Rebuilding a $34K SGI Computer from 1994 | Indigo2 Extreme Retro Revisit

We rebuilt an SGI (Silicon Graphics) computer from 1994, sent to us by SGI Depot, to look at high-end graphics from an old flagship workstation.
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The SGI Indigo2 Extreme is the first of two SGI systems we're looking at this week, this one using the Extreme Graphics set from Silicon Graphics. The system is from roughly 1994 and originally sold for about $34k, largely targeting movie studios and enterprise clients in the medical and defense industries. SGI has long since gone bankrupt, but built some of the highest-end, earliest GPUs with surprisingly good 3D rendering capabilities. This was sent from Ian of SGI Depot.
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Hosts: Steve Burke, Patrick Lathan
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[@GamersNexus]

Our sincere thanks to Ian of SGI Depot for making this possible! We are planning to look at other parts that fans sent in last year as well! Find our latest HW News here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r5u2cnWNmpKjj7c Support GN via the store and grab one of our GPU artifacting shirts or modmats! store.gamersnexus.net/

[@MrZics]

LGR did a video on the Indigo 2 Impact (The one with 1 GB of ram) back in 2017. You should go check it out if you haven't.

[@jerrywatson1958]

You left out the Video Toaster w/Light Wave 3D it was used to make Babylon 5. In '92 you could do the same and more for a $3k desktop with a Commodore Amiga. Good video looking back at when computers and their hardware was still made and manufactured in the USA.

[@scottgoodson4838]

Thank you, GN, for taking the time to feature SGI hardware. It's great to introduce the giants of our industry to a new audience. You should do a similar overview with the NeXT Cube, with its legendary Dimension video card -- 12x12" square. I believe a single system could have three of those cards, with installable graphics memory on each one.

[@Xaltar_]

Great video and really cool of SGI depot to hook you guys up. These machines existed in a completely different era. Today the only difference between most "state of the art" systems and your desktop is that it's just more, more speed, more RAM, more storage. The actual software is by and large the same. Kinda sad if you ask me. There are a few properly custom systems out there with proprietary OSes and software but nowhere near what it used to be. Thanks for the memories :)

[@mycosys]

@gamersnexus I'm kinda surprised you didnt lead with the huge gamer connection that SGI owned MIPS and developed the N64, Playstation and PS2 CPUs

[@Xaltar_]

When I first started in IT in the late 90's we got an SGI system in for servicing. My then boss freaked out on us all and wouldn't let anyone but him touch the thing. We watched in awe as he stripped the system down and carefully cleaned it. He then proceeded to hook it up to the 220v power in our workshop and promptly blew the PSU..... While he was in his office with a bottle of whiskey and making plans to take out a morgage on his house I decided to pull the PSU and open it up to see if it had a fuse that could be replaced. Luckily for our little tech firm it did. We swapped it out and our boss treated us all to a night out. That was the first and only time I ever laid hands/eyes on one of these. The one we had in was huge and took 3 people to unload from the van it was brought to us in (safely), sadly I don't remember the model but I think it may have been an Onyx, I remember it being black and purple. My personal PC at the time was a 486 DX4 100 with a whopping 4mb of RAM and a 200mb hard disk so this monster of a machine with I believe 64mb of RAM and a massive 4gb SCSI hard disk was mind blowing. And yes, we wondered how well it would run quake if it could :P

[@GamersNexus]

Awesome story! Must have been a scary moment for the boss!

[@Xaltar_]

@@GamersNexus Thanks! The poor guy was absolutely terrified.

[@wobblysauce]

Oh ya... that happened a lot.

[@3800S1]

Yeah sound like the onyx super computer as SGI called it. From what I learned about that you could blow a fuse just by using a normal KB even though it had a PS2 type connector, you had to use their own KB. Interesting machine and was a graphics power house for it time. They were worth about 250k in the day.

[@Xaltar_]

@@3800S1 Very likely, the thing came to us with all it's peripherals and monitor. Now that you mention it, there was a warning taped to the side of it not to use anything but the peripherals it came with. I wish I had known then what I know now, I would have paid much closer attention :)

[@blakegriplingph]

Try rendering the Gamers Nexus logo on that workstation lol.

[@GamersNexus]

We'll get back to you on the results in about 6 years.

[@sneakie1649]

@@GamersNexus lol was about to make that joke, that would take forever, if it even works

[@maxmustermann194]

@@sneakie1649 It wouldn't work because the CPU isn't compatible to the needed OS and the RAM amount wouldn't be anywhere near sufficient for the render. Yes, I'm fun at parties.

[@cybercat1531]

An old build of blender(traces) is available for SGI Indigo 2 kzbin.info/www/bejne/lYirYZSoeJmWetk www.blender.org/press/blenders-25th-birthday/

[@_BangDroid_]

I doubt it could even load the blend file

[@rollingrock5143]

Thanks for going retro, Steve. I absolutely love SGI because of how bonkers those things were in the 90s.

[@Space_Chief]

I remember replacing radar draw cards from SGI back when I was in the Navy. Cool stuff.

[@birdythemighty8830]

I remember training on military 2D projector shooting range simulation running on old windows XP machines, while Battlefield 3 had came out and was playing that in my room with a top of line gaming PC. LOL Military still uses old outdated junks.

[@MrDJAK777]

@@birdythemighty8830 Because its a standard, makes it easier to get parts if they haven't already been ordered in bulk for replacements and also avoids bugs, vulnerabilities, and instability that come with new products. Along with not having to retrain people on new systems constantly. They upgrade small sectors over time to find any problems then roll it out to more and more as it gets more mature.

[@geronimo5537]

@@MrDJAK777 yeah I watched a video a few days ago about something like 40% of the US military still operates with windows 98 and xp because they cannot replace the systems.

[@NightMotorcyclist]

@@geronimo5537 ADA and COBALT are still in play as well especially with various systems in use from ATC to nuclear substations. Heck, even old architecture such as the i486 were still produced and in use by various modern systems up until recently IIRC. I guess if it ain't broke don't fix it.

[@MasterChief-sl9ro]

@@NightMotorcyclist Fucking COBALT no wonder the shit runs slow. It takes 1 whole page of code. To run just one instruction...I used to have to carry 6" thick pages of it. I bet today you could run that 6" thick worth of code with something that fits on 2 pages with C......

[@tannerbartkowicz2960]

With 2020 coming. You could do a evolution of gaming pcs. Put together the best gaming pcs from 2000,05,10,15, and 2020. I like to see the old tech. Many forget how far we have come in such a short time.

[@kn00tcn]

what happened to 1995, 1990, 1985, 1980? other interesting note is the deceleration each decade, though maybe that's due to resolution increases offsetting the potential performance gains

[@rohanmuppa213]

YESSSSS

[@tannerbartkowicz2960]

@@kn00tcn i guess going back earlier would be interesting for the older generation of the audience. I didnt get into pc gaming till the early 90's. I never paid much attention to the the hardware at the time. I used whatever my parents could afford to play games.

