SiliconGraphics O2 Vintage Workstation - It's a UNIX System, I Know This

[@gullf1sk]

Wow this kid is a PROPER nerd, rare breed today

[@dogriffiths]

This bloke genuinely gives me hope for the future.

[@The_Laser_Channel]

wow...this is the first video i have watched on this channel....and I was shocked to see how young he was. Awesome to see someone so young that is interested in these niche machines (or older computers at all)...seems younger people these days that are into computers just care about 4K gaming and VR...

[@Dodoid]

Well, I do like my $17 Chinese Google Cardboard knockoff and the monitors you see behind me are 4K (that's for video editing though, not gaming), but hey, nothing wrong with new and old tech. That's basically what this channel is, although I've talked about a lot of old stuff lately.

[@EduardoDudaSilva]

In 2006 I worked on an O2 like this, on a local TV station. (weather forecast "automation"). I didn't realize how powerful it was, beside its age (about 10 years), it was already a dinossaur.

[@eherrmann01]

i worked in the robotics department at a major shipyard in the 90's. We used SGI machines including the O2 and the Indy for 3d modeling. They were great machines, and I still miss the Irix OS. I got my first taste of Unix on them as well as the actual robot controllers which ran command line Unix with no GUI.

[@juanpaulomardonez9151]

My 3 O2 are still beautiful and rest on my desktop as a reminder of how I started with Power Animator 7 in 1996!

[@trenken]

Same. Why 3 though? I had an o2 but by the late 2000s the insides were all rusted.

[@juanpaulomardonez9151]

Tim Renken I have an animation company (many computers). Back in the day, while doing maintenance To them I saw a lot of condensation inside, the more humidity the worse! Lol

[@mapesdhs597]

Thanks for the video! Worth noting that the O2 *was* intended from the beginning to be heavily used by the medical industry, because its UMA design meant it was ideal for processing volumetric data sets (I've sent quite a few O2s and parts therein to hospitals in the US, Canada and all over the world). Before the O2 launched, I talked to a surgeon in South Africa who was helping test the O2 for SGI; he told me that the O2's performance when dealing with MRI datasets meant he could cut the time taken to prepare scan data for a report from an hour to just five minutes - live saving stuff. Also note that when O2 launched, its UMA design meant that it was 4X faster than the best PC one could buy at the time (Intergraph) for Challice/Shake, holding several benchmark records for some time before PC gfx raw performance finally caught up. Even then though, O2 was still good for some tasks many years later, eg. ILM told me they liked using them for compositing, and a properly updated O2 (eg. using Cobalt from the VW320 and a CPU like the R9000) would have been something ILM would have bought a "truck load" of ("We could edit 2K in cache!", the ILM guy told me, hoping that SGI would release a newer system with a CPU containing 16MB L2, something IBM said was perfectly possible, but of course it sadly never happened). Other industrial tasks where O2 excelled (and still used today) are image processing and textile manufacture. Many of the O2 spares I sell go to textile companies. People probably think 3D when they consider SGIs, but a lot of companies have to work with very large 2D datasets (same applies to defense imaging, though they tended to use Octane/Onyx2). Or sometimes it's the video processing combined with the video I/O that's relevant, eg. I know of a pig slaughter house which uses an O2 to process UV video data for calculating muscle mass/position, controlling the cutting machines and preparing more accurate and fair payment data for farmers. Then there's GIS for which O2 was well suited as a low-cost alternative to Octane. This was before VPro came out, so the larger VRAM capacity of VPro wasn't yet relevant. MXI could handle large texture sets very well, eg. Chevron Nigeria told me their Octanes could process 750MB datasets massively faster than any PC, but an Octane MXI was expensive. And of course there's the O2 that went into space! 8) The only COTS machine ever to do so AFAIK, though sadly it was one of the Mars probes that NASA lost because of their usual screwups (data entry mixup, metric/imperial, something like that, I forget). I did test rotating an 800MB 2D image one time on O2 and it worked ok, though of course not as smoothly as a more realistic workload such as a 4K (50MB) image. Still, it didn't barf, which it definitely would have done on a PC of that era (I remember people trying such things on GF4 PCs vs.VW320s which operate in the same way as O2, the latter were 100X faster for high-texture datasets in VR for urban modelling, mainly because of the use of large composite textures). Ian. PS. More arch details on my O2 info pages: www.sgidepot.co.uk/o2/

[@AndrewSchott]

GE Healthcare used these heavily. I should see if there are any at my location. I will pay for em :D Still working on getting some older Solaris rigs off one of the engineers.

