with that very same stuff a few years later. I still have a piece of SGI harware though : the screwdriver they used to pack with the Indy's optional extension board. Very handy screwdriver. Still usefull as day one when the rest of the hardware is now just crap.

[@Asdayasman]

That's not a great deal of time.

[@srfrg9707]

Joaquín Nuñez That's kind of rude! 😉

[@Eli_Santin]

I think this video singlehandedly made a lot of people realize how cool SGI's workstations actually are.

[@Minitomate]

Yeah, that's the oldest computer that I have ever seen that can hold up till today with 16GB of RAM.

[@declanhinshaw4791]

@@SimonWoodburyForget gaming....

[@declanhinshaw4791]

@@SimonWoodburyForget no. Gaming on a computer. Are you dense? Just because you don't need 16 gigs, doesn't mean no one else does

[@RemoveChink]

@@SimonWoodburyForget There are plenty of games that are CPU dependent that will hiccup if you use less than 8gb of ram.

[@wadimek116]

Doubt its super slow ram...

[@LogicalNiko]

The paper is a non-conductive barrier to prevent an accidental misalignment of a card, a component outside of spec, or conductive dust from contacting and shorting the card to the metal case. It's basically because the specs for the cards allow for components to possibly go all the way to the edge, and well, adding more to the case is way more then expensive then a sheet of "fish paper". These and the bigger cabinet systems were pretty fun to play with and work on back in the 90's they powered a lot early VR research tools. And although annoying the keyboard design wasn't a big issue as most of the time you ran them headless, and just used the serial port to do base of tasks until networking was up.

[@Meekmillan]

Had no idea Doug Demuro reviewed computers too

[@opticFPV]

I really enjoyed the quirks and features of this machine.

[@roryparrish4200]

Christian Mcmillan haha I wish i didn’t get that or think it was funny

[@samspace81]

no one knows me :(

[@SudeepRohit]

But he doesnt look like Doug to me

[@viewer54322]

Better than hoovie

[@bushhawk5460]

6:10 Apple: "Let's do that, but worse."

[@kkfdes]

Duuude, you went far and beyond with research and documentation of this particular hardware, I must say. Wow, just wow. Keep up the good work, subbed!

[@cddog1995]

FINALLY! KZbin recommends me something im actually interested in... Nice video. I had no knowledge of these machines and enjoyed the video. Will there be more content like this in the future? I need more.. lol. Seriously, good job on the video. Very informative, and you are easy to understand.

[@Robeight]

IKR, same for me.

[@samplehunter]

I wonder if SGI had "kidneys" as an official payment method back then ;)

[@jh77sly]

I was always amused by SGI's system designs. Very colorful for the time when everything else was mainly beige or black.

[@cradeke]

Not only the hardware, even the OS came with unusual font style, a really cool theming of the elsewhere always default grayish and ugly Motif widget set!! A few years ago my daughter saw their mouse pad and found it cool and nice to use 'not so standard' she said - true words. It was always an honor to work with SGI computers for that!

[@GroverAU]

Ahh. Memories :) This was my development machine back then - we were doing a 4 channel sim with motion base. The price isnt quite right: Thats the "base" model. Depending on what cards you purchased. You could buy: RM Cards (Render Managers) GU Cards (Graphics Units) - these were like GPUs but you needed good RMs to have good performance. Memory Cards And some video specialist cards (video in/out and channel managers/mixers). Cards generally cost between 25-50K _each_ And with a decent setup you could have 250K of just cards :) The SGI guys I dealt with here in Aus, were generally useless - they sold us very shit RM's and GU's and basically had a machine that was very poor in 3D performance for the machines abilities. Once we replaced the RMs and received some great assistance from the US tech support, we were rocking. It was my first ever development in shaders (I wrote some rain, and snow shaders for the train sim) and posted solutions for particle rendering on Performer. Good times. Fond memories. Thanks for the video - its a very clean/nice example of a great machine. Btw. Their memory and processor system actually became the industry standard, and is still used by Intel and AMD today :) .. The crossbar system was crazy, and awesome :)

[@jbondhus]

How far ahead of consumer machines were these things? Assuming that the architecture was compatible, would you be able to run something with similar graphical fidelity to half life 2, from 2004, on it? The demos obviously aren't stretching the capabilities of the hardware, so I'm really curious what $250k would get you in 1993.