[@TheShivABC]

@@tannerbartkowicz2960 Anything pre 1999 is far more interesting, I understand what you are saying but before you learn how, you must learn why

[@ceej5690]

@@kn00tcn 1980 would be sick. because that's when the first IBM PC was released. or when x86 became widely used among the world. kind of insane we've been on the same architecture for 50 years at this point

[@TekTherapy]

Much love for SGI, still own several systems in my collection ranging from the indy to the octane 2 and so on. So great you did a video on it!! Makes me wanna switch on my O2 and run some irix magic!

[@KRN1VOR]

same here I still have 2 brown IRIS's a 10 MHz render box and a 30 MHZ IRIS 4D workstation - an Indy - 2 of the green gen 1 Indigo extremes and a vaunted gen 2 purple Indigo 2 extreme - long live IRIX UNIX System V

[@thongorshengar]

Gamers Nexus and retro computing stuff. How's that two of my favorite things could come together?

[@andljoy]

He needs to get himself a SUN Enterprise 10K! And a 100 amp supply to run it :D. The E10K as you may know was an amazing system, you could power down a " blade" i think you could call it in modern terms and move the running programs off it to the others replace it and move it back over all without taking the system down. It had hot swap EVERYTHING including system boards and CPU!

[@omegaelixir]

In 2030 Steve rebuilds a system of today

[@GamersNexus]

"Titan RTX and 9900K? Those can barely even play Crysis!"

[@vojtasTS29]

Realistically it would be in 2045. We'll all be using ARM and gaming pcs will be on one chip at that time i think.

[@C4CH3S]

@@vojtasTS29 I dont think that would be efficient for thermals lol Having like a 3nm arm cpu and a gpu side to side would create massive Temps... I do think native AIO water coolers in midrange gpus will become commonplace, because nowadays even the midrange have massive coolers, like the 2060 strix oc for example

[@AshtonCoolman]

2030 is only 11 years from now. Steve has recently tested 8 year old 2600k CPUs which isn't too far off from that mark. There may be 6700k's and first gen Ryzens being compared in 2030...hopefully to show the massive leap in computing and not just a 20 to 30% gain in FPS.

[@vojtasTS29]

@@C4CH3S Arm is massively efficient compared to PC architectures. A high end phone has more compute power than some thin and lights and the gpus are at GTX280 level pretty much yet they take like 5W at most.

[@lenn55]

You can tell it's really old because of the "made in the USA" stamped on the boards. lol

[@user78405]

made in mexico

[@tauttechminusmanagedmusic3778]

There was a networked combat flight simulator for SGI machines. We played it in work between an Indy and Indigo 2, with the 2 being the only one with sound. I will never forget the face of my co-worker (Cameron) when he heard my machine say "locked-on". He jumped up saying, "Who?! What's?! Locked on!!!!" Somewhere I still have the demo I wrote combining kinematics with muscle simulation (including "pain" on over extension/compression) in which a spider walked across its web , the web bending with the movements of the spider. The spider used a primitive AI to work out how to walk across the web without falling off. Very happy days with much time to do fun things.

[@mapesdhs597]

Looking back, I don't understand why I didn't mess about with that flight sim more. In the late 90s I ran a lab of student Indys for 5 years, don't think I ever tried it out once. Weird... Cool stuff with the spider!! Ian.

[@SoaringSimulator]

@tauttechminusmanagedmusic3778 I remember the spider. Has learning capabilitys. Did you code that? There was a tank game also to play. Alias was the best for me.

[@simonb.9414]

I'm listening to this video via speakers, and Steve is not to be heard unless I want to blow my speakers. Patrick Lathan on the other hand was loud and clear. Love these kind of videos man, keep up the great work ;)

[@JoeSmith-jr5ek]

As someone who has worked in both aerospace and defense, yes they are still running on 1990's computers. Especially for Catia V4 stuff.

[@goa141no6]

Is it budget? or a if is not broken don't fix it situation?

[@theoldpcguy]

I just watched both of your SGI videos and had to laugh. Having cut my teeth on S100 computers it was fun to watch you guys struggle to plug stuff in. Thanks for that!

[@watkinry]

Another application for SGI system you didn't mention is their use modeling and building proteins used by structural biologists (X-ray crystallography and NMR). I used SGI machines in the early 00's not long before they got replaced by consumer hardware and used their 3D glasses (lenses would turn opaque in sync with a monitor) to build protein structures based on X-ray data. It was pretty cool at the time.

[@mapesdhs597]

I remember seeing a demonstration of precisely that sort of thing on a POWER R8K Indigo2 Extreme one time, all setup with CrystalEyes, etc. They demo'd GIS apps on the same system. Oddly enough I sold an R8K Indigo2 many years ago to a guy who wanted one for this kind of work (in his case, computational chemistry): www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/r8kcomments.txt SGIs were used for so many things, a great many types of task largely unknown even to hobbyists who like collecting them. Heavily used (and still are) in textile manuacturing, medical imaging and even in slaughter houses. Much of the Harry Potter clothing merchandise is made at a factory where the huge knitting machines are controlled by a couple of Stoll/SIRIX SGI Indys (I upgraded them way back with SSDs, better CPUs, more RAM, etc.)

[@Jimbo-in-Thailand]

Excellent video GN Jesus! That SG graphics demo reminds me of the Commodore Amiga's revolutionary (for the time) Bouncing Ball demo from the mid-late 1980s. In fact, I had purchased a brand new Atari 1040ST in 1986, which used the same Motorola 68000 processor as the Amiga. Both were incredible machines for the time. It wasn't until 1994-1995 when I finally jumped ship and bought a new 486 powered Gateway 2000 brand PC. It took that long for the IBM PC hardware to finally exceed the performance of the older 68000 models. Hmmm... come to think of it I've still got my trusty old 1040ST stuck away in storage in the US, complete with both color and B&W monitors and all the accessories. WOW, suddenly I feel very very old!

[@DVRC]

Silicon Graphics machines were awesome and pretty unique. I even discovered in my country (and near me) there is a research center (CRS4) that used those machines

[@joncarter3761]

My Dad used to work at Nottingham University where they had a couple of SGI computers, I only ever got to use the slower 75Mhz one but considering how slow the processor was compared to the Pentium's of the time (mid 90s) the system was remarkably quick and could produce graphics in real time that the PC just couldn't. If only they listened to Jenson about consumer graphics we could have been using SGI 20 series cards in our computers!

[@richiec7700]

Lots of actual gold used. The O-Ring May have some faraday function or heatsinking function with it having metal in it

[@desertmike680]

Here in Vegas, SGI server arrays are in use for Pay Pal, with the primary purpose of is to verify financial transactions. I work for HPE as a Data Center Engineer and we primarily work on the UV300's and the HPE Super Dome's. And yes, the current generation of servers are as complex as these SGI computers. Crazy!

[@madfinntech]

This is so cool. Especially for someone who has always been fascinated by 3D modeling and computer graphics and I have finally started to learn 3D modeling myself. Silicon Graphics was the magic words back in the day!

