The Complete History of Silicon Graphics (1982 - 2009)

A video overview of the complete history of Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), from their founding in 1982 through to their final bankruptcy in 2009. This video is a compilation of all seven parts of my "History of Silicon Graphics" series, with intros and outros removed to make watching from start to finish easier.
-- Contact Me --
Please don't use any KZbin contact features, I never read them. If you need to get in touch, please contact me on Reddit as a private message to /u/DodoDude700 or comment on one of my videos.
-- How I make my videos --
I use Final Cut Pro on my custom built Xeon E3 Hackintosh, and film with a Canon EOS 60D. I use a pair of large fluorescent studio lights for most of my work, but may use various other types if filming away from the room I usually film in. I have a really overfilled lab, which is usually where I dig up the tech seen in my videos.
-- ALL TRADEMARKS AND IMAGES BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS --
I do not claim to own any of the trademarks mentioned in my videos. Some images may be obtained from third party sources. If you need to contact me for legal reasons, please use one of the above contact methods.
-- Music --
The music used in the Dodoid and Dodoid Advent Calendar intros is AdhesiveWombat - Bombs. Other AdhesiveWombat songs are sometimes used. This episode uses "Symphony of a Forgotten Sprite" instead of "Bombs".

[@n00bnetrum]

So, lets see if I got this straight: >1997, release great MIPS computers >get guy who murdered HP-UX as CEO >he kills all hardware development and forces a switch to x86 and Windows >after having effectively killed SGI, he goes to work at Microsoft :^) >next "generation" of SGI computers are just normal PCs as they don't have any hardware or operating systems know-how anymore That is so 90's Microsoft. Damn.

[@thundercloud2982]

They did the same thing with Nokia through Stephen Elop. >2010, release great Symbian phones >Get guy who worked for Microsoft as CEO (Elop) >He calls Symbian a "burning platform", kills all MeeGo development, axes Symbian, and forces a switch to Windows Phone >After effectively killing Nokia (absorbed by Microsoft), he goes back to Microsoft, back from whence he came (complete with a nice "welcome back" bonus to his paycheck) >Next generation of Nokia phones are just normal Windows Phones with the Nokia logo slapped on Now, Microsoft is just following their "Embrace, Enslave, Extinguish" strategy with Linux. They're already in bed with Canonical (Ubuntu). Micro$#!t is incredibly evil. They're right up there with my most hated corporations, alongside Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. My question is, why did all of the great ones have to end up Trojan Horsed? Even Apple has lived long enough to see itself become the villain... :-(

[@nonegone7170]

"That is so Microsoft. Damn." Fixed that for you...

[@amostake]

That's exactly what happened. They had the goose that laid the golden eggs, special hardware and software that made the money roll in, and they killed the goose.... then they were just flopping around like a fish on the shore, not knowing how to swim again.

[@DavidLindes]

@@amostake having seen it from the inside... it was a sad, sad time. :'(

[@Schyz]

Itanium is not x86

[@Johnny-rx4hs]

My dad worked for SGI when I was a kid. I remember going to their Mountain View campus (part of which is now Google's HQ) for the occasional family events and "take your kids to work" days. Kind of sad how the company ended up, but I guess that's not uncommon in the tech industry.

[@null0byte]

My dad worked for TRW. I don't really remember any "take your kid to work" days, but they *did* have "family days" which were nice and fun company picnic type things. Even if they did have "take your kid to work" days, my dad never really participated in them from my recollection. His company was fairly accommodating when their employees needed to have their kids with them for short periods of time due to familial needs. I have a number of fond (and often boring...hey, I was a little kid, and all I saw were manuals upon boring manuals of tiring at the time technical jargon and plots of really neat looking lines on big pieces of paper...I still couldn't tell you what any of it was other than neat looking lines our dot matrix printer at home could put out, and that's just as well) memories of the times my dad needed to have us kids with him while he was at work for a few hours and our mom had appointments or meetings as a teacher. He was an electronics engineer and boy can he tell you stories of the headaches I would cause him with regards to his engineering desktops. Luckily nothing horrifically destructive...at least as far as he is willing to tell me, but those times and times at home..eh heh...doing the same thing to his computer at home, are what I (and he as well, rightfully) attribute to what laid the foundation to my computer knowledge and ability to learn new things today, so many decades later. Oh! Sorry, got lost in nostalgia for a moment. I meant to include what my own little tie to history was, with respect to where my Dad worked. He worked in the part of TRW known as "Space Park." It's the place they did most, if not all, their aerospace work. Think: Satellites and stuff (TRW made the Pioneer probes!). However, the most visible and pop-culturally-relevant part, was that the cafeteria portion of Space Park was used in the Star Trek Original Series episode "Operation: Annihilate!" The architecture was still the same when I saw it as a little kid in the late 80's/early 90's....I'm not sure if it remains since Northrup Grumman took it over in the early 2000's, and I no longer live in SoCal.