[@freddyli5356]

Do you still working on CGI today?

[@anjhindul]

You didn't watch the video did you?

[@GroverAU]

@@freddyli5356 yes still working with simulators in defence and AR and VR systems as well. Its been around 25years of electronics, PLC programming, games programming and simulation architecture. Some awesome experiences especially with SGI and the Onyx's bigger brother the Origin 3000 series. Good times :)

[@TruMoist]

David Lannan yet you weren’t even born when this came out kid hahah

[@LordPrometheous]

A couple years before this when I saw the first 1GB HDD for sale in Computer Shopper, they were about $1K each, to put the price point in perspective.

[@padmad3k63]

lol, I saw the first 1TB HD for sale I think it was back in 2005 and it they sold it for 1000 euro. Now you'll get a 4TB HDD for like 100 euro.

[@LordPrometheous]

@@padmad3k63 I wonder if we will ever get to a point where we just don't need more and more space. Maybe in the future, hardly anybody will use local storage, and everyone will keep their files in the cloud, aside from maybe stuff like any embarrassing porn that you wouldn't want leaked. If we ever have affordable terabit speed internet, maybe processing will all move to the cloud as well. At home we'll have nothing but a dummy terminal. Tablets will be cheap bc the real hardware is in the cloud so you have a monthly payment to use it, bundled with a home pc, game console etc for discounts. Then you will no longer need to keep upgrading hardware at home. You pay for a higher tier package to get the better graphics in games, more storage, faster tablet, etc.

[@padmad3k63]

@KillerHax I didn't say anything about 12TB drives but about 4TB drives.

[@mjmdiver1137]

I bought one of those HD's. I was thinking it was a Seagate SCSI Barracuda, but on second thought, it may have been a WD Caviar drive. Too long ago to remember. I spent about $5000 on a computer for graphics rendering work (which was more than I earned working all summer long while in college!). If I recall correctly, RAM was running about $35 per MB at that time, so it was insanely expensive as well. Most computers only had a few MB in them.

[@luckylikey9280]

pretty common. there used to be a 1MB / Dollar Deal at the local hardware store

[@davidslchu13]

Wow..a blast from past! I designed one of the ASICs in this system - incredible to see one after all these years!

[@tmass1]

18:12 when pluto was still a planet. RIP

[@clashwithbat2283]

it is still a planet

[@symphony137]

@@clashwithbat2283 It's a dwarf planet, which by definition is not the same as planet.

[@lil_weasel219]

It is a planet right now

[@lil_weasel219]

@@symphony137 no. It was brought back into the cathegory of planets

[@freeaudiobooks7469]

Fuck space. Waste of time

[@nightmarezer0507]

17:22 Icon for Doom. WHHHHY DID YOU NOT RUN THIS IN THE VIDEO?!

[@MKVideoful]

Because DOOM is for DOS and DOS emulation on these computers is super slow. There is probably solution, compile DOOM from source code files for unix.

[@dnebdal]

@@MKVideoful SGI Doom is a proper, native, port, made by Id. Just software rendering, though.

[@Dodoid]

@@MKVideoful Yeah SGI doom is its own thing and it runs fine, it just doesn't use the graphics hardware and doesn't look any better than Doom on any other platform. That's why I didn't show it.

[@MKVideoful]

@@Dodoid Maybe somebody can add light mapping, dynamic shadows just like Bisqwit do in his video, where he programmed doom renderer from scratch.

[@mapesdhs597]

@@Dodoid The funny part is that the SGI port at 4x scaling to fill the screen is blatting 28x more pixels than the DOS version.

[@ericlampi2696]

That's a Desk Side Onyx, they only came with 2-4 cpus. Full size Onyx looked like a refrigerator and had up to 24 cpus. I worked on both of these, including the Crimson when I was an intern at a VFX studio in 1995. Later that year, we beta-tested SoftImage 3D (owned by Microsoft at that point) which had just been released a Windows NT version. The PC of choice was from a company called Intergraph which had one of the most powerful graphics cards available for Windows NT at the time. Side by side render speed comparison, the Intergraph machine was MUCH faster than the Crimson we had in the studio. This was the beginning of the end for SGI, they never took the PC threat seriously and ended up coming to the PC market several years later with an expensive, unreliable workstation which I ended up using at another studio for a time. Within 10 years, SGIs disappeared from all the studios except for use with Flame, Inferno and Smoke. Which are high end compositing and VFX applications that relied on the SGIs hardware and super fast throughput. Eventually, they too migrated away from the SGIs and now run on souped up PC workstations instead.