[@johnmclelland661]

Keep up the good work kid. Get em. I like the format of your vids only thing I would say is I was nodding out and at the end your music scared the shit out of me so a little Loud on the outro compared too the rest of the vid. But over all this and the octane vid very well put together buddy. Keep it up.

[@christopherhenderson239]

As a nerdy UNIX obsessed teen in the 90s this was my dream machine I was never going to afford. Then I discovered the Linux project and made do with a almost but not quite homebrew project on my Intel PC in the years before it blew up to what it is now.

[@AlexSeibz]

A new interest of mine has been born! Awesome videos, dude.

[@scubyfan]

I loved you in Stranger Things

[@silicongraphics]

Henry G He was in stranger things?

[@Dodoid]

No he's referring to the fact that I practically never blink.

[@brianboni4876]

Another use for the O2 was as a graphical front end. If you ever see photos of a room full of 02s it's likely they were all logging on to a high power server that ran the heavy duty applications and the 02s only ran the graphics part. In my business we had a VAX computer the size of a filing cabinet running the VMS OS in another part of the building that did all the heavy number crunching and next to that computer was a dedicated file server in an even larger box. The room had its own power supply and cooling system and went years without needing to be rebooted.

[@Dodoid]

+Brian Boni I have seen pictures of Origin2000s with O2s as frontends. Never knew of use with non-SGI systems.

[@brianboni4876]

Any computer running the X Window System (X11, or shortened to simply X) will work. Load Quartz on your Mac and you can log into the Mac from your SGI and push an X window back to the SGI. A fast new Mac should be able to run a room full of O2s.

[@TheUglyGnome]

My company used O2s as OpenGL rendering servers for client programs running on Origin200 cluster in late '90s. It was a neat setup, because you still could use those O2s as workstations at the same time. The O2 on my desktop was even equipped with the video I/O card. Then one day an IRIX upgrade had some bug and video card couldn't record PAL video anymore :( Fortunately I already had digitized all my important home video VHS tapes when this happened :)

[@jimhibert]

It’s important to note that there were very few standard components in those days. Also, the proprietary SGI graphics pipeline was the foundation of SGI’s business, and lives on today as Open GL. They were in the hardware business only because that was how you did it back then. MIPS was an independent company before SGI bought them out. Originally, SGI was also making their own CPUs until a third party contracted SGI to build them a workstation using MIPS CPUs. This resulted in a shotgun wedding that worked out.

[@goatnicholson]

Dodoid you rock. Excellent historical reporting. I wish this os would come back in some form although mac osx and even nextstep had more advanced capability

[@kuglepen64]

Awesome! Looking forward to the rest of the SGI videos!

[@fallingwater]

Came here from /r/retrobattlestations. Excellent video, informative and well-written.

[@Dodoid]

This was a hard one to script. It's difficult to make a video that is enjoyable both to those that already know about SGI stuff and to those that don't.

[@unpromptedmusic]

I'm just thoroughly amused seeing someone young being interested in these machines. I owned an Indy at the time the O2 was out and I was lusting after it. And I was probably older then than you are now. Anyway, have fun!

[@jgaines3200]

Dude keep doin what you do....your a smart kid and keep it up.

[@jaygames1980]

You remind me of myself at that age keep learning

[@richardkoerper1630]

I have my o2 in my home office along with my 27 inch iMac, my 2 Thinkpads running Linux and my 2nd gen Bondi Blue iMac.

[@ELF_Productions]

I used to work on one of those back in the late 90s. The operating system was called Irix which would be in the family of Unix, Linux and all those similar types of OS and i hated every moment of it lol

[@yyhaoyue]

Amazing video, nice work

[@robrocksea]

If you still have it before selling or scraping, Please Consider giving it to a Museum of History and Industry, or Seattle's EMP Computer and Tech Museum.

[@ChristinaK1024]

sweet looking light box segments

[@Dodoid]

White Ikea Desk + Posterboards from the dollar store. My new videos are better though, my lighting was crap when I made this.

[@josecarlosxyz]

those machines made most of our beloved games in 90´s

[@JamesTomlinson2]

Great video brother i got 2 OS machines from our weather system at my tv station im gonna put on ebay soon. Thank you so much.

[@Dodoid]

Weather Star XL! Cool hardware. Are you selling the whole unit, or the O2s individually? It might be more interesting as a whole machine.

[@JamesTomlinson2]

im not sure yet but i got them both fired up and they boot up great gonna ethernet them together tomorrow and see if the weather system talks to each other. They are the Irix 6.5 300mhz r5000 with video out and in cards in both with 9 gig drives in both. Just not sure what they are worth together i see single ones going on ebay for $350 each.

[@asic_]

Very well done buddy! Subscribed :)

[@n_3719]

Talking 'bout unix workstations, I think I still have an sparcstation 5 somewhere in my attic.....

[@nicholasmorris3924]

$15,000. I guess Hammond wasn't lying when he said 'spared no expense' (except for paying the actual techie....)

[@Serial1977]

Dude if you can manage to not get hooked on drugs, be screwed over by some girl that broke your hearth, or run into some nasty disease you'll be Einstein when you're 30.

[@robrocksea]

If i had the chance, I wish I'd gone thru door #1 instead. door #2 set me up with no health insurance and getting sick (very bad luck) was hit with a rare viral infection, less than 12 people get it, in US each year. Went into high fever, went into a coma for almost a year, it F.M.U!

[@oddarneroll]

Awsome 👌

[@jailsonsouto9122]

EXCELENTE VÍDEO!

[@zzador]

I watched ebay so often to get an indy or indigo 2 impact for under 500 dollars...I think those times are gone. The collector prices rise.

[@aschnauzerrap6442]

Brilliant Video Man Really Enjoyed it. r/retrobattlestations for life!

[@mediis]

Seriously, you're making me feel bad for giving my 02 away . I could build out a better desktop with better hardware, so I really didn't see a need to keep it. Although, I kept the keyboards. The best keyboards in the business. Even though I loved Slackware, the one thing linux couldn't beat on the 02 was the desktop. I still pine for that thing, and wish someone word port WM skin for it.

[@Creeperboy099]

Wait so were these the same machines that created Super Mario 64?

[@MrWolfTickets]

great video!

[@tv8g]

Hey im here from OSFT

[@1Soniccool]

Rare used SGI computers for the sprites in DKC 1-3 and KI and KI 2

[@Dodoid]

The Nintendo 64's graphics chip is also developed by SGI, and their Onyx and Indy systems were used for N64 game dev. GoldenEye was made for the before they had any idea how powerful the N64 would be, and all they had to test on was a $250,000 supercomputer, so when the N64 came out they had to quickly make it faster.

[@logansorenssen]

If you're really lucky, you can find the N64 devkit for an Indy, even. There's a few hundred or so of them in circulation, IIRC. Also, someone was working on making Mupen64 pass the MIPS instructions directly through to the CPU when running under IRIX, rather than emulating the N64 processor. Not sure what ever came of that, but there were some ha-ha-only-serious jokes about combining that with a USB to N64 adapter for the controllers, and having an "N64 dev kit for SGI Fuel". (Which would have worked on Tezro, too, and maybe on an Octane with a PCI cage, though I never tried a USB card in mine, I'm really not sure if USB would work at all on IP30, or if it was only IP35 and later).

[@RoswellNight]

Why don't you put your SGI machines to use, and edit a video for KZbin on it? That could show they're still useful to this day. I mean, it's better than having them just sit there looking pretty. Even though they look pretty.

[@msmcshan1]

good stuff kid

[@testarossa7993]

How do you look for companies getting rid of these?

[@Dodoid]

Hang around collector groups (e.g. IRIX Network, SGUG). People are usually quick to post whenever one turns up, and sometimes hobbyists in these groups offer some of their own machines for sale. Either way, your best bet is a collector group's for sale section.

[@dream_emulator]

Cool!

[@thelichisdeath]

dude you ware born after the ipad!

[@Dodoid]

I was born in 2002, the iPad came out in 2010. I was 8 years old when the iPad came out.

