Upgrading my SGI Indigo 2 With EXTREME Graphics!

[@little_fluffy_clouds]

We had two of these maxed out with RAM and Extreme graphics at my university’s computer lab back in 1993. They were magnificent beasts. We could book time on them to work on our Computer Graphics coursework as part of our Computer Science course. They were mind bogglingly expensive, probably close to $100K in today’s money when maxed out. I’ll always have fond memories of them since I learned how to program with IrisGL on them. It’s crazy how fast technology has advanced, since even a smartphone has more 3D grunt than these now, but these machines pioneered the tech which made that advancement possible.

[@skillzorz101]

A smartphone must have about 1000x as many FLOPS than this, at least, right? If not 10 or 100 times that, even.

[@Lauren_C]

@@skillzorz1011000x would have the geometry performance of the PS3 and Xbox 360. Smartphones have advanced past those considerably.

[@homelessEh]

i can dig your excitement.. being if you had the money to buy one of these when it was new you had enough money to buy a house.

[@homelessEh]

i guess accounting for inflation such a beast would have been around 60 grand if it was new today

[@mipmipmipmipmip-v5x]

​@@homelessEh that's almost as much as a stand for an iMac! 😂

[@jonjohnson2844]

Even a regular home PC was the price of a decent second hand car back then

[@Kwijibob]

​@@homelessEhalmost as much as pickup truck!

[@BigDrewski1000]

These Indigo computers always remind me how far computers have come. A computer the price of a small pickup in 1993 can't do what a $350 computer can today. That just blows my mind sometimes. Lol

[@Xaltar_]

In 1992 4mb of RAM was huge. Most systems still ran 2mb or less, 286s and a scattering of 386s were pretty much the norm with 486's being relegated to that one rich friend's dad who wouldn't let anyone touch his office PC. 128mb of RAM back then would be about equivalent to 8 terabytes or so of RAM today, maybe someone somewhere has a server with that much but to the end user, that's practically a myth. Bare in mind a 1mb stick of 32pin RAM back then would run you about $30 - $50 (before adjusting for inflation) and you needed at least 2 of them in 16 bit systems and 4 in 32bit ones. Prices increased exponentially too, with 16mb RAM sticks coming in at over $500 each (sourced from magazines from the period). So yeah, 128mb would run you at least $4000 just for the RAM alone, more if it was ECC. Figured this info would lend a bit more impact to your video. These SGI systems were absolute monsters, unicorns practically. This is the kind of system you saw in a PC magazine and drooled over with the thought that even a lottery may not get you one. Not only were they expensive as all hell, they were also very difficult to actually buy. I remember when I first started in IT we did maintenance for an Add agency, must have been in around 1998, maybe 99 and they had an Indigo 2 that they absolutely wouldn't let anyone touch, even outdated it was better than anything else they could get at the time. My boss handled the service of that machine himself because he didn't trust anyone else with it, basically it was irreplaceable.

[@2xtreem4u]

My 1994 Mac had 112MB of RAM

[@marcp.1752]

I had a self build 486DX2-66 VL Setup into Fall 1993, and 8 MB of RAM, 8x1MB SIMM modules, the faster ones with 60ns, instead of plain 70ns RAM. I paid pretty exactly 865 DM for these 8MB of RAM, something like 444 EUR, but keep the inflation into mind.

[@seanwieland9763]

By 1992 8MB of RAM was typical in a 486 DX2 desktop. 16MB was a big upgrade, usually for all those “multimedia” games coming out on CD-ROM at the time.

[@marcp.1752]

@@seanwieland9763 16MB was no standard into 1992, and especially CD games came out with "Rebell Assault" from LucasArts into 1993, which pushed a lot CD Drive sales (mostly 2x speed, back then) not into 1992 - simply 1992 was still the year of games via 1.44 MB 3 1/2" Floppy Disc, stop the cap. FYI, 1993 came X-Wing also from LucasArts, and it was of course being installed via Floppy Discs. Have had computers since the C-64, Plus 4, Amiga 500, NCR 286 AT (AMD 12 MHz) and so on. 1st game console - Atari 2600 VCS.

[@ScoopexUs]

I agree, and also: your comment is an obvious magnet for the exceptions. Just how it is :D Few PC users had multi MB systems and Windoze 3.1 certainly didn't know how to use it. My exception would be an Amiga with HDD and 9MB RAM in 1992 at half the price of a PC, and not an hourglass mouse pointer in sight. This Amiga was a $1000 wannabe workstation and could do rendering, but far from SGI.