[@basj1970]

This is indeed how the story went. We had a lot of Indy's , Challenges and later O2s in the office. I used to work for the european distributor of SGI so I got my hands on lots of thoses machines. Even had one at home. I used Newtek's Lightwave on it to try go get into 3D modelling.

[@basj1970]

I have no SGIs but I do regret selling my Indy. Never got into 3D professionally. But I am doing some modelling using Blender though on a Macbook Pro. It sucks at rendering though. Cool that you still own all those machines. I don't think my wife would have these lingering in the house ;-)

[@ericlampi2696]

@@marander512 I started on the Amiga, first Imagine 3d, then Lightwave 1.0. I didn't even know they made an Irix version of Lightwave. Such an odd platform to port to at that time.

[@calc2377]

Also, SGI proprietry hardware doesn't help either. Where as you can run out to buy a generic mouse for the intergraph, you need to get back to the dealer to buy a simple mouse. Poweranimator was also the software of choice for these machines. Amazing that a Nvidia GTX now has more computing power on a PCIe bus than this behemoth. I was starting out with 3d and back then, 3dstudio ver 4 on ms dos was the main option for smaller studios.

[@pants8029]

Ah this brings back memories. I used to work at an oil company with a full size Onyx. It was used to load seismic data which was then projected onto a 180 degree screen. The geologists would manipulate the huge chunks of data to look for oil. At lunch, though, we would play Doom.

[@falxonPSN]

I remember my friends and I being amazed at these things back in college in the mid 90s. The things they were claiming with these bordered on witchcraft at that time. So glad people like you are keeping the spirit of SGI alive.

[@robertvazquez35]

Legend has it he's now paying off he's parents credit card in 2019.

[@furryballsploppedmenacingl8534]

Replacing all the furniture he sold too

[@koljawls]

But can it run crysis?

[@mapesdhs597]

Hmm, very interesting to ponder what might be possible with a deskside IR system with a highly optimised engine, but it would need to be a complete rewrite to match the hw, no kind of port would be any good. IR can certainly run Quake2 and Quake3 pretty well, so who knows with decent coding. Huge differences though in what functions are support which would mean a lot of the visual effects in Crysis would have to be left behind, eg. SGI's gfx tech doesn't have pixel shaders, that hadn't been invented yet. Some of its staff moved to NVIDIA, took the IR base concept with them, removed all the stuff not needed for games, squased it onto a single board on a modern process size, voila the GF256 was born, the first PC GPU with a hw GE (it has the same GLperf specs as IR). SGI did argue internally at least once about making gaming consumer GPUs, but it didn't go anywhere, likely the resellers didn't want to have to deal with ordinary cheapo consumers and SGI bowed to that. Pity really as in theory a scalable product based on the RCP from the N64 would have been viable, but the whole Nintendo deal kinda soured as SGI failed to make much money once the console price went down, perhaps not realising that the real money in console gaming comes from the games sales, not the initial console sales. Still, who knows, one could probably make something pretty cool, given how impressive some of the real-life apps and demos are for IR, but Crysis per se, no, that's just way too demanding. :D Love that game btw, still playing Warhead atm. RE2 though, definitely not, it's just too old, even with RM5s. The GE speed and fill rate just aren't there for anything seriously detailed. Remember it's not just about triangles/sec either, eg. gaming hw has 3D functions such as 2-sided textures which pro hw doesn't need, all sorts of optimisations on one side or the other. Ian.

[@louistournas120]

+Kolja Wilms: Nope. Back in 1993, OpenGL was brand new. I think it was designed in 1992 or 1991 and it was competing with about 15 other 3D APIs. The great thing about OpenGL was that the specification was open. You can even downloading it today for the latest and greatest GL 4.5 (www.opengl.org). This thing probably supports GL 1.1. There is no support for multitexturing. No vertex or fragment shaders. I imagine it can do hardware stencil buffer while most consumer gfx boards from 1995 to 2000 could not. I think GL 1.2 came out in ~1998. Shader support in the form of extensions came along after 2003 I think.