[@GeoffSeeley]

Back in my university days they had one SGI IRIS system that you could only use if you had a purpose. I built a forms language to PostScript compiler for compiler class as my excuse to use it, but I mostly "played" the awesome flight simulator on it. Learned to outside loop a 747 on that simulator. Fun times.

[@CheapSushi]

Man I love when boards had large chips on them like that. Something about it aesthetically looks great. And those HUGE ISA boards.....so cool.

[@mapesdhs597]

I sent them various parts aswell, including some boards for Challenge/Onyx. I don't know if they'll do a video about those, but it would be cool. The Geometry Engine board for Onyx is particularly awesome, while the MC3 memory board is just nuts (32 slots, 2GB max per board). A single rack could have up to four MC3s. The Onyx I bought had 4GB RAM, which back in 1995 was just whacko, but essential for what the system was originally used for, namely FEA car crash analysis at Ford, later the same task at BMW, the GIS processing at Midland Valley. Finally I bought it in the early 2000s, along with an identical Challenge rack and two Indigo2s.

[@CheapSushi]

@@mapesdhs597 That's awesome! I hope they do more videos with the parts. I love learning more about SGI. Tangent but I went to NYC just to see the Connection Machine CM-2. I wish I could own one of the boards they had inside.

[@lookoutforchris]

*huge GIO boards.

[@markstriker]

I got 2 SGI Indigo2 Extreme, one with failed power supply and one with failing harddrive. I keep both just for the nostalgia. They were the first machines I experienced the internet and 3D graphics back in the early 90s. The IRIX system will be my long time favorite Unix flavor.

[@DarrynPusey]

Lgr did a good tech tale about it I believe, it was the os used in Jurassic Park 😂

[@accesser]

I can vaguely recall a making of Jurassic Park documentary that showed these

[@CaveyMoth]

It's a UNIX system. I know this.

[@madmax2069]

Jurassic Park had Mac Quadra 700, an SGI R4000 indigo Elan, SGI crimson and a thinking machine CM-5

[@DarrynPusey]

@@madmax2069 I knew it was a sgi machine but the scene using the Unix system is the is of the sgi is what I meant

[@madmax2069]

@@DarrynPusey yes I know, I was just rattling off the computers in the movie.

[@heyitswesty]

the indigo2 was huge as well the octane and o2. SGI machines were ubiquitous in CAD shops back in the day.

[@mapesdhs597]

I think Indigo2 was SGI's best machine. Not perfect, but definitely the most reliable. I have, er, rather a lot of them, hehe. Ian.

[@skroz1]

Thanks for making me feel old, Steve. My IT career started with SGI Indigo systems.

[@mohdfaizal6773]

At least u made it to the new millennium 😊👍

[@SoaringSimulator]

@@skroz1 Me too with an Indy...lol

[@Coincidence_Theorist]

20:00. Interesting how much the tone/sound/resonance of voice effects feelings of confidence/calm or nervous/tense/insecurity in the listener. Check out the incredible documentary on sound and its interaction with life and all things called: “Kymatica”

[@joshmakeshift]

i have a pile of old VAX stuff if you guys are ever interested. was pretty high end hardware in its day.

[@GamersNexus]

If you're serious, we might be interested in it. Shoot an email to team [at] gamersnexus.net and let us know what you have and might be able to loan out!

[@joshmakeshift]

@@GamersNexus will dig them out of my storage tomorrow and send you an email with what i have. i know i have 2 VAX stations that i powered up a few years back, really didnt know how to use them or what to do with them....

[@hydrochloricacid2146]

Isn't VAX hardware mostly discrete though? As i the CPU being multiple parts? Side-note, i have an old DEC Rainbow 100A microcomputer lying around, but it's mostly parts and not functional.

[@joshmakeshift]

@@hydrochloricacid2146 i have a few VAXstations that were i guess consumer grade? they look like a normal computer i powered one of them up and got to the interface i just have no idea what to do with a computer from the 80s lol

[@hydrochloricacid2146]

@@joshmakeshift Must've been the later VAXes then. I don't know lol

[@rogerwilco2]

When I started at university in 1994, the students had access to six SGI Indy's, part of a package for some research group buying a whole load of much more expensive SGI machines. But even those Indy's were awesome. Webcam, 16-bit audio, HD screen, 3D graphics, 150 MHz RISC CPU, 64 MB RAM, several GB harddisk. The fastest PCs the computer lab had, were 486DX 33MHz machines with 4 MB of RAM running Windows 3.11 The SGI machines were at least 5x as fast as any Windows PC, and those Indy's were the slow, cheap SGI machines.

[@mapesdhs597]

I'm rather envious. :D When I was running a student Indy lab (1995 to 2000), the spec was a lot lower, which made them somewhat underwhelming at times (R4600PC/133, ie. no L2, 32MB RAM, 549MB disk, 8bit gfx). I was told that the dept. was able to get a deal for a larger number of lower spec machines if they selected 20" monitors. Silly really, as it meant I couldn't install all the stuff I wanted, so I had to use several NFS mounts, but that used up valuable memory. Still, as you say, they blew away the PCs in the other room. Ian.

[@dionelr]

I remember these systems being used when I was an intern at a micro electronics company. They used it for high end imaging on electron microscopes. Mid-nineties were cool.

[@mrsquishyboots]

I got one of the acclaim ones few years ago. I love these strange old toys. Now I need to find a Sun workstation, I love the tower layout and look.

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

Remember our Art teacher having one of these, as she worked in the film industry on the weekends, i saw it once when i had to pick up an assignment from her, looked AWESOME and she had a really cool screensaver she rendered herself with it. Thanks Man for Video man, gave me some retro feels.

[@dannyberry8725]

did you also have a Mrs. Robinson moment?

[@mapesdhs597]