[@nerdmeister2]

the RAM isn't proprietary, it is standard FastPage 72pin SIMMs with parity. but the machine prefers 60ns and gold plated contacts :)

[@framebuffers]

this one is probably my dream machine. fire up softimage or 3d studio, a C compiler, and do some mind-boggling graphics. the 90s were wild

[@ppipowerclass]

I remember my mom use to own a maintence business and we had access to a few very large companies corporate offices. There was one room, in particular, that had SEVERAL of these in it ( this would have been 93 or 94 ). I was floored by them back then. Crazy to see one now.

[@Hansengineering]

I love that you're keeping this era of computing alive. We had 2MB of RAM in a 386 in that time frame, and had to upgrade to 4MB for me to write a shitty word doc with inline bitmaps.

[@billgaudette5524]

Please! Please? Please get a reasonable tool kit ;) I never got to play with SGI boxes, but I developed on some pretty sweet DEC Risc machines back in the mid-90's, as well as some SparcStations. I owned an Amiga at the time, so diving in to alternate versions of windowed operating systems was really fun...Windows didn't really count as it was still around the 3.11 Windows for Workgroups era and wow that was rough! Great to see these old boxes get a second chance at life :)

[@Helloyousilverdevil]

@19:13 - I believe you mean “jurassic park’s GUI”. Which this is SUPER cool to actually be able to connect back to that because I’ve been wondering for decades what she was using in that scene

[@shokuninstudio]

No rendering on graphics cards back then. They weren't called GPUs at the time (first one was Geforce 256). We called cards 'graphics accelerators' or 'video accelerators'. If they supported OpenGL they were called 'OpenGL graphics accelerators'.

[@little_fluffy_clouds]

There was no OpenGL back then, this ran its ancestor, IrisGL.

[@JoshNotJohn0]

6:48 Ionic1k briefly turns into bringus studios for a moment.

[@henriray1440]

Very nice rig purchase. Also, I have that same Astolfo figure sitting on my computer desk at home! :3

[@wdolgae]

I was lucky to rescue an SGI O2 from my last job, they were going to scrap it. I can tell you though, installing Irix was the most painful and aggravating experiences I've had!

[@skillzorz101]

The Indigo 2 (with Extreme Graphics) has approximately 100-200 MFLOPS compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s estimated performance of over 500 GFLOPS. That's 2.5 to 5 THOUSAND times as much processing power in a modern cellphone versus this very expensive unit. If you spent the modern equivalent in price, I would imagine you would be in the millions of times more powerful. Insane.

[@thedungeondelver]

re: thrown out SGIs, here in a certain part of Central Florida in around 1995ish or so Time Warner Cable had a test run of broadband they offered to a very limited number of customers. The "cable modem" was a headless SGI Indy (not a full Indigo). From what I have heard, when the test was over (it would be another 7 or so years before they rolled out broadband for the whole market area), they got the data they wanted off of the systems remotely and told the now broad-band-less users they could just dispose of them. I imagine somewhere in a landfill 'round here are the rusting decayed remains of more than a few :(

[@jdmcs]

You should get the other Indigo 2 running (with the old video card, of course - keep the Extreme graphics in the good system)! And I should try again to install IRIX onto my Octane… sooner rather than later.

[@OttoIncognito]

SGI computers are fucking badass. Love seeing any video involving them. Good shit

[@rockets4kids]

I used one of these as my home desktop in the late 90s. By the time I picked it up, the price on the secondhand market had come down to about $3k.

[@plushifoxed]

i bet you could convince Geekenspiel to make a reproduction of the Extreme badge, he does a lot of different repros of old computer badges and such i have a classic intel-styled "core i7" badge on my laptop, it's great and, i love pumpkin pie. it's my fave

[@nerdmeister2]

I still have a PowerIndigo2 (but with a purple case from a R10000 machine) with a 75MHz R8000 w/ ExtremeGfx in my basement: 128MB RAM, a 3Com 3c597 EISA FastEthernet card (hacked Phobos), a FDDI GIO network card (not installed) and IRIX 6.5 on its original 4.3GB Quantum Atlas II drive. I power it up every 3-4 months just to make sure it works and the drive doesn't clog up.

[@yakyakgaming1027]

You had me as SGI Indigo

[@VK2FVAX]

So.. Quake2. Get that. Quake1 usually is software rendering. Quake2 runs on everything from indy up with some fondling. Great for getting FPS in timedemo and crusher. That's how we used to benchmark Indy/I^2/Moosehead or the Racers at uni club. Then watched Onyx(1) deskside with IR and just wept...