[@chrwl007]

+James Fondren The only problem with that theory is that SGI created OpenGL

[@ChuckN0rr1st]

maybe with a resolution of 2x3 pixels

[@butwait]

it will be a crisis when you try to.

[@knifeyonline]

I was waiting for you to give it a Doug score at the end... Dod score?

[@DarrenD777]

Doug Score FTW! Car guys ruel!

[@OLatency]

may be in more doug channel

[@3601christopher]

lRaziel1 he would actually go into detail about it and why you should or should watch it

[@needtoknow204]

Lmao! Absolutely agree!!

[@95TurboSol]

No wonder people at the time thought VR was just around the corner with machines like this, unfortunately they would have to wait another 25 years to get it. I remember 93, we just got 14k internet for the first time on AOL, I was 6. The only games our computer could run were things like tank wars on floppy disk.

[@Stuntzii1]

lols tank wars. took 10 seconds to update the screen

[@4204-j4x]

Omg lol AOL... memories

[@MartinAston00]

Yeah... lol.. it was around... we’ve played... and it was pretty decent given when I played it was 98’

[@4204-j4x]

Doom 3 Quake 4 i think

[@CigsInABlanket]

How many people in 93 actually knew this existed though? Not only that, when I hear the price of 250000$, I know it has a long way to go before becoming mainstream. P.S VR still isn't here. I do not consider wearing goggles with screens in them and joy sticks/motion sensors in your hands to be VR.

[@TheDunrod]

Your video was really good, It was a time machine back to the days of the computing super expensive devices. Thank you for all the efforts.

[@bitflips]

You see how warped that board was? Imagine that board being on the very end of the row, close to the side. The pink paper could have saved you a 2nd mortgage.

[@sn1000k]

great post

[@myfj40]

Thanks for making this Dodoid! You're understanding of "how we got here" will give you a great perspective on today's technology. I sold many of these and Onyx 2's - Larger systems to run simulators and VR Caves. A few systems were in the millions - I worked at Apple in 1988-1993 and then to SGI. It was a great place! IRIX and MIPS forever!

[@mapesdhs597]

Couple of extra points worth noting: - The rack system supports up to three gfx pipes (adding a 3rd requires an additional card cage and 3-phase power), for a total of up to 18 output channels. - The Challenge server model, not having gfx, could support more CPUs, up to 36. The Onyx/Challenge racks I bought both had 24x R10K/195MHz (2MB). - Performance of RE2 depends very much on the number of RMs installed, as do various features such as available pixel depths and video formats. Dodoid's system appears to have up to 2 RM4s, the range being 1, 2 or 4 per pipe, using either RM4 boards (4MB texture memory) or RM5s (16MB TRAM). The TRAM does not combine between RMs, whereas the VRAM does, which is 40MB per board. - The default SCSI disks are HVD (High Voltage Differential, 20MB/sec), though the buses can be altered to run SE at 10MB/sec. Be very careful when working with such systems not to connect the wrong type of disk, or to the wrong connector.

[@pdsnpsnldlqnop3330]

That serial port on the backplane goes round to the bottom front, you can use it to 'terminal login' if there is a problem during boot leading to the screen not working. You could use the 'terminal' application that came with Windows and an actual serial Rs-232 cable rather than a 422 cable (harder to come by, then) to login, much like how you might 'ssh' into a machine today. Back in the day these machines came with a £40K support contract, with lots of special stickers over door panels so that the SGI engineer would know if you had been in there. Hence you would never see the internals unless you had an SGI guy in upgrading a board for you. Service was actually pretty good and you could get same day repairs, obviously on site. All Onyxs were 'clustered', e.g. for film and TV in the UK that meant Soho, London. So it was relatively easy for SGI to do support because their machines would only end up in small geographical locations. So, thanks for the vid, back in the day there were production demands plus support contracts that meant that nobody could spend all day taking these boxes apart in their parent's bedrooms! I 'had' an Infinite Reality 2 version with all of the boxes to allow for digital video out. Before that I had a Crimson, which was a very large box for one CPU. I also had a few O2s on my desk with an Indy tucked away in the mix too, however, the cost of all of this hardware was dwarfed by the cost of the broadcast kit that everything was linked up to. Clients paid £10K a day so 'my' Onyx did bring in millions.

[@tylerkrueger5797]

Nobody: KZbin: Time to learn about this hyperventilating brick!

[@PassportBrosBusinessClass]

But can it mine bitcoin?