Steve & Patrick, thanks for the excellent video! I hope the following can help clarify a few things about what I sent... I should have mentioned better that the parts I sent excluded all aspects of the main metal chassi and external plastics, so it was just the internals. A complete Indigo2 system would look rather different. :D I thought it would be more fun though to send just the internals, a 1994 tech jigsaw puzzle. The CPU is an R4400 with 1MB L2 (there was a later version of the 200MHz with 2MB L2, then a final version at 250MHz with 2MB L2 before the R8000 and R10000 models). The R4000 you mentioned was an earlier 100MHz CPU (first used in the older IRIS Indigo and Crimson systems) which, though it normally had the same 1MB L2, had half the L1 and was thus quite a lot slower than the R4400. Even the R4400 at 100MHz was a good bit faster due to it's larger L1. Worse, there was also briefly an R4000 100MHz option used in the Indy system that had no L2 at all, but that was so awful it was quickly ditched in favour of the version with 1MB. See my benchmarks to see just how bad the CPUs without L2 performed: www.sgidepot.co.uk/perfcomp.html SGI did make a later CPU for Indy (the R4600) which was so much stronger for int that the lack of L2 in the 'PC' versions of the CPUs (R4600PC 100MHz and 133MHz) wasn't too bad most of the time, but even so the R4600SC 133MHz with 512K L2 was much better (similar int performance to the R4400 at 175MHz). The R4600SC/133 was used in Indigo2 aswell for a time, but it's extremely rare. Like the R8000 "chipset" CPU model for POWER Indigo2 (very strong for FP64), SGI had planned faster models, but all of them were ditched in favour of the R10000 which was just so much better anyway, even when used in the suboptimal Indigo2 platform. Btw, a curiosity: if one has an Indigo2 with too old a PROM chip fitted, the PROM will "see" the R4K/250MHz as being 300MHz. This happened to me once, I thought I'd found some ultra rare custom system, but once IRIX was booted entering "hinv" in the OS of course could see the correct 250MHz just fine. Aww... Note that back then, L2 cache was of course horriby expensive, so models like the R4K with 2MB, and the R8K (2MB in Indigo2, 4MB in Onyx), commanded serious premiums. See: www.sgidepot.co.uk/depot/prices2.gif Curious, in that list the R4K/200 1MB (like the one I sent) has already been replaced by the 2MB model. Btw, in the later Octane system, the crossbar chip has 2MB of the same type of L2 RAM on each port of the crossbar (16MB in all), one reason why Octane was so expensive, 16MB of that kind of RAM in the late 90s was not cheap (plus whatever the CPU module had). SGI's biggest problem with MIPS in general was the CPU designs were hard to clock up. DEC had a much easier time with its Alpha design, though the early 21064 had a tiny L1 which ruined performance much like the small L1 did in the original R4000 (the later 21264 was way better and a real competitor for a time). It took SGI a long time to get usefully faster clocked R10K CPUs released (partly because Intel nabbed a 3rd of SGI's CPU design team during 1996/7, to bolster their talent pool for the IA64 programme), indeed with the later O2 system SGI actually went backwards from Indigo2's R10K/195, initially offering 150MHz, 175MHz and 195MHz options for O2. SGI didn't actually want to use R10K in O2 at all (it was not designed for that platform, the mismatch in the memory arch damages FP performance when used in O2, though int tasks run ok), but numerous big customers demanded it because it did run so much better than the far cheaper R5000 model. See: www.sgidepot.co.uk/r10kcomp.html O2 topped out officially with the R12000 400MHz (2MB L2), though hobbyists enabled the use of the R7000 600MHz (roughly the same performance). In theory the O2 could use up to a dual-core 1GHz R9000, or a 1.5GHz single-core Sandcraft, but that would need the source code of the O2's PROM to be made available and sadly SGI point blank refused to do this (no matter how many SGI employees supported the idea, because many did). O2 was a wasted platform in this regard, it had great potential but SGI let it die an unwarranted death, mainly via the truly awful O2+ launch (which wasn't any kind of upgrade at all), much as they did with their NT-based VW320/540 systems (same architecture as O2, but 10x faster gfx), made worse via terrible marketing and a bad sales model. You mentioned SGI's failure to pursue consumer gfx tech; I think though that even if they had, in the end it would not have worked out, not unless they ditched their reseller sales model, and that would have been very difficult, the resellers held quite a lot of sway over how the company operated. Uh oh, I sense my veering towards a rant about SGI's numerous screwups... :} 3:10 - These are the locking screws. Once undone (along with the 2 small screws from the PCB on the side), the whole module just lifts off, though one has to pull upwards firmly where it connects to the socket. 4:05 - Thanks! :D

[@Blustride]

Well this was unexpected... Glad to hear SGI Depot is still around. Got alerted to Ian by LGR with _his_ Indigo 2 episode a few years ago, and was never quite sure if the company was will in service. You never really can be too sure when the website was designed *on* an old SGI machine.

[@mapesdhs597]

Thanks! Yep, still alive. :D Been tied up somewhat with family matters for a while, slowly getting back into the groove this year I hope.

[@MarkRose1337]

@@mapesdhs597 Maybe post a video of stuff you have on your channel? I'm subscribing just in case you do!

[@mapesdhs597]

@@MarkRose1337 That could take a while; atm I'm somewhat immersed in family matters. Someday maybe though.

[@IanTester]

Anyone familiar with Linux (or Linux-based NASes) will have probably heard of the XFS filesystem. Well that also came from SGI, ported by them to Linux in their later years. It was originally designed for their big servers and is still a very good filesystem.

[@FuzedBox]

SGI deserves fame for being the driving force behind both Jurassic Park and the original Donkey Kong Country games. Two staples of many childhoods, SGI was used for the first time in film and game industries with these two franchises.

[@omg_wtf_not_now]

Exactly!!!

[@davmar9923]

In 1992 I convinced the management the Silicon Valley tech company I worked for, in the Engineering department, to switch from designing products with pencil and paper to Computer Aided Design. After reviewing various offerings we selected a product from, then, Hewlett-Packard Mechanical Design Division called ME30/10 (ME30 was the 3D modeling app and ME10 was the companion computer-aided drafting app). The systems used dedicated HP hardware operating under HP-UX. The under desk boxes consisted of separate CPU and GPU enclosures stacked in a case about the size of a bar refrigerator. The GPU unit was larger than the CPU. The displays were 19" CRT's. I think the systems for the 3D modeling app cost about $30,000 each. Separate workstations for the drafting department that ran only the drafting app cost a little less and used 16" CRT's. Today, I use a grandchild of that app, Creo Elements/Direct Modeling and Drafting (now owned by Parametric Technology Corp.), on a PC that I assembled for about $2,000, that uses an NVidia Quatro mid-range graphics card. The display is a 30" HD Monitor/HDTV (Not included in the cost of the PC). The current system has significantly better graphics performance than did the uber-priced systems of yesteryear.

[@bloozism]

Old school mainboards are so alien in their design. Absolutely fascinating video to watch.

[@miguelangelriveiro]

I did work on the Indi and the O2 back in the day. Man, they were Light years ahead of the rest... Feeling really old right now.

[@mapesdhs597]

I know the feeling. :D Just turned 50; I really should get the chassi & cases sent to them before I kick the bucket!

[@beatingcancer1180]

I do remember when the (sadly unreleased) Amiga "AAA" chipset was in development everyone was comparing it to lower end SGI systems. Early 90's hype train! :). Love the retro power computing dive, looking forward to the next one :)

[@whatmakesittick8362]

I had an SGI system once. I got it from a neighbor that wanted a working pc, and had this given to him from a company he worked for. No hard drives, and no monitor. I knew the name SGI as being valuable, so I told him I would build another windows PC for him in exchange for the SGI. The system I built was from used parts out of customer PCs that I had gotten for free. I ended up selling it in 2003 or so on Ebay for $600!!! Today that's around a grand! And the neighbor got what he wanted too, complete rig with monitor, and all accessories. I never told the guy that old machine was worth so much. I don't feel bad at all.

[@mapesdhs597]

Cool! Can you remember what model the SGI was? What it looked like?

[@whatmakesittick8362]

@@mapesdhs597Wow I just looked at the Ebay sale pics I had stored... It's NOT an SGI after all. It was a Sun Blade 1000 workstation. The internals are similar. Shows how the memory can fail over time. At least I'm honest and can say I was wrong however!