[@hessex1899]

I had one of these back in the 90s. It was a pretty sweet machine.

[@LilMissMurder3409]

A spectacle of graphics and sound.

[@RichardArkax]

being grown already and being able to buy the best parts i always wanted in the past for couple of bucks feels so perfect. i always wanted a Q9650 back in the day and try to OC it until it's like a QX9650 , my younger self wouldn't believe that i got a Q9650 +16GB DDR3 @ 2000+MHz system at home and it's not even my main :D. 1.5TB also sounded almost unbelievable to me back then now it's real

[@bunnymaid]

We used these for CFD results vizualisation in the early 90's and the glorious tiles screensaver. Typically I would get a new one every couple of months and give the old ones to the customers. Even had the purple ones too.

[@HopperMinecarts]

My goat. Told you I’d tune in

[@Zephyrus-ZX]

Hey, wonderful video! Your excitement is absolutely infectious, even if I don’t know too much about these machines. Hope you enjoy your expensive unicorn 😄

[@VK2FVAX]

I felt the same way when I bought my first Indy for home from a company that'd folded and the estate sale .. was so giddy with excitement that I nearly had a car accident on the way. :) Must've been early 1995.

[@werehyenataur]

I got the card and breakout box, still new oldstock if you want it, and the other 256 memory

[@Ionic1k]

Shoot me an email! [e-mail]

[@turke765]

That background noise is doing my head in lol

[@VK2FVAX]

I find it helps to turn the government mind-probes off. Just flat-out lie and tell em you're chaning the batteries for a few minutes and couldn't find your glasses so had to fiddle. Peace and quiet..

[@carlosnumbertwo]

I love how we have literally 20 times the power now!

[@gentrywilliams4255]

Me in 1993 or 94 w an IBM Aptiva 50Mhz/4mb RAM/500mb HDD w onboard graphics thinking it was an awesome computer. I could only dream of a SG Indigo...... Still do honestly

[@AutisticFloppa]

very beautiful

[@linuxuser145]

love old computers for animation i love to animate something on that computer

[@johnmay4803]

jelly evapo-rust will be perfect for them connecters pal. you can paint it on with a little brush then wash it off with iceapro 99persent

[@Nochillatall]

Love the video. Thank you for putting this together. Chuckled at “highnev”. 😊

[@mindbenderx1174]

in 93 you were lucky to have 4 rich to have 8 not unless you had cad, i worked on a unisis computer with MARC os and it had 16mb, it also ran all the tellers as well, i loved giving my tasks 99

[@VicGreenBitcoin]

Old times, I worked with this a lot when I worked at Oracle

[@mrwang420]

Wow. This thing can ray trace better then todays gpus can lol.

[@mbe102]

Yeah dude, I just subbed, save that beast! Grind all that rust off, make it a beauty again

[@CathyInBlue]

Ah, yes. The Jurassic Park file browser. There are several Onyx2 Reality Monster racks for $6k on e-Bay right now. No nuts.

[@AnonyDave]

128MB of ram in 1993 while definitely impressive, a couple standard 72 pin simms looks a lot less impressive than the sun4 memory boards I still have. 48MB in the late 80s, big arsed vme board absolutely covered in 512KB 30 pin simms 😅 Oh how times have changed

[@madmax2069]

10:10 oh, a Midland CB.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

if you get the donor indigo 2 running with your old graphics card, you may consider to find a 19" rack case and mount it inside it. It would get this professional look, if you know what I mean...

[@Ionic1k]

perhaps

[@dritzzka6177]

If you made a game on the indigo 2 wouldn't it be easy to port it over to RISC V later?

[@little_fluffy_clouds]

No, as they are completely different architectures

[@JasonCarlile]

put all the metal pieces in a cheap rock tumbler and they'll come out pretty shiny

[@akfreed6949]

Almost a PIXAR in a box .

[@AC3handle]

I gotta say in this day and age, FINDING the ram for this type of machine is not to easy anymore. The PROBLEM was, too many people were literally tossing these at recyclers, and no one was saving the usable parts. Hell, I HAVE one of those ram sticks as a keychain, but all the memory modules have since broken off.

[@DerekDavis213]

At 0:38 , that 36k usd machine from 1993 is easily defeated by a 1k machine today. And no modern software will run on an SGI Indigo 2 !

[@drPeidos]

I think that for the Doom port the best graphic accelerator card is the worst one available for the Indigo2, because it was better on 2D than the other cards.

[@little_fluffy_clouds]

Doom doesn’t use 3D hardware acceleration so fast CPU and faster bandwidth to the graphics card determine overall performance

[@SFoX-On-Air]

Imagine having 128MB RAM in 1992 and have paid $50.000 (inflation cleared) for it! I´d rather would have choosed my 80486 DX with 8MB Ram for under $700 :D

[@CorentinHarbelot]

I wish I could do the same treatment to my Octane!

[@paulpsomiadis5847]

Could have used SGI Quake for testing purposes 😊

[@Chriva]

Would something like Quake run on that hardware?

[@crazyone3494]

Probably, it has more then enough raw power

[@Ionic1k]

Yes it does! In fact there is actually an unofficial port of quake to IRIX, I don't have it installed (yet)

[@CD3WD-Project]

Holy crap that is sexy stuff.

[@raccoroni.]

another yarp chan banger !!!!!!!

[@HPPalmtopTube]

You should get IMPACT graphics :)

[@kwaki-serpi-niku]

Get your mom to make you some Mac&cheese to celebrate.

[@JoshNotJohn0]

What are you thinking of doing with the Water Damaged Indigo 2?

[@skipperbentdk]

Hands looks like that meme opening a bottle of soy with a tool

[@oblitum]

❤

[@aayushsharma4379]

stream on TWITCH lil bro

[@MrNeverseeme]

1st time viewer. kill the music its very distracting

[@flweeptwo]

I love pumpkin pie but not with whipped cream, thats too much happening

[@Ironapple09]

What KDE theme do you use?

[@MizzKenzi]

8:56 sorry, my brain halted when I heard this sentence and I watched it no less than 10 times to be sure I heard what I heard. Mayhaps that just a me thing, but... anyone else?

[@andrewdunbar828]

I wanna see it saved!

[@generic787]

i thought this was a micheal mjd video LOL

[@UnixPerdunix]

Now install Linox on it, it's possible afaik

[@qwerty_studios]

linox

[@Ionic1k]

Linox

[@goclunker]

Linox

[@flweeptwo]

Linox

[@themadmallard]

Linox

[@10percent4DaBigGuy]

imagine having a 7900xtx in 1992

[@阿綸的全勳學院]

High PC in 1993

[@lolmao500]

256 megaflops... damn if you compare that to a 4090 with 100Tflops... its like 400 000 times faster. Yeah... too bad we wont see such a jump in performance in the next 30 years... if we do I'll be very impressed... We would need a 40 exaflop GPU in 2053. Maybe its possible. Maybe... but I doubt it.

[@nick_pappagiorgio]

19 inch monitor - 71.6 lbs

[@crazyone3494]

0:34 damn, 36k for a turbo N64....

[@fleshwound8875]

but does it run doom?

[@Ionic1k]

18:02

[@theodanielwollff]

double that price for 2025 now Trump is heading back in office. God help us all.

[@spunkmire2664]

Now you can get Jurassic Park back online!

[@BartKus]

get latest gcc running on there

[@PerfectSoundRS]

16 MB in 93? More like 4MB.

[@SchenkelBart-j7h]

That is so cool i remember reading about it when those machines came out. GREAT STUFF

[@kozekistudio]

run doom on it

[@F_I_J_I_W_A_T_E_R]

18:02

[@neilpatrickhairless]

This is the perfect computer 🥺

[@AquaFrostByte]

i love thos videos sadly at my plasce these things go for so much money

[@friedgpu]

why are you suddenly speaking portuguese?

[@crazyone3494]

KZbin's auto-ai-translation, you can change the language back to the original in the settings

[@Ionic1k]

I can't for the life of me figure out how to turn it off :/

[@animeaspie9635]

I know this its a Unix system

[@jmd1743]

It would be cool if somebody were to develop/create something with these SGI systems instead of them being pure wank fests.

[@little_fluffy_clouds]

They’re hopelessly outdated now, so only homebrew enthusiasts would bother.

[@jadhal6649]

It is rusty too old. Any part is failed. Ex motherboard, we can not get working motherboard. So stay away.

[@paulwoods1809]

Please when recording turn your music off in the background. Thank you.

[@teletvbis_]

first

[@aname3576]

20:04 this whole video production thing was just a scam to drum up SGI sales leads! what a clever scam! 🤫🫣