[@711jastin]

of course it can until the late 00's. it has Asic chips on it.

[@LaurenceReeves]

Bicoin is dead, whoever mines these days make little to anything... have you not seen the massive drop on the stock? xD

[@fishshit]

dumbass doesnt know what hes talking about^

[@MrUltraDreamz]

The fact you called it a stock proves you don't know anything about Crypto Currency lmao

[@CryptoRebel]

Stock...

[@WardCo]

Wow. Very well done, both content and production. We had a similar one to this unit when I worked at Global Village in Mountain View in '93-'95 -- though my memory is that it had a more "art deco" purple front -- so probably not a $250K unit. Still, I remember playing with some of the demos you showed. (As for me, I was writing Motorola CISC code for an office communications server product on Sun SPARC workstations. Ugh!)

[@TheBanjoShowOfficial]

If they could do that in 1993, imagine what we could do now for the same price in 2019. Now that’s something to think about.

[@canyousub8255]

Nasa pc

[@HitPointG]

Engineering + time = money?

[@sberryscake]

pixar... thats what we do in 2019

[@dnebdal]

The boring answer is probably that you'd buy a decent enough workstation for < $10k and spend the rest on rendering servers. A rack full of high-spec x86-64 servers isn't as _cool_, but it's a lot of computing power.

[@aevans1683]

Nice presentation on the inner workings of an SGI Onyx, a juggernaut of a machine. In the 90s I learned scripting and 3D modeling/animation while a few Onyxes were in the server room at school. SGIs machines were also in each classroom. Scripting brought out the machine's hidden power. That's one reason why Terminator 2 looks as good as it does. SGI made true dream machines. Again, nice work on the video, and thanks for showing the inside. Now I know why SGI computers cost so much.

[@TiberianFiend]

That paper keeps you from accidentally shorting anything out.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Back in those days, all that heavy specialist hardware was used for both online (interactive, real-time) and offline (capture to film/tape) rendering. Looking at all the video outputs on that thing, remember that videotape couldn’t stop to allow single frames to be recorded, it all had to happen continuously in real time (unlike film). Later, as hard drives got larger, it became feasible to render a frame at a time and save, say, a few minutes’ worth of animation all to disk, then play it back in real time to record to video. This needed just the video-interface hardware and some fairly basic raster-copying capability, not the full-on rendering pipeline behind it.

[@allenschmitz9644]

nice catch, all them video line in/out ports...I was looking at the same as we had a graphics dept to render stuff for the customer, and the machine they used was no where like this one but it was big and slow, 1991-and I remember it running all nite to render one complex image....lol', I don't miss the 90's.

[@andydelle4509]

Well there actually was a videotape recorder that could record still frames and play them back in realtime. The Sony BVH-2500. These were available in the early 1980s. They did it with a movable record head and a video pre-processor to correct the non standard track resulting from the still tape motion. Just a clever extension of the then popular movable play head that Ampex invented in the late 1970s for smooth slow montion and still playback from helical tape machines. The competing Ampex VPR-3 was said to also do still recording without the special record head or pre-processor although I understand it never worked properly. Most facilities at the time and where I worked used Sony BVH-2500s for still frame recording. Then Abekas (ex Ampex guys) came out the with their line of video disc recorders that could record up to a minute of material and that was the early end of still frame video tape technology. Still the Sony BVH-2500 worked very well for this application.

[@allenschmitz9644]

yea our MC had a Sony BVH-2500 all so...analog glory days...lol'

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

It appears both those models (Sony and Ampex) you mention have something in common: the “Type C” videotape format en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_C_videotape

[@captainthrall]

whoa, 1280x1024 resolution in 1993? 640x400 was considered excellent at that time. The first PC game I knew of that had 800x600 graphics was the Diablo 2 expansion, which came out in 2001.

[@redfirekla]

f-16 mrf and the first f-22 lightning 2 from Novalogic had a 1024x768 resolution in 1995 f16 game came after.

[@azzamA]

I still play games with 800x600

[@erickbaka]

Sim City 2, 1994 had 800x600 VESA support.

[@erickbaka]

Actually I have to correct myself, SimCity 2000 came out in 1993 and indeed supported 800x600. Of course, 1280x1024 as a standard resolution in 1993 is still massively cool for a workstation.