[@adacPROKYON]

cant wait for the can it run crysis comments

[@jubeh]

Will it run Golden Eye 64?

[@ClellBiggs]

Spoiler warning: It can't. lol

[@klobiforpresident2254]

Can it run Quake?

[@-Kerstin]

Will it run Doom? Edit: Yes it will :p

[@macsek666]

i thought the 3. comment is about crysis. not disappointed :D:D:D

[@FarrellMcGovern]

The opening credits to both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager were done using SGI computers. In fact, the first element of the DS9 opening credits, that fly-by of a rock spewing small particles was originally a demo on SGI workstations to show off the real-time graphics capability of the SGI systems. I worked for an SGI dealer, as a Unix guy who also didn't mind getting his hands dirty working on the innards of the hardware. I said then, and I still say it now, SGI made some of the prettiest computers out there. Apple is a pale imitator, at best.

[@ItsJustElenore]

90s CGI style rendered GN intro incoming?

[@chapel4533]

I work as a Director of Information Technology for a glass mould designer and manufacturer. We have half a dozen SGI O2 systems that were just decommissioned two years ago. When I first started here, we had a room in storage with ancient SGI hardware. I have seen and worked with it all! Ha ha.

[@m-aloyer5455]

A small note, SGI did make a GPU-ish that ended up in consumers hands, the "Reality" processor in the Nintendo 64. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Coprocessor Great content there, I love to see the guts of these old crazy expensive ancient machines. It remind me that I almost scored an Indy for a few hundreds, while in school, when a video game studio closed in my region, but I was slightly short on money... I would have loved to thinker on these systems !

[@AnonymousDisparity]

One of my first on-site jobs was installing 12x Indigo2 Extreme systems for Dream Works labs in Australia :)

[@FSK1138]

this is a blast from the past!!! , i had a chance to work on a few of these machines " back in the day " at the time i knew a.i. was just around the corner .... i can't really express to you the amount of power these machines had, or the feeling or booting and using a workstation like this gave you... it felt alive . but . most phones of today are faster and all people do is facebook and twitter .

[@mapesdhs597]

Glad you enjoyed it! 8)

[@ericwood3709]

Wow! Gamers Nexus working on an SGI workstation! That's a fun little surprise. I've messed around with an O2 workstation that I bought and fixed up, though not too extensively. They run A UNIX SYSTEM! (Jurassic Park reference, and yes, that movie features an SGI as the UNIX system in question). By the way, the MIPS architecture was also featured in the N64 and PS2 consoles, and in other workstations of the time. Windows NT was released for MIPS and various other architectures, there was so much competition and variety in CPU architectures back then.

[@mapesdhs597]

The PS1 had an R3000 main controller, but I'm curious, what is it that's MIPS related in the PS2?

[@ericwood3709]

@@mapesdhs597 The CPU, according to Wikipedia, is "MIPS III R5900-based" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2_technical_specifications#Central_processing_unit

[@thevortexATM]

what an amazing system, great video Steve!

[@fryode]

Ian's a good guy. He's pretty much the SGI God. I learned a lot from him during my early days at the Nekochan forum where my handle was misterdna.

[@BaDitO2]

IT'S A UNIX SYSTEM, I KNOW THIS!

[@Wingnut353]

Turn the radio on,

[@bur1t0]

That file manager is included on Irix, Steve missed out by not loading it.

[@hydrochloricacid2146]

@@bur1t0 I think you mean the SM64 file select menu

[@tkolbe73]

The fun part is that the 3D navigation of the filesystem was an actual part of IRIX

[@rowanrobinson]

Steve should get a Cray

[@ianskinner1619]

i used these in the late 90's to do film and TV work in Toronto. I've used the 02, Indy, Octane and indigos all amazing machines for the time, as long as you had enough RAM , these would never crash.. it wasn't long after that Alias|wavefront came out with Maya and both that and Softimage name an NT version. ( the death of SGI was close at hand)

[@drunkredninja]

my old ibms were built the same way using multiple daughter boards and tape drives. this video is inspiring me to bring it out of storage.

[@mapesdhs597]

I keep hoping IBM will enter the GPU market, and I really like their Power CPU series.

[@ILMsux]

I used to have two of these plus an Onyx workstation. In roughly 2008-2009 I couldn't get them sold on eBay so I ended up tossing them into a dumpster behind an ULTA. Tears were shed.

[@tooitchy]

Holy crap this is cool, for 1993 this thing would have been insane for 3d rendering, and physics simulations.

[@mapesdhs597]

Yes, very much the sort of thing they were used for, along with a great many sold for CAD (lots of car companies used them). I remember visiting a place that used POWER R8000 Indigo2 Extreme systems with CrystalEyes for processing visualising 3D GIS datasets, though an oil company I knew in Nigeria used Octanes for this later, along with a POWER Onyx rack to handle the larger datasets (massively faster than any PC for the task back then, processing 1GB texture volume datasets on the Octanes).

[@dmtd2388]

back then when PCs and Macs was back in there stone ages doing word processing and basic tasks while big Amigas 3000s and 4000s workstations and Silicon Graphics was doing History in hollywood 1992 by fully rendering CGI Jurassic Park using Amiga and Sgi workstations for pre render and final render on SGI farms even smaller Amigas 1200 home office was way ahead of its time from pcs for gaming

[@joe--cool]

Season 1-3 of Babylon 5 was rendered on networked AMIGAs using Video Toaster expansion cards.

[@mapesdhs597]

@@joe--cool It's strange how one comes across contradictory info about this. Recenty I read an article which said only season 1 was rendered with Amiga hw, after that the same sw was used but with different hw. Truth probably lies somewhere inbetween. One can't rely on wiki sites, I've seen numerous errors on such sites about SGI stuff.

[@joe--cool]

I could be wrong. The first 3 seasons were rendered at Foundation Imaging maybe they used other machines later before Netter Digital Imaging was doing S4 and up. Apart from the pilot where I saw footage of Amigas and an Article in some print zine I don't have any reliable sources. I guess we could ask the people who made it ;) I know NDI had DEC Alphas and Pentiums. You're most likely right. My bad.

[@whydoihavetodothisannoying]

Once worked in a place that did sell second-hand high-end components, really crazy to see someone fly in by plane or get carried halfway across the continent by taxi to pick up 20-year-old hardware because somewhere out there a factory is standing still after one of this dinosaur parts broke. Or the amount of money someone is willing to spend on a serial network interface of a certain make because whatever software they are running was build to only work with this one part and even slightly different models that may even have the same spec won't do.

[@kamui004]

Good old times back in college where they had a couple of computer labs full of SGI indigo 2s. Some of the most expensive and underused stuff there. Not many courses used them and they didn't have any incentive to add more CAD/CGI courses. Incidentally I associate the Octane name with their workstations, it took me a while for me to get to switch that association to Intel's Octane memory.

[@mapesdhs597]

A lab of Indigo2s?? Blimey! I ran a lab of Indys for a while at a university. You're right though, most edu places grossly underused SGI tech when it was obtained. I found too many lecturers just didn't care, they couldn't see the potential. Often other departments could see and tried to do something constructive, but getting different depts. to cooperate can be very difficult in academia. Re Octane, note the Intel name is Optane, not Octane. ;) Btw, as I type this I have a dual-600/V12 less than a foot away, destined for a hobbyist in the US.

[@gophop]

It's interesting how different components of a graphics system we know today were physical parts, interconnected via traces or sockets, originally. Pretty much everything on those 3 graphics boards is now on a single die. Thousands times more powerful. It's mind blowing, really. This gives a perspective when thinking about terms like a "frame buffer" or a "raster engine." Those things used to be tangible, beefy chips and circuits. Now they're behind silicone and might as well be software terms.

[@witnesszer0]

at 28:26 looks a lot like mario 64 main menu tiles

[@madfinntech]

Because it is exactly that!

[@mycosys]

@@BridgetSculpts yup, and MIPS was an SGI subsidiary, they designed the CPUs for the N64, PS and PS2 under SGI ownership

[@joesterling4299]

Yes. The Nintendo N64 was developed by SGI. Its original dev platform was the Indigo ("Indy") with some added hardware. Here's some interesting history: medium.com/@AguyinaRPG/the-nintendo-64-was-the-culmination-of-90s-virtual-reality-1271aca6f762

[@luiscipher4855]

I was lucky to stumble upon and buy 6 different SGI systems, a couple of purple Indigo 2, couple of indys, one being R5000, one Octane and one O2, One SGI monitor, KB and mouse and one high end 21" graphics workstation monitor from SUN. Most of it is in running condition and since I'm currently abroad I did not have much time to play with it. But, certainly looking forward to it :)

[@mapesdhs597]

Congrats!! If you need any help with OS installs, I can do that (for a fee. ;)

[@MizoxNG]

SGI also made the N64 hardware, which mostly consisted of customized and stripped down versions of their workstation parts

[@PeterBrockie]

90's SGI was great. They were a lot like how Apple used to be - not giving a fuck about what it takes to get it built right, tons of in-house chips, etc. Sun, Amiga, SGI, Sony, and Apple were all HUGE on making their own chips for everything from sound to basic disk controllers. A couple things off the top of my head done in the 90's with SGI machines (although specifically I think the Challenge super computer series) are the bridge explosions in True Lies and the sprites in Donkey Kong Country (DKC used 3D scans/models which were rendered out to normal 2D sprites for the SNES).

[@Teluric2]

Not giving a fuck how much it cost? You re not talking about apple dont you? Comparing apple to sgi is sick. Sgi is a VS model and apple is a local dancr chick.

[@rars0n]

Rare Limited, the game company responsible for games like GoldenEye64 and later... Kinect Sports... actually bought a couple of SGI workstations and used them to create awesome games like Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct. Also, SGI was responsible for designing the Nintendo 64 hardware itself (often cited as being "1/4th of an SGI workstation" and was originally shopped to Sega before they rejected it and SGI turned to Nintendo). Sorry, SGI stuff fascinates me and I can't help but spout some gaming history. Just to note, Rare had a bunch of great games long before the SNES, including RC Pro Am for the NES.

[@mapesdhs597]

Ironic as I ended up visiting NOA before the N64 launched (there was a time when the only web page about the console available via the search engine of the day, which was Yahoo, was mine; I left the page locked on my site as a sort of time capsule): www.gamers.org/dhs/usavisit/ If I'd been able to send GN an IMPACT system instead then I guess that would have been a more interesting comparison with regard to the N64, though I think the N64 is closer to HighIMPACT than Max. Maybe not even as fast as a High. Hard to know what SGI was referring to (I never found out).

[@TheRestartPoint]

Cool. SGI was used for tonnes of excellent stuff like Terminator 2 & Jurassic Park, and they were involved in the N64! You might notice at 28:25 the similarity of the menu system to that of Mario 64....this is not a coincidence. I remember when they first reported this we were all very excited to be playing games that looked like Jurassic Park but after the few years it took to see the finished console, the reality wasn't quite the same :)

[@theseabass]

These types of systems would have been used to create the pre rendered 3d graphics for games that would be mapped to a 2d Sprite, with the SNES Donkey Kong Country games being a good example. Also a quick tip for being able to capture footage from sync on green, you can use something like an Extron Rxi RGB interface (201 or 203 models work fine) to convert the RGsB signal (sync on green) to either RGBs or RGBHV (VGA) for capture cards/converters that can capture those. Alternatively, something like the Open Source Scan Converter (OSSC) can take sync on green natively and convert it to a digital signal that can be captured via HDMI. I just thought I'd let you know in case you were looking to do some extensive content with these systems.

[@jolesco]

I bought an SGI Octane SE back in 2003 for US $500. The list price in 1997 was about US $20k (quote by SGI) In some ways it was the dream machine, finally in my hands

[@wsippel]

Nvidia wasn't the only consumer graphics spinoff. Dr. Wei Yen, who led the Nintendo 64 project at SGI (he was also lead dev behind OpenGL), left SGI to form ArtX, the company responsible for Flipper, the GPU used in the Gamecube and Wii. ArtX was later bought by ATI, and their technology served as the basis for the R300. He was also on ATI's board of directors.

[@dmtd2388]

nvidia bought out all sgi graphic division technology and its engineers they work still there now

[@nimrodery]

@@dmtd2388 Silicon Graphics Inc. assets were bought by Silicon Graphics International. In 2016 HP paid $275 million to buy SGI. Pretty high price for a company with no assets.

[@dmtd2388]

@@nimrodery i know that but graphics engineers all went to NVIDIA

[@nimrodery]

@@dmtd2388 Source?

[@Carstuff111]

My last Neurosurgeon visit, many years ago in Little Rock, Arkansas...I am pretty sure they were using SGI equipment now that I think back on it. I caught glimpses behind the scenes (as it were) because I was always wanting to learn how the MRI equipment worked and all the other imaging machines.... I am pretty sure even till about 2008 ish I saw SGI equipment, and I am pretty sure my last visit to have some imaging done, my Urologist was still using SGI computers for his old equipment, and I think till at least 2015 one of the local hospitals had some SGI equipment. I could be wrong, but I would not be surprised to learn it was SGI stuff either.

[@mapesdhs597]

You're likely not wrong, medical scanner systems is still one of the main continuing use cases of SGIs worldwide, mainly O2, Indigo2 and Fuel. A hospital in France told me upgrading to any PC based setup would mean replacing the scanner aswell, and that would be vastly more expensive, plus they'd need to recertify the whole setup for H&S. Much cheaper and easier to just keep the old SGI rig going for as long as possible. Similar issues define all remaining industrial process control uses of SGIs, such as textile manufacturing, PCB production, etc.

[@montymousester]

That makes me miss my diamond stealth 4mb up-gradable to 8mb and 3dfx add on card so much.... moreso my original diamond stealth 1mb. The days before vesa busses :D

[@mapesdhs597]

Just to give you some idea btw, the gfx for Onyx in that era had up to 160MB VRAM per pipe, with a max of three pipes per system. :D The texture memory was separate, either 4MB or later 16MB, before everything was replaced by the newer InfiniteReality tech (which then became the foundation for the Geforce256 when SGI people moved to NVIDIA).