[@stevebez2767]

NOT true,space hopper Newton nail em?

[@SOF006]

Cool video but just some constructive criticism. You talk very fast, I think you need to slow down and pace your speaking a little better. Was a bit overwhelmed with how quickly you were talking.

[@Cobalt985]

Really? I found the pacing to be perfect. Although I sometimes have a similar problem where I'm thinking much faster than I can talk and I end up sounding like a bored rapper.

[@jpalmz1978]

Did Doom get ported to this

[@der.Schtefan]

Can it entrap dinosaurs though?

[@antigen4]

as much as a BRAND NEW car you mean?????

[@goeiecool9999]

This is nice and stuff... But it's no mainframe. Just kidding. Hope you got the reference.

[@Edward3DFX]

Nice vid, try installing some software....fun times.....

[@mapesdhs597]

I always thought Software Manager was one of the best aspects of IRIX, though general patch management wasn't done properly until IRIX 6.5 (before that, dealing with patches could be a pain, especially for 5.3). Using 6.5.x though, the conflict control in Software Manager means it's almost impossible to break the OS via software installations and removals, every individual file is tracked. However, manually installed software, favoured by way too many vendors, was indeed annoying. Running some company's home-brew uninstall script was always a tense moment. :D Btw, I know a movie company who worked out how to upgrade the OS using a cloned kernel image in the swap partition, then they could reboot into the new kernel without physically rebooting the system at all. They had a renderfarm of fifty dual-CPU Origin200s at the time running 24/7. so time was definitely money. When they upgraded the RAM in all their Octanes (several dozen), that alone cost a few $M in the late 90s. Now of course they have a massive pool of x86 cores (7000+ cores last time I asked, dozens of Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers, or newer models); way faster, but not as fun. :D They also had custom-ASIC boards for accelerating Discreet Inferno in their Onyx2s, making the app run way faster than normal, in addition to the usual acceleration done by the IR2 gfx. With each system supporting several user, they charged clients 7000 UKP/hour for using the main edit suite which looked like a Star Trek bridge - big screens, keyboards, Wacoms, other custom kit, audio stuff, etc. And when they moved to a new building in the late 90s, they left behind an older Onyx RE2 rack because it wasn't worth the hassle of moving it (several floors up, long since replaced with newer SGIs), so the machine was bricked up to hide it away. I bet today whoever uses the building has no idea there's a rack Onyx hiding behind one of the walls. :D Ian.

[@Edward3DFX]

mapesdhs you know what would be so cool, if the few engineers left at SGI That understand how cool IRIX actually is....and there are a few left in the company, if the reworked the kernel so it could be installed on x86 64 machine......now I know that is is probably a million man hours worth of coding....but dude it would be cool....I am sick of Linux, Win10, and Mac OS X.....I run pcBSD on my laptop...

[@mapesdhs597]

Edward, something's wrong with the youtube comments notification thing, I get an update saying you've replied, but I can't see your original thread with your followup post, or my reply either. Feel free to PM/email instead. Sad to report that AFAIK all the original MIPS/IRIX people at SGI have long gone, and now of course what was left, after being bought out by Rackable, has been sold to HP, so there's a pretty high chance in a year or so SGI itself will be shut down. HP has a habit of doing this with former rivals it buys out. I lost contact with the two dozen or so contacts I had at SGI after the Rackable buyout. Many had already moved elsewhere, to NVIDIA, Intel, etc.

[@Dodoid]

Alright, deploy the Hammer Drill and Masonry Instrument Control and Onyx Recovery Drone (HDMICORD).

[@hunterm4188]

You still collecting dude??

[@alexklein455]

You're so pretty man.

[@zombieflip281]

Where's the note 7 ps I love your videos

[@Dodoid]

Waiting until I or someone I know is in Toronto so that I can get the $200 off trade in offer at the Samsung store. Will unbox/review/use Note 7 when that happens.

[@MindBodySoulOk]

They had iphones when you were born

[@Dodoid]

Was born in 2002, iPhone launched in 2007. Handspring/Palm Treos, maybe, but not iPhones.

[@MysteriousSystems]

76th like

[@barrycomer169]

Lose that horrible music

[@msmcshan1]

good stuff kid