[@EgoShredder]

The Atari TT 030 had a similar high resolution monitor and graphics output in 1990.

[@GamingHelp]

These rather large cases that SGI made for their bigger hardware is where I got the idea for a "deskside" approach for my last large workstation build. About 30 disks (16 of which were 15K SAS drives short stroked in raid 0 for swap. My god was that array fast), dual socket board, dual power supply, dual GPU (SLI), and a gigantic cooling system that used baffles and damping to make the cooling system nearly silent. It was big enough it used two of the gigantic blue filters that home furnaces use for the heating furnace. The only downside was the cost to run that machine 24/7.

[@3minswithoutzaza]

*Clickable TIMESTAMPS:* 0:00 - 2:01 Musical Introduction Segment 2:02 - 3:10 Spoken Introduction 3:11 - 5:16 Onyx Background Information 5:17 - 11:11 Physical Overview 11:12 - 17:13 Teardown and Hardware 17:14 - 19:27 Software, Demos, and Games 19:28 - 21:38 Spoken Outro 21:39 - 21:52 Standard Dodoid Outro

[@zachschumann5899]

Thanks

[@qn2h]

No longer need this comment timestamps in description work now

[@qn2h]

Juan Vivían your KZbin isn’t updated to current version then

[@josephmoloney6925]

daim, this guy has put a lot of hard work into this video

[@caroguizo]

First PC that i've ever seen that has more RAM than HDD

[@Dodoid]

It could take MUCH more in terms of hard drives, mine is pretty "average Onyx" storage-wise. I read an SGI document a few months ago that was talking about setting up a server for a 300GB database on the Challenge XL (effectively the same thing as an Onyx rack, minus the graphics hardware).

[@igorordecha]

Idk, maybe original IBM PC? It has 64k of RAM and no HDD(0B)

[@ralfbaechle]

A friend of mine had one as his personal workstation at SGI around 2000. Kitted to the max, as a sysadmin he was soaking up all the parts that "flew by". Problem was the power consumption. The one thing he could not upgrade was the power circuit in his office. So when the machine was nibbling a bit more power for example when running a graphics demo like Performer Town (video of the demo is on youtube) the fuse blew after like 10 seconds. The machine was noisy and the air conditioning system did not keep up making his office as hot as the parking lot outside on a warm day. But he had what once was an dream machine unreachable to most and gobs of RAM.

Young man, this video is on spot. Easy too follow, very well explained, and very educative. I really hope to see more of your content. Congrats.

[@RobertCasas]

You are a clever guy. Such an impressive knowledge about this great computer. Congratulations!

[@CaptainCooter]

Robert Casas okay thank you Robert Casas very cool

[@gavinthecrafter]

I would love a full series of this, going through the most powerful computer from every few years, like the most powerful computer in 1996, 1999, and so on

[@Balabok]

I remember when I started at Digital Domain in 2002. I saw 2 black Onyx RealityEngines sitting on pallets outside being removed from the film scanning dept. I think there was being used for dust busting. A sad day indeed. The mighty SGi had come to an end. While working at DD, I witnessed massive shifts to new technology. The other was the "monitor graveyard" dozens of blue and gray Sony SGi/Trinitron 17" and 19 "monitors, stacked on pallets having being recently replaced by IPS flat monitors.

[@TheGuruStud]

Netburst was worthless trash when released. People should have been fired for buying that garbage when AMD had superior CPUs out for a long time.

[@Digi20]

While this is really a crazy piece of Hardware for 1993...it really shows how extremely fast tech moved back then. Only 6 Years later you could buy a 1ghz home computer with a geforce graphicscard for a 1/100 of the price, yet especially that consumer gaming graphics card should theoretically be able to run rings aroung the SGIs graphics system.

[@esaron1071]

and now for nearly 3 years companies have been allowed to stop innovating and start price fixing. The same DDR4 memory from nearly 3 years ago costs 4x what it did at the start of 2016, the same exact memory. Nowhere in history is this rivaled. ~3 years and no improvement with the price rising?

[@RetroDawn]

Esaron Actually, the same thing happened back in the late 80s, when the Regan admin levied a tariff on the Japanese RAM imports, due to claims that they were dumping the RAM. Prices skyrocketed for a few years. Rather unfortunate timing for the Atari Mega ST systems, with 2 and 4 MB of RAM.