[@detaart]

I have two octane2s sitting around and i used to have an indigo2 solid impact (r10k). They are wonderful machines. Very impressive for their time, but extremely outdated by today's standards. The firmware is very clever too. Not only is it graphical, but it also has something called sash (stand-alone shell), complete with networking, from which you can mount the operating system's filesystems and mess around if the system ever became unbootable. In fact, you use this environment to install irix. Very interesting series. Subscribed.

[@mapesdhs597]

Ironic, I'm doing exactly that with an R3K Indigo this evening, darn thing refuses to boot from the file system. :D Boots to the sash ok, but then, nada.

[@cozy_kat]

shame that you mentioned SGI folks leaving to form Nvidia but you forgot about 3DFX, also founded by some very notable SGI employees and a pretty big player in consumer 3d graphics in the 90s (and later bought out by Nvidia iirc).

[@totalermist]

3dfx Interactive went proper bankrupt. It's true, though that NVIDIA bought most of their assets.

[@Argoon1981]

@@totalermist went bankrupt with the help of Nvidia...

[@rogerwilco2]

Yes, they seem quite oblivious about some important history of what they're discussing.

[@KokoroKatsura]

a n i m e n i m e

[@blargblarghonk]

I know someone who works in biomedical field. I'll have to ask him the last time he saw one of these units. I'm sure he's worked on them before. Old tech is fun.

[@jordanwharton5286]

Nintendo seems to have borrowed that Button Fly menu system for Mario 64 from their N64 SGI dev kits!

[@parrottm76262]

Man, I miss my Indigo2. I had one for my daily work when @ Boeing.

[@michaelwoods7770]

I bet it performs better than the verge pc. Despite its age.

[@mapesdhs597]

Absolutely true. 8) Btw, my first proper computer was an Indigo2 (R4K/250 with 384MB RAM, Elan gfx which I upgraded to Extreme, 4GB disk); in the 4 years I used it as my main desktop I never had a single crash or major OS error of any kind. I sent GN a slightly lesser spec though, but with the better Extreme gfx. My system still works to this day (indeed most of the Indigo2s I have, several dozen, still work fine), though it's buried in the garage somewhere; my current SGIs are a dual-1GHz rackmount Tezro and an R7K/600 O2, but I use a 2700K PC for most general daily tasks now.

[@stoneymahoney9106]

My brother did some military contracting around about the time this thing was new. He worked with a "graphics card" that had 1GB of memory and was reportedly the size of a 330ml can vending machine. Haven't got the faintest clue what that would have been.

[@smiththers2]

i love seeing vintage hardware!

[@BlahBleeBlahBlah]

Rare used SGI workstations to create and render the 3D sprites for the Donkey Kong Country games. The pre-rendered 3D sprites helped keep SNES sales going until the Nintendo 64. Speaking of the N64, Nintendo worked with SGI to create the “Reality Co-Processor” which performed graphics and audio processing.

[@iidxstyle]

I absolutely love any sort of dive into older, and sometimes even historic, hardware. It's fascinating to experience or see what the pinnacle of tech was back during that time, how well some of it actually holds up relatively speaking, and is super nostalgic for the crowd that's a bit on the older side these days like myself haha. Takes me back to being a kid installing Windows 3.1 from a tower of floppy discs >_< Great stuff as always GN crew and hope you guys do some more classic tech videos like this in the future!

[@jonathanwhiteside6092]

I've got a couple of Octanes here, one of which Ian helped me get running again :)

[@mapesdhs597]

Most welcome! 8)

[@johnpapichulo6140]

In 1994: 3D Icons, in 2019: 2D Icons , Thanks Windows designers.

[@diamondblack3776]

apparently, progress is a reverse gear... been through all this since 84.

[@totalermist]

Thanks indeed - you really don't want the 90's back when it comes to icon design. I'm still traumatised to this day... media.giphy.com/media/Mw9vlG6NGjXDW/giphy.gif

[@totalermist]

@@PredatoryQQmber Fair enough. I'm a little challenged on the association side of things. I have no memory or acquired reflexes that would allow me to associate "Update", "Security", "Privacy" or "Personalisation" with colourful, tangible 3d depictions of ... stuff. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@lashyndragon]

90s-early2000s: UI options are clearly labeled with text Today: "We'll just use icons and arrows"

[@solarstrike33]

Those PS2 memory card saves...

[@spankroy]

Irix was one of the best commercial Unix's around. We had to use some Irix machines for some chemical modeling software way back in the day for a class I was taking. I remember an SGI rep came to our school at the time with a special deal to get an Indy with SoftWindows to emulate Windows. I really wanted it but, even with the student discount it was more than a really nice Pentium Pro system. I wonder how many people realize that Google's current headquarters used to be the old SGI headquarters.

[@ahtzee9078]

It’s crazy to think that we have much more power in our smartphones today. Amazing how technology advances.

[@mapesdhs597]

@Michael Hansen These days people just gawp at their FB updates and long for ever higher retweets. We have powerful tech in our hands today, but use them for grossly trivial purposes. Curious to think how different it was when home micros were all the rage - far more limited in what they could do, but people squeezed everything out of them that they could, home brew coders, hw control projects, all sorts of things.

[@SeanCC]

Had one of these on my desk, and later an Octane, through most of the '90s. This one is very similar to what I had '93-97 with Xtreme graphics. Did lots of work on it for film. It's ironic that SGI couldn't pivot to deal with the threat from DEC by the mid '90s, and then Intel and Motorola/IBM by the end of the '90s. PCs did to them what they did to the mainframe and minicomputers in the '80s. In '99/00 I used their attempt to compete, a quirky dual-Xeon SGI that was at least faster than any of our Indigos and Octanes but by the beginning of the '00s everyone was replacing their SGI hardware with Linux workstations and either Quadro or FireGL boards. And they didn't do 3D near as elegantly as SGI, but you couldn't argue with the price and speed advantage.

[@user78405]

nintendo engineers also work with SGI also with Jenson was there too..even SEGA folks as well...they all departed due to opportunity for consumer version of theirs....and down fall for SGI hardware while software continue developed as OPENGL..then company bankrupt sold OPENGL to group that was longest unreleased for version 2.0 till 2010...then group reform catchup quick with adding SM2.0 through increment updates while major re-haul entire library on version 4.0 to support sm3.0, 4.0 and 5.0

[@FranksReactions]

I remember I was at a PC conference in the late 90s(?) where SGI showed off a spinning cow demo. At least then they knew it was coming to consumer PCs as the rep told me I could have it in my PC just a few years later. I remember it was hard believing it, but he was right.

[@spoozilla]

Listening to PC guys talk about Unix workstations from the 90's is a little painful. Nice to see one of these getting some TLC though.