[@jakeherter]

Couldn't imagine having parents that weren't uneducated, cruel addicts. Life sucks.

[@lostspace5811]

It is amazing how futuristic the cases look then suddenly get daggy when they go that off white

[@ivorjawa]

When I was at google, one of the sgi buildings was my favorite lunch room.

[@wildmano1965]

Just say. "That's common in the industry..." No need for double negative.

[@videogamephenom1991]

This was the first company that rendered 3D graphics for video games, until NVIDIA and AMD later dominated the market.

[@frottery]

lol not even near the first

[@TheTravelTechBear]

I've worked in the office where SGI had their offices, in Mississauga, for 12 years now. The interior before renovations a few years ago were magenta, that unmistakable SGI blue and yellows. Quite a funky space. Also, when I was at Carleton, in my second year, I had worked for Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering as a sys admin. They had a whole lab of Indys, Indigos and they also had Crimson which was my favourite machine to work on. The thing was massive and fast for the time. I miss working in IRIX. :)

[@ianf123]

In the late 90's several SGI offices redecorated their decor to match the system colors. At the time this meant purple (Onyx 2, Power Indigo 2), black (Onyx, Challenge), aquamarine (Indigo 2) and deep blue (Indy). None these colors work well together. It made for quite gross interior design.

[@olldomu5790]

@@ianf123 where the brand specialist shoehorns interior design onto their CV and hopes noone notices before they cash the cheque. yes i said cheque. it was the nineties after all

[@anttipeltola8578]

I bought a used Octane in the early 2000s and still have it and boot it up once a while. Thanks for making the best SGI history video around. System architecture like the crossbar switch on these is still awesome and unique.

[@jessed0308]

I have a dream, and its called a crossbar switch......

[@AndrewDanne]

A truly excellent review of the history of Silicon Graphics. I worked in the Australian Sales office as their 1st engineer in the Asia Pacific region. Was trained in MtView the 1st week the MtView campus opened. The 1st system I worked on was the IRIS 1000 and subsequently all the products from then on till I left in mid-2009 when the Australian Engineering division was shut. A great company with great people who just wanted to engineer the best Graphics experience on the planet until we lost focus and vision of what we did well. Brings to Mind the Skinny Hackers, the Rocktain event, PCP monitoring, CXFS (Clustered File Systems), Failsafe, Diskless boot, Voxel vision, and so many other engineering wins. A great company, great people, & the drive to make a better computing world. Thank you for the memories and documenting the history of a company that did make some huge breakthroughs in Computer Graphics & Computing architecture. Just go ask NVIDIA, Cray and now HP!! Also a shout out to Jim Clark & his team for the vision and determination to bring the Graphics Engine to world, the heart of the IRIS workstation and subsequent graphics systems.

[@MA_808]

If they had priced them reasonably from the beginning they would still be in business.

[@AndrewDanne]

@@MA_808 No, that was not their failing. There was an executive belief that the PC computing market would not amount to much. We lost all our senior design tech to NVIDIA, even won a patients case again NVIDIA I believe but basically gave the winning away. It was a lack of adapting to rapid change, manufacturing, and yes price value. The integration (or lack there of) of Cray also hurt the company. The Execs lost focus and the understanding of a changing market place.

[@adam872]

I spent several years looking after SGI systems and even had an Indy myself. I miss those guys and especially IRIX, which I maintain was one of the best desktop O/S's I've ever used. A big part of me wishes I could go back to running Unix full time, it was certainly a lot bloody easier (I had practically everything about my job automated at one point). I know it all lives on in cloud hosted Linux driven applications, but there was something rad about those Sun, SGI and DEC servers and workstations. I should also point out that I've never forgiven Rick Belluzzo for what he did to SGI. A series of really bad decisions in a short space of time sealed their fate. I know they were up against the tidal wave of the PC, but I can't believe that with some better management they'd still be in business.

[@arthurjennings5202]

US Postal Service used racks of the Origin 2000 to "read" addresses on envelopes as they were running through canceling machines at 36,000 per minute. The machine would spray a barcode on the envelope before it was sorted. If the system could not "read" the address, a florescent bar code sprayed on the back of the envelope contained information of the date, machine number, and identifier number, that was paired with the captured image, which was later read by an operator at a display console. Our facility had ten canceling machines and used a rack of 60 SG computers.

[@DavidLindes]

Oooh, nice! I didn't know that was an O2K use case... that's cool! [Totally makes sense, though... the I/O for that must have been intense, and that was one major strong-suit for SGI...]

[@DougDingus]

SGI computing was the best computing experience I've ever had. I enjoy your videos on this awesome time and culture.

[@tritop]

I too was absolutely speechless back then when I could work with them

[@DavidLindes]

Yeah... they were amazing to work on. And the company was amazing to work at. To this day, I miss that place. It was like nowhere else I've been since (and I've worked at Netscape and Amazon and Google and....)

[@zelphx]

I envy the breathless excitement of youth :)

[@rCRTEr]

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on that sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas

[@jessed0308]

same

[@saultube44]

Want a sharp mind, lots of energy and great nutrition to feel young, take Vitamin E 400 IU every week, B complex and C, and become Vegan. Animal products tend to make you tired, angry, reactive, clouded judgement, etc. linkstothefuture.createaforum.com/general-discussion/live-up-to-20-years-longer-healthy-drug-free-watch-these

[@Zarnubius]

@@saultube44 SHUT THE FUCK UP

[@saultube44]

@@Zarnubius Oh the snowflake crybaby got his conscious butthurt'? you butthole? then don't deny reality, loser

[@jeffostroff]

Great video, thanks for the history lesson SGI. Being a former Motorola engineer, it was nice to see the history of a name plate we were all so familiar with, and thanks for pointing a out that trivia about Jurassic Park, I never knew that! I did not hear you come up for air once!

[@aceng3912]

The then state-of-the-art 64-bit R4000 processor is used as the CPU for the Sony PSP released in 2005.

[@viewedit]

Being so young, @dodoid has done a good job on research and successfully created the video, thats an achievement in itself. well done, keep going.

[@NathanielValdivia]

Dodoid did an amazing work by putting this together THIS IS AWESOME!!. I owned an Octane2 and that was my favorite workstation for running Maya and StudioTools ! You forgot to mentioned that they owned Alias at some point in time. And how influential they were in the development of movies and design work, in the areas of ID and Architecture. And that almost every industrial designer in the late 90's experienced Alias using O2 and Octane Interesting little design fact about the design of the o2 "The SGI O2 was a collaboration with Lunar design (at the time Yves behar, founder of Fuseproject, was part of the Lunar side of the equation). The original pitch was they should work with a team that used their products to “design” (up until then IDEO did most of the ID work, and ironically used Vellum CAD on Macs) - we were the designers that used SGI, lunar were the engineers on the SGI platform. Our combined efforts led to the round, friendly, yet sophisticated form language of this computer (you must also remember this predates the first iMacs by over 2 years), sending the message that the O2 was arguably the friendliest Unix workstation every made. This entry level machine nicknamed “the toaster” was powerful beast for its size - offering the cutting edge 3D graphics SGI was known for at “nearly” desktop prices (this meant $10k in 1996). At the time, SGI machines were the only computers that we could run Alias software (and many of these workstations we ran at Alchemy cost over $50k each, and we had 6 of them). This was an exciting program for us, at all levels. The O2 ended up being SGI’s the one and only “low cost” workstation they produced - the company soon lost its edge to the on-slot of cheep & powerful PC’s from Dell and HP. Their slow and reluctant movement to the PC platform ended up being their demise (ironically many of the smartest engineers left SGI to form Nvidia, the leader the 3D graphics industry today)." www.grayholland.com/first-experiences/

[@Fletchable]

This is easily the best tech history video I've ever watched.

[@tuberoyful]

SGI & Sun were the best workstations before the PC's. AND Cray supercomputers are the very best in supercomputing. Even though you barely scratched the surface on the Onyx 2, I just would like to say great Job on the history of SGI bro!

[@ForOdinAndAsgard]

You are forgetting Amiga. Fantastic workstations, too bad Commodore fucked up.

[@gregd6022]

@@ForOdinAndAsgard Amiga was for consumers, was no where near what the engineering work stations like SGI and SUN were doing.

[@gregd6022]

HP as well and at the very beginning was Apollo, they started the race in Engineering desktop work stations, however short lived where #1.

[@ForOdinAndAsgard]

@@gregd6022 That is why Medhi Ali rejected Sun twice for working together where Amiga would supply the hardware OEM and Sun would supply the Unix OS? Yeah the A3000UX and A4000 were dedicated workstations for professional usage as shown with Jurassic Park. That movie was made by using the A3000UX.

[@AngelDarthNet]

PA-RISC + HP-UX = very good workstation

[@Ashtree81]

That Crossbar power ballad cracked me up! :D

[@Wazoox]

Too bad you didn't mention but in passing the so famous "Reality Engine" born on the Crimson. As John Carmack said, it was the target for all 3D graphics manufacturers for many years. Other noticeably informations worth mentioning: nVidia was founded by ex-SGI people. Belluzzo sold out the very best SGI 3D IP to Microsoft (after the failed Farenheit common 3D API project) and to nVidia (because who cares of gaming 3D cards makers?), this was really the worst thing he did.

[@bobohbuboh8604]

I felt a strange affinity between that dude and the one which sold nokia to microsoft

[@DavidLindes]

@@bobohbuboh8604 an affinity of evil? Yeah, pretty much.

[@AndrewFree]

Nvidia was assisted early on by ex-SGI people. They were not founded by ex-SGI people.

[@DavidLindes]

and dy I don't know the history terribly well from the nvidia side... but my impression is that "assisted" is an understatement. It may not have been founded by ex-sgiers, but they hired a whole lot of them, as I understand it.

[@fredbrammer6983]

@@DavidLindes 3

[@nikkcade4481]

thanks for putting all of these together. love your videos btw

[@MatthewCobalt]

Hard to believe that it has been a few years since I first came acrose this channel. Hope you’re doing well in life, as we are always here waiting for you decide to update us.

[@raulcortes937]

Fantastic video dude... Congratulations. Enjoyed all of it.

[@Edward135i]

4:28 I love the idea that a 10 year old girl not only had readily available access to a $30,000 computer but she also knew how to use very complex professional developer software.

[@hanniffydinn6019]

Fucking love SGI they made me dream about having their kit...

[@pete0007]

Very impressive history of Sgi, I have had the pleasure of working on almost all of the systems Sgi offered over the years and was lucky to visit their facility just before it was sold to Google. Thanks !

[@mystaledoritos2141]

Thanks for a great video! I worked as an SGI field engineer between 1994 - 2001. Brings back many good memories, sad to see the eventual decline of a once great bleeding edge company.

[@KA1637]

The video seems sped up.

[@Dodoid]

While the video is not sped up, earlier episodes featured a noticably faster pace. After I was told that it was hard to understand, I slowed down, which is the main thing which made episodes longer (apart from Part 7, which just plain had a lot to talk about).

[@darkstatehk]

I have no problem listening to your excellent history of SGI! Thank you!

[@maxheadrom3088]

Me neither and I'm not a native speaker. It would be nice to see a history of DEC.

[@hypercube33]

Ya'll need to breathe a little when talking

[@MrGencyExit64]

He shares DNA with humming birds

[@nyceyes]

This was a delightful and thorough SGI documentary. Excellent job! Thank you for it. 😊

[@rlcodispoti]

Love the history and your video format in general, keep it up man you're going to do well I know it.

[@tommytahmoreszadeh1158]

Silicon Graphics played a HUGE role in the rise of computer-generated effects in movies and TV shows in the 80s and 90s as well as the rise of Pixar Animation Studios. It is truly legendary.

[@acdeditch99]

Instantly subscribed! Amazing summary of SGI!

[@KenChinSzeto]

I worked for SGI in Mountain View in the 90’s. Great video! I enjoyed the flashback of the machines I used daily.

[@seanc.5310]

Great video my friend. Takes me back to computing in the 80's and 90's. A lot of great info and I'm sure it took you a while to put together.

[@Dodoid]

Yeah, quite a few months. You can see the original release dates for each segment if you look at the black title cards that show up every couple of minutes.

[@Adrian-re9fh]

Hello Dodoid, thank you so much for your video, I really enjoyed, but I have one question, Do you think I could use Basilisk II to emulate an Irix 6.5 system ? Regards From Spain.

[@Dodoid]

I doubt it. IRIX runs on MIPS processors, and there are plenty of MIPS emulators out there, but the tricky part is emulating all the other parts of the SGI. There are some ongoing attempts (I think MAME has ongoing work for IP22 support), as well as one other that can boot the PROM of an O2, but nothing that promising yet.

[@DominusEstOK]

I worked on SGI's in 98/99 for Kodak. I still love them. Irix 6.5 and XFS were awesome.

[@DavidLindes]

hear hear. Long live Kodak and SGI. :D

[@apu_apustaja]

This is possibly one of the best put together videos on KZbin. You are better than TV ever manages to be.

[@countmegabaron]

This is awesome. Nice job!

[@georgemonstro4441]

I haven't heard of SGI until your SGI Onyx video and then I clicked to watch this. What a gem I must say! Liked and subbed - no questions asked: your narration is humble yet professional and it's really easy to see that you have passion towards the subject. Don't you dare stop making videos, because the SGI History was one of the most entertaining long watches I've had in a good while. Thank you for the knowledge and keep this up. Mad props from Russia ✊🏻

[@christianhujer346]

To me it looks like one CEO ruined it all in less than 2 years.

[@hydrochloricacid2146]

I don't know... SGI did definitely bet everything on Itanium, which hurt them in the long run. But there's absolutely no telling if they would have survived had they kept developing MIPS. In the 90s they had a huge advantage over x86 given they were first to 64bit, plus their machines had great 3D capacities. But the upcoming x86-64 and the rise of cheap 3d acceleration would have been huge competition. Given how Alpha, Sparc and POWER have either died or fallen by the wayside, MIPS might have shared the same fate as well.

[@gregd6022]

@@hydrochloricacid2146 i think SGI could have been what nVidia is today.. but so many great tech firms eventually get some clown CEO who just wants to gut the Co. for his own benefit.

[@DavidLindes]

@@gregd6022 Arguably, SGI _is_ what nVidia is today... so many of the early nVidia folks were SGI folks that jumped ship when Belluzo came through. So........ who knows what would have happened without him. But... yeah, he did a lot of damage.

[@DavidLindes]

Butt Cube I never said they wanted to be nvidia. I said, basically, that nvidia was created largely from pieces of what was SGI.

[@DavidLindes]

Hominid Interneticus maybe. It certainly contributed to changes in the direction the industry took. I might argue that Google's push to commodity hardware did more of the damage... but, the beginnings of the demise of SGI predates Google's rise to prominence.

[@freezetile8588]

Thanks for making this video! I learned a lot about the Silicon Graphics company that I didn't know already. :-)

[@kandc07]

very well produced and informative documentary! great job!

[@LarryTheLlama]

Hi Dodoid, every now and then I reminisce about SGI and just came across your video. I really enjoyed it. I worked at SGI from 1984 to the summer of 2001 when most of the field service management team were let go. Prior to SGI I was working for System Industries, a Ca. start-up, in NJ as a regional service manager. I started as a field engineer and traveled the east coast installing and maintaining their data management systems. My employee number was 203. They first connected into the DEC PDP-8, machines and then up from there as things advanced. I became branch and then regional service manager. I was at SI for 9 year's before I got tired of it. My Boston branch manager at SI resigned to join another startup in Ca. named SGI. He was the first guy on the east coast. He said he would call me when they needed another field engineer in the east. In 1984, six months later, I left SI for SGI. My employee number was 206. I met Ed MacCracken on my first trip to the west coast. His employee number was 204, I think. I traveled up and down the east coast again doing what I liked best. Installing and fixing the hardware. It was the beginning of what we now know as computer graphics. I was in the room when Jim Clark gave a lecture on his visions of the future in the industry. He talked about virtual sets, cable tv, and how actors would be replaced by animated characters. Flowing hair and wind was really hard to animate. I set up a system in a hotel banquet room for Jim when he came east to do a lecture. I remember when SGI had 3 big trucks that traveled the country to be at NFL football games. I had to send an SSE (System Support Engineer) to be with the truck when it came here in the NYC metro area. It had two complete systems on it including spare parts. The system tapped into the live TV feed to insert the first down line and game score on the screen. Do a search for “An Explanation of the Football 1st & Ten Line.“ I also had and SSE at CBS studios in NYC for the 1996 presidential election when Dan Rather used a touch screen map of the US to show results on TV. Do a search for “Video 1996 Election Night, CBS Touchscreen Map" to see it. The SGI cube logo is on the map screen. My SSE had 5 seconds of fame when CBS did a live cut to the computer room and he was in the shot. Of course I always stayed to see the credits of the movies that SGI systems were used in. I still have my “Building A Better Dinosaur” tee shirt. I feel SGI’s demise started when Ed MacCracken left and that guy from HP took over as president. Ed also came from HP. I liked Ed a lot. We strayed from our core mission of computer graphics to something else. I hated it when the classic logo changed. After the purchase of CRAY the service management team went to Minneapolis for a few days, in the winter, to meet their service team. Our field staffs were integrated. The people were all great to work with but some of us were asking if we still had the receipt of sale so we can return it. If you’re still reading this. When the NT product line came out I switched jobs again. My new title was something like “North America NT Systems Support Manager.” All the field service on these smaller systems was actually provided by a company named Entex. Their service staff supported many different types of smaller computer systems. Once a month or so I traveled to their Cincinnati office to review operations with them in the US. The rest of the time I helped put out fires and helped to resolve logistics issues regarding spare parts. I also then assisted with the customer satisfaction programs in the US. I helped correlate all the surveys results and passed out the information to the field branches. Somewhere in the beginning of 2001 or so the NT product line had ended. Entex took over all the spare parts and kept doing their thing. Me and most of SGI’s US field management staff were let go. I happened to be in the middle of my third or forth sabbatical. I was expecting it. My boss called me on the phone and asked me if he needed to come to NJ or could he just send the paper work to the office for me to sign. Just send it. I got a 9 month severance package, that was very nice, 9/11 happened a few months later, and the world went on.

[@tubestuff1000]

Thanks for the great video! I worked for SGI for a little over a decade during their heyday (1985-1997) Absolutely the best job and company I've ever had or will have. The product and culture were truly one of a kind. Unfortunately, once Jim Clark and Mark Adreesen left to start Netscape, the company was never the same. Next video, you need to research and highlight the internal culture that made it such an amazing place (ie: Lip Sync at the amphitheater, new building roller skating parties, product launch events, free monogrammed everything etc. - look it up...it was awesome!)

[@AntagonisticAltruist]

Very nice! Would be interesting to see a video like this on DEC!

[@avtpro]

It would be because DEC Alpha were serious competition to SGI using Window NT.

[@creativechannel6148]

Great job. I love the speed and the consistency of your video. Because we don't have time to watch a long video on youtube nowadays. Liked and subscribed. Keep doing short but consistent videos please. Thank you.

[@MM-cr7dq]

Hey Dodoid, great job, really appreciate the work. You brought back forgotten memories of finite element analysis at Uni using SGI machines (or maybe a VAX!)

[@bengreen3794]

This kid puts great content into his vids. Not sure how much research you put in but kudos to the technical content. Keep it up

[@DavidLindes]

5:49 - HAH! Thank you! That's so incredibly validating... Having essentially "grown up" at SGI (my mom worked there when I was in high school, and had a Personal Iris at her desk; later, I worked there off and on throughout much of the '90's), I can't tell you the number of times something "new" has come out since, and I've been like "oh, cool, someone else FINALLY HAS THIS THING THAT I'VE BEEN MISSING" [because, you know, I'd had it decades earlier on SGI machines]. There's still stuff I've not seen on other platforms, that I miss. Sigh. Anyway, thanks for the trip back! Nice to see that they're inspirational to others, as well. :) It was far and away the coolest place I've ever worked (and I've worked at several of the big names). Edit: watching more, a few other things to comment on... [some of which I've scattered as replies to other comments.] 26:37 - can attest to Casey Leedom... I remember him from my time in the engr (engineering) org circa 1998. I liked him. I don't recall if I ever had Hamburger Stew, though... I don't think so, but maybe I heard him talk about it?? It vaguely rings a bell. I found the recipe... maybe I'll try it someday. :) 37:16 ... :'( Good stuff, all around. A couple things you missed: Silicon Studio (an internal division for a while, that might be worth talking about), and Alias | Wavefront -- the merger of Alias and Wavefront when SGI bought both, merging the two together (or really, the three -- Silicon Studio kinda got shut down, but many of the employees, including myself, became employees of Alias | Wavefront, under a new Mountain View office (where neither Alias nor Wavefront had previously had offices, IIRC), using the same building (SGI building 21) as Silicon Studio had been in. Dunno if you ever plan to do a follow-up, but if so, it might be cool to include that... and maybe just more on the software side, generally -- IRIX, Showcase, Indigo Magic Desktop and 4Dwm, etc. Totally optional, of course... it's just a thought. Anyway, thanks for the nostalgia trip!

[@RicardoBanffy]

Belluzzo is the first instance I know of offensive outplacement by Microsoft. He destroyed HP, then destroyed SGI.

[@bobohbuboh8604]

And then nokia. Do u know of other cases ? I'm worried about the Linux Foundation ..

[@DavidLindes]

This makes me a bit sick to my stomach. :-/ He destroyed something fucking amazing.

[@avtpro]

I would have never imagine a young man would be the one to so well articulate and document the past so well. You do your generation proud.

[@swakersoh4407]

Thank you Dodoid, you had did alot of research. You are a budding KZbin Star! Thank you for your fantastic historical introductions of Silicon Graphics. I believe you can do other companies as well ^^

[@chrisreavis9484]

Nice! Thanks for creating this. Actually I'm glad you talk fast - it matches the high I/O SGI's always had. :) Really enjoyed working there in 1995-1999, and have lifelong friends because of it. Everyone I know that worked there has been amazingly successful after, as well.

[@danamals2]

How did you manage to get that many SGI systems, let alone one?! I looked around and they're really expensive...

[@ct8060]

I just discovered this video and I liked it! It covers many of my questions I had in my youth when we had such systems in the university . One question though .,, where can I find a decent emulator for such systems ? Mainly the IRIX 6.5 which as I read is the last of IRIX systems. Also what about the emulators of the more recent systems? Thnx

[@jonathancook4022]

Sweet review of the companies history and funky computer cases. The video progressed swiftly and the 40mins flew by!

[@djpeterabreu]

Awesome video, I really like your editing style, keep it up!

[@meandtina]

The MIPS CPUs are RISC-based. During those days, the big computer companies banded together to support a common architecture, I think it was called ARC or something. Digital was one of them, I remember. Anyway, great video and so much detail. Kudos to reserach. You brought me back to those days where people were green in envy when they find out you work with SGI machines. I kept a copy fo IRIX 5 as a memento.

[@scottcass4243]

I worked in SGI's IT department in Mountain View for several years starting in 1986.

[@osakanone]

Good video, well written script, good delivery, very solid editing, great content in the channel... Subscribed.

[@aalkurdi]

Sick video bro, KEEP IT UP!

[@ragtop70]

Having worked with and owned a variety of SGIs over the years, this is the most concise history I've seen/heard... also makes me want to find the purple feet for my Indigo2. :)

[@chargen7224]

Inspiring how passionate you tell this story, iirc, the R10000 "T5" design had another designation , called "Terminator" (the analogy of "agressive" speculative branching...) and later versions were developed in the PRC codename "Dragon".. (here be a snowden funfact) I found the sight of 300 intel- powered Drones performing with the imagination of the intel drone team somewhat visually reminiscent of the well know irix screensaver. History has it, one of the userland Indy had the Indycam for gesture recognition I believe someone from the Netherlands wrote it. SGI is so much innovation I suppose, elegant and proven technology.

[@bobohbuboh8604]

Masterpiece! Thanks for all the info, very interesting

[@BobDarlington]

Nice to see blue mountain. Been many years since it was hauled off, and today most of the equipment I manage is in that same room. Thanks for the cool video.

[@thedruz]

great trip down memory lane, i worked on a sgi cluster back when writing software in the late 1990's I remember transitioning from a CDC mainframe to the sgi cluster & it was like a new world had been opened up.

[@gwernette5971]

Very nice video. Made the complicated SGI product understandable. Thanks for your hard work

[@noka1979]

Fascinating, thanks dodoid

[@nochan99]

What is the second song? "in the 1980s" one?

[@Dodoid]

It's actually all one song. AdhesiveWombat - Symphony Of A Forgotten Sprite.

[@SledgeFox]

Phantastic documentation! Subscribed!

[@gregd6022]

FANTASTIC video man! thanks for the effort and to set the history books straight, loved the "Sorry mac book pro, you're 23 years to late" line. haha.

[@bruhzooka]

Excellent work my main man!

[@GTVGTV-bb4yx]

can you give me a link of the sgi.com website that you showed in the video

[@neanda]

Great video, keep em coming bro :) I wondered what happened to SGI, I remember seeing them around in the 90s before I got into computers

[@joshkerr]

Great video. You narrate very well. When I was in college at UT Austin we had an SGI lab. That was my first experience with SGI. It was soooo cool. My first job out of college in the late 90's was working for Compaq. I wrote device drivers to test hardware. In our lab we had an unreleased early version of Itanium. When you powered it on, it sounded like a jet engine with a giant fan. Later, I bought a cheap SGI O2 and SGI flat panel display. That was one of my favorite all time computers. I miss Irix and MIPS and the cool designs of SGI. It was totally memory lane watching this video. Thank you.

[@antonnym214]

Dude, you know your stuff. I was programming for Software Sciences International in those days, before ending up at Control Data. I remember SGI. They had a reputation as the go-to folks for graphics rendering.

[@timthompson468]

Great video! I have a passing interest, since i worked for a company that used the Indigo, then the Indy in a confocal laser microscope for wafer inspection back in the ‘90s. That was my first exposure to a Unix style OS. I still have a set of the RGB juggling balls somewhere. On another note, have you ever considered making how-to videos for making KZbin videos? That might be a good “second channel” for you. Your videography and editing is great, in my view.

[@vapourmile]

This is great. Well done for researching it all. The thing I'd like to see is more dates. It is crucial to state when products were released to put it in the context of surrounding systems of the day. This is especially so in the period up to 1985 when there were so many changes in computer graphics.

[@alexanderj1988]

Great job.. I enjoyed watching this video.. keep up the good work.

[@zosxavius]

Wow. So much going on here! Great video.

[@gerardoovalle2785]

Wow you make amazing well informed videos. They are extremely great content. Thank you for your awesome videos keep it up.

[@jeffn9825]

Youve got a great channel, young fella!

[@meandtina]

I've always said SGI is ahead of its time. During the '90s, when video conferencing was only all talk, Indy came with a video conferencing camera, I think they called it Indycam. They tested video on demand when people were renting VHS tapes from Blockbuster and Netflix was still light years away. When you attend Siggraph during those times, the software vendors - almost all of them use SGI, because only in SGI they can have visualization. From scientific to medicine to oil and gas to engineering.

[@esra_erimez]

Well done. And, very accurate. I'm loathed to say that I recall a lot of this as it was happening since it reveals I'm old now

[@petervier]

do you know who did the design of sgi cases?

[@bloqk16]

One of my best workplace friends in the 1980s left the CAD/CAE startup I was at to work for SGI in administrative support with the sales division in Mountain View. One telltale clue about her: She was a fanatical Pittsburgh Steelers fan. She seemed happy working at SGI. I've thought about her over the years and have wondered how she has faired over the years; but google searches have turned up nothing.

[@dmtd2388]

Commodore Amiga & Silicon Graphics should have merged years before for video and 3d workstations as both of them was years ahead of pc and apple in 90s in 3d and video

[@Dodoid]

You're right they did co-exist for a bit, but SGI began the rise to its highest point around the time Amiga died. The 1993 SGI Indy could do a TON more than even an A2000+Toaster, given that you could work in real digital with VINO rather than with a VHS like on the toaster (which is basically just a big video switcher). SGIs were used for video editing, in fact the SGI Tezro from 2003 excelled in it for its time, even well after the "death" of SGI for most other jobs.

[@dmtd2388]

there was somewhere i read long time ago on Jurassic Park they used Amiga 3000 workstations for pre render scenes and final render and everything was done on on sgi farms

[@Dodoid]

That is very possible. That film would have been in production before SGI really took over that industry, so something else being used for preview would be totally conceivable at that time. Later on (late 90s), another common setup was SGI for preview (thanks to the graphics hardware), PC for render (cheap CPU power).

[@dmtd2388]

oh year now i remember i seen a vhs rip how they done JP they was using lightwave 3d on amigas 3000 i think but they must have been withe high end zorro videos cards and etc

[@MrStephen777]

You or someone like you should have been the CEO.

[@samgod]

You totally skipped the Indigo 2 Extreme workstation. Your videos are seriously impressive. I seem to remember all of this until the 2000s. You also didn't mention SGI's acquisition of Alias and Wavefront and merge them into Maya.

[@Max_Mustermann]

15:15 - got one of those Octane Soundtrack CDs and a couple of Irix update discs when I was still in university and one of the PHD students wanted to throw them away. He also had an SGI Visual Workstation (540 or 320) on his desk, which was pretty cool. Interestingly, the update discs wouldn't even read in a regular CD-ROM drive.

[@heathkidd]

kinda wana get one and put my pc inside it maybe a O2 or indigo. are you aware of any other brands with these like late 80s/90s aesthetics? what do you think is the coolest looking system case of 13x8x5.5 inches? that's the total size of my ITX pc in a bitcoin mining rig frame. I guess you could cut a indigo in half if that didn't upset any one. can you think of any cool dev units or any hardware suitable for thous dimentions (would gut the inside/frame obviously and resell to some one interested in operating the hardware)

[@user-yl4lf9mh1w]

this video is amazing. I remember being 12 back in the 90s and being obsessed with Industrial Light and Magic. I really wanted an SGI computer because I wanted to make stuff like jurassic park. I eventually got a copy of 3d studio from my cousin who was in graphics. I was pretty lucky. Anyways great job on the video it really brought me back.

[@ForOdinAndAsgard]

The first Jurassic Park was made with the Commodore Amiga 3000 (Musiga) not with SGI its tech.

[@MrFennmeista]

A very extensive analysis. Excellent work

[@garyhaus]

I was there using these machines, all the way back to 1992. Thank you for the history video young man. I still have a few of these workstations hanging around!

[@alienmicrobes]

I saw an Indy on the SGI campus at around the time Jurassic Park came out. I wasn't blown away or anything, since I had a Mac, but I did like the desktop. A few years later, I got to tear apart Indys, Indigos, O2's and Octanes. I was assigned a Sparc 5, but I did get sudo on an Origin 200, which was our main server.

[@mamilolucosi]

You are the best man. Great Video. Impressive well done.

[@CalmestPlace]

Nice to see this, brought back happy memories. I was lucky enough to use Silicon Graphics machines between 1997 and 2000. Whilst studying for my MSc I used R4000 Indy machines - with 32mb of RAM (most PCs had 4mb or 8mb back then), but they still required a lot of patients! We also had some R1000 High Impact Indigo 2 machines but it was rare I could get any time on them as they were the reserve of the phd students. I remember the Indy machines not having a HDD activity light like PCs of the time had - they didn't need them though as when rendering in Softimage you could certainly hear the HDD thrashing a lot! Later when I started working for the uni we had O2 machines - better for real time graphics but no better than the Indy machines for rendering. We also had a Octane - very nice! And a couple of Onyx 2 machines - the biggest with three graphics pipes, 10 CPUs and a whopping 2GB of RAM! To be honest though apart from the high end VR stuff the writing was already on the wall, we bought a few of the NT workstations - great for real time graphics but no upgrade path with its proprietary motherboard so soon overtaken with cheaper PCs only a year later. Intergraph were already leading the way with NT machines and the rise of cheap PCs combined with cheaper software such as 3d studio max... a shame great machines. The only odd marketing stuff we got were mugs and some cardboard cubes - guess I should have kept them!

[@cellularmitosis2]

such an amazing video. excellent research, thank you so much!

[@mbe102]

We need more Dodoid and more SGI videos dude!

[@rwdplz1]

When I lived and worked in Silicon Valley, I used to buy used server equipment from an e-waste reseller called 'Green Citizen' and I saw several SGI systems when I would go there to pick up stuff. Also consistently saw a guy picking up large quantities of Sun Microsystems computers

[@matthewghali2987]

rwdplz1 wow thank you, that was a truly moving anecdote, thank you for sharing your most memorable experiences with us

[@hyperverbal]

Great work!

[@rosstowle322]

Missing the Orlando Project leading to TiVo. Did you ever