[@esaron1071]

@@RetroDawn I don't see this ending until the government cracks down on the price manipulation. They've reached a stable artificial price that people are reluctantly paying because they NEED the part to complete a build. All companies are keeping prices high through cooperation with one another.

[@springbloom5940]

Esaron Well, Im sure your garage operation will show us all how to do it. This is typical entitled mentality.

[@esaron1071]

Spring Bloom What a stupid thing to say. "don't like the price fixing, make your own company". You realize what they're doing is illegal right? No, of course you don't, you're not smart enough to understand what it is they're doing.

[@JamesBenet]

Having used this machine along with O2s in the 90s to render stuff, it is literally mindblowing that a run of the mill integrated graphics chip is about 1000x as powerful. I remember the SGI reps going around my college trying to sell more of them. The software license for Alias which was the precursor of Maya could run up to 30grand. I remember pricing an Onyx II maxed out in 96 and getting back 780k quote. Then a few years later it all went bust when you could run Maya on Windows for under 10k with better performance thanks to the advent of faster graphics cards. RIP SGI we all wanted one but now looking back, it was just a vanity thing unless you were rendering Jurassic Park or Toy Story as a business.

[@Scalpaxos]

Yes, I remember them too, they were using them for 3D protein modeling, not sure it was the exact same machine though, in my unit they had a dedicated air conditioned computer room with huge Silicon Graphics workstations.

[@JamesBenet]

@@Scalpaxos nice!

[@acorgiwithacrown467]

Damn this thing is cool. I wish they would start making "supercomputer" workstations again.

[@NuGanjaTron]

It's great to see someone paying tribute to this wonderful machine. I think SGI deserve far more credit for pioneering interactive graphics. I remember working on these during my PhD, and I was blown away by its capabilities. Best of all was the "Welcome to Reality" splashscreen!!! I have a Crimson from 1990 with the original Reality Engine (as seen in Jurassic Park), but the GE board is shot, and parts are unobtainium nowadays... :^(

[@DarrenD777]

You might contact Stark Industries (or Cap') for the unobtainium you need for the GE board...but you know Stark --> it'll cost ya! ;-) But seriously, I remember going to the local junior college when I was in middle school (early 80's). They had one hard drive for the entire computer lab. It had 12" platters in this big box that was about 2' tall. It looked like it had room for more platters since there were only 2 or 3. I was totally in awe of the computer power in those rooms. Nowadays my 2 year old cellphone probably has more compute power than those entire rooms combined - certainly more storage cap. It's amazing how far hardware has come in the last few decades.

[@NuGanjaTron]

Yeah, but let's face it: the room full of hardware is more interesting than a cellphone (everyone's got one of those). Plus you can get your hands on the tech docs for the former and stand a chance to fix failed components; the latter just gets tossed...

[@llamamusic_____synths-samplers]

Former SGI Systems Engineer. These were a total bitch to cart from one location to another! Extremely heavy. I was part of a Virtual Reality (VR) tank battle simulation in 1992 for a 4-Star General at Ft. Knox, KY using two similar systems (Crimson + Power Series side by side). The Crimson controlled the VR headset (left eye screen) and the Power Series controlled the VR headset (right eye screen). It took 2 days to setup and haul the hardware from Indiana and Ohio to Kentucky. The General wore the VR headset for less than 3 minutes and then walked away :^)

[@Gligar13Vids]

how many women do you get when you fire this bad boy up

[@Dodoid]

Only my mother, telling me to "quiet down, it's 2 AM".

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Put on one of those suspension mods on the wheels so when you roll it up to the lights, you can bounce it up and down ... that always gets ’em swooning.

[@skillzorz101]

This bad boy renders 5 women in 60 fps!!

[@MrStu]

A Gigaherd

[@P.K.04]

-1

[@iElsupremo]

Looks like a mini fridge from BladeRunner movie :D

[@zlarb]

I'm pretty sure one of these were used to make the first Toy Story. Great video Dodoid!

[@caveman357]

I love the video, but the curtains disturb me!

[@andrewchristiansen8311]

thats an awesome tidbit

[@danfried7736]

and Jurassic Park

[@deasttn]

And a Boeing jet

[@inversemedia9174]

Pixar had their own computer they actually marketed, Jurassic Park was done on a crimson, aka the “Jurassic classic” it was a sad day when I took mine to the local dump after selling the boards for penny’s, the construction quality was mil-spec as the government or gov related were the biggest users, commercial 3d animation was a tiny tiny market share in the early 90’s.