[@mapesdhs597]

I did think it would be an interesting contrast though, to see where some of modern tech came from, eg. IrisGL (the 3D demos shown) eventually becoming OpenGL, SGI had the first webified desktop, they tried to kickstart stuff like VRML, etc. Many of the things they did were a failure of course, but it was an interesting time. Mind you, much of the time the cool stuff they started only failed because SGI didn't run with it. This was especially true of the many excellent supplied tools included with the Indy (Digital Media Tools), they never properly updated them for later systems, which was a real shame because if they had then something like an O2, without any commercial sw at all, would have been a potent competitor to a Mac with an expensive Adobe setup (O2 has OGL ARB imaging extensions included as standard, as do all SGIs with hw texture mapping, something I wish I could have demonstrated by sending a MaxIMPACT system instead, but I didn't have any spare and atm they're still rather valuable).

[@spoozilla]

The concept was sound. I just wish they'd done a little more research before making the video, given they clearly had access to your excellent website. The lack of knowledge of product stack is forgivable but the camera literally pointing at the audio jacks as we hear the words "no audio out"... gah. You're not wrong on the wasted opportunity that SGI had. I still have my I2 Max Impact as well as an Indy and an Octane, and although I don't use them daily anymore they still get fired up from time to time. I had to sell my Onyx deskside (which I bought from you, a great but very impractical machine), that would have been a very interesting strip down for them.

[@mapesdhs597]

@@spoozilla You got an Onyx from me? Blimey! :D Heh, yeah, I kinda blame myself though for the audio thing, I completely forgot to mention audio in the large web page of instructions I wrote for them. And I know what you mean about still using SGIs, I have many, main one being a dual-1GHz rackmount Tezro, but my main daily general task machines are a 2700K PC and an HTPC with a Haswell i5. The Tezro is too loud, takes too long too boot and the browser support means many modern web sites don't work properly. Infact I plan on reverting back to using my R7K/600 O2 as my main SGI, while moving my main user account data from the Tezro to a NAS.

[@spoozilla]

Yup, a quad R4400 deskside with a two RM4'ed Reality Engine 2. It ended it's time with me fully stacked, a quad R10K, 2GB RAM and 4 RM5s. It was an absolutely beautiful machine, but too damn big and power hungry. I was lusting after one of the quad 1Ghz "Desktop" Tezros, but I think I've settled on my 3 machines now. The Indigo2 is the closest thing I have to an SGI daily driver these days. The lack of a reasonably modern browser and no tap interface pretty much killed IRIX for me. Most of my daily stuff is split between a Pi2 and a Thinkpad x230 both running FreeBSD.

[@antmax]

I remember having a fancy Pentium Pro with Matrox Millenium at college around the time this computer was out. The school of 3D and Furniture Design had one of these and an O2 in the department. None of the students got to use it. The technicians played with it, but it spent most of its time hooked up to a CNC machine carving out Burns guitar bodies lol. The Pentium Pro and 3DS Max v1 was out around then and was pretty groundbreaking at the time. So was the Matrox Millenium. I had one at home along with the first Voodoo card for gaming. It's great seeing this video, back then these computers were the rolls royce of 3D workstations and stuff we could only dream of. So there was a certain mystique about them. Especially when films like Terminator 2, Jurassic Park and Twister had been out for a while.

[@trisymphony]

28:26 „it‘s a unix system, I know this!“

[@RyoHazuki224]

Man, those things were built like a tank! Gotta love pre-standardized ports and connectors! LOL

[@mapesdhs597]

By far the most reliable and robust desktop SGI ever made. People praise IRIS Indigo for the same reasons, but Indigo2 definitely has a more robust PSU, pretty much all the R4K Indigo2s I have (like the one I sent) are still working just fine. The oldest are R4000/100MHz systems, but where there are faults it's usually just a bad memory SIMM.

[@charlesballiet7074]

wow a triple wide card in 94 thats nuts

[@mogFX]

28:26 for those of you wondering why button fly looks so familiar, think back to the save game screen from Super Mario 64 a game that ran on SGI hardware. Or perhaps you remember it better from Jurassic Parks interactive CD ROM inside the tour Jeep, a movie with effects rendered on Silicon Graphics equipment. I believe it was also the first film to have SGI hardware on screen with a couple of SGI machines in the control room in front of the gorgeous CM-5. It also had a pivotal role to play in the plot as the Unix system used to lock the doors, running fsn fusion a file viewer app made for SGI systems.

[@cisseshairdresser]

“Greetings. And welcome to an LGR thing......”

[@williammurdock3028]

SGI made a great Flight simulator that was pretty cool for the time with a multi monitor display that was at most demos that they did. Are media group have several workstations.

[@kght222]

23:49 eisa is just as 32bit version of isa, it is pin compatible, you should check out the pins on that board. eisa pins interlock so that they sit in the same alignment as normal 16bit isa, but of course you could never put an eisa board in an isa socket, but isa works fine, it is pin compatible. throw a soundblaster at it =P

[@psyolent.]

....remember vesa local bus :)

[@kght222]

@@psyolent. vlb was the more common 32bit implementation before pci. i used to have a bunch of microchannel stuff too. ps/2 systems could run REALLY slick.

[@psyolent.]

@@kght222 thats right it was too. yes mate MCA was WAY ahead of its time in the PS2s. I wish i still had my Model 95. I've still got my M keyboards though.

[@kght222]

@Michael Hansen i certainly believe you, although they did specifically mention a lack of sound hardware at the time stamp i gave: 23:49. while they certainly couldn't have been running x86 software (it is an arm proc; risc) they were running doom and a few other pieces of software compatible with some really simple sound implementation, because it is directly addressed. perhaps you didn't notice them complain about not having good sound.

[@mapesdhs597]

@@kght222 They were wrong about the sound hw (all the ports are at the back, and actually in view), and I think what Steve meant about the audio was just the quality of the internal speaker, which is indeed very basic. The onboard audio hw is extremely high quality (A2 audio chip), supporting 4 channel stereo, etc. See section 3.6 of the Indigo2 Technical Report: www.sgidepot.co.uk/i2.html To be fair though, kinda my goof really, I completely forgot to mention the audio hw when I wrote the instructions for them. And btw, plug in proper speakers at the back, Doom sounds great. :)

[@coolcreeper9874]

DoD still uses some SillyGraphics systems for old architectures that would cost too much to develop with new OS, storage, hardware etc. I helped upgrade a large room of SillyGraphics servers to 2 racks of modern equipment. Quite amazing

[@mapesdhs597]

A few months ago I was contacted by a US defense contractor looking for a complete gfx set for a 4D series machine. Even I was surprised they were still using SGIs that old, though it wasn't that long ago when BAe finally stopped using their Crimson and IRIS Indigo systems, and CAe OZ is still using SGIs for some of their stuff. Industrial companies continue to use SGIs quite a lot, including old Personal IRIS systems, though most are Indy, Indigo2 and O2.

[@igloo2962]

This is insane!

[@cozy_kat]

I love these old SGI workstations, my local museum has a running example and it's great fun to mess around with

[@mapesdhs597]

Cool!! Do you know what model/spec it is?