[@WoodsPrecisionArms]

The best video I have seen yet on an SGI workstation - especially taking it apart and showing how vastly proprietary that system really was - the good ol days of computers - you know, when they were fun. SGI blazed the paths for CGI that’s so commonly used today.

[@rerez]

I never thought I'd ever see someone on KZbin talk about one of these machines!

[@Dodoid]

Hi there! I've watched your channel for longer than I've had my own. Do you have experience with SGI machines, or have you learned about them from their Nintendo connection?

[@timg2727]

It's crazy to think about how much more powerful a modern smartphone is than this gigantic thing and its multitude of chips and boards.

[@shivasthong4924]

A thumb drive is more impressive

[@darkkavenger]

Fantastic video! I had the chance to closely see two Onyx stations in Monte-Carlo around cca 1996 and see one unassembled for troubleshooting. I was 16 at the time and still have the photos of me proudly posing next to the various system cards :)

[@kbhasi]

8:01 I do imagine that companies that used such systems back in the day, would've had a primary console on a desk, but also a terminal or two (or occupy both serial ports on some MS-DOS PC), as well as one or two broadcast-grade VCRs.

[@mapesdhs597]

There was a vast range of uses. Onyxs are still out there plodding along, mostly for running visual simulation systems or other defense setups.

[@kr15]

I never expected to see something like this being explained by some barefoot dude ':D

[@kr15]

plus it probably is some exquisite quality mahogany floor not to be ruined with some pesky shoes am i right ? :'D

[@kr15]

it's a joke....

[@BillAnt]

SGI computers work barefoot only, to dissipate static electricity!! lol

[@kr15]

:'DDDDDDD

[@paulwilliams4274]

@Dodoid are you going to continue making awesome videos? I just found this one and I really liked it.

[@Wipsplash]

I believe the riveted paper is to prevent electrical arcing between the case and board.

[@patrickneary8446]

I was guessing it was moisture activated for warranty purposes. But, your guess makes sense too.

[@DrewskisBrews]

I saw one of these at the Boeing surplus store in the mid-2000's

[@sketchdude4631]

I would absolutely love seeing more of that cyberastronomy demo it just looks so cool

[@orangemancometh]

This was the shit that finished the digital composites for the movie "Titanic".

[@kyle-9203]

😱

[@pwnmeisterage]

And today they use far more powerful machines to make far more awful movies.

[@madskillsgamer128]

P Yep.

[@shinigamilee5915]

Actually, I worked on some of the technology that is being used to do 3d rendering for many of the latest blockbuster movies. The biggest problem I helped to solve is speed of rendering files. We took 6 month or even year rendering times down to a few weeks.

[@ViroVV]

P I dunno.. Titanic was pretty shitty in its own right.

[@AppreciatingLife]

Keep doing your thing. I always appreciate a thorough, detailed, and honest breakdown/review of anything, and you did a solid job.

[@johnblecker4206]

That Onyx seems fast for 93 and is a very cool collectable pc. My second pc was a 93 pentium P5 overdrive at 3x66 or 199 MHz.Presently using a water cooled I-9 9900k at 5 MHz.

[@Ingsoc75]

My first 3D animation class in 1997 was using Softimage on this machine.

[@milutinndv]

So, today you work for Dreamworks or Pixar?

[@david78212]

I had an SGI Workstation, although which one escapes me, and I can tell you (other than the fact it constantly tried to look for the "server") it was a BEAST of a machine... I made a silver ball that bounced between the "floor" and the "sky" of the scene I made and then went into the "floor" and disappeared. I'll admit basic 3d stuff, but it proved the machine was barely working to render this, and it did it very fast. Once you take into account SGI was used for CGI that you see in movies, you start to realize what it was for. A lot of people just claim "it's a glorified computer" and they were SOOOO much more.

[@TheMtpleasantbc]

former sgi employee from 1993 here, that thing was a beast!

[@jspafford]

That. Was. Thorough. A studio I worked for in 2002 had a old one of these that they actually used in 1998 when I did a internship there when I was like 13. In 2002 we threw it out. (Recycled it)

[@chaddeez8446]

In 1993 I was just happy to be able to play Street Fighter 2 Turbo on my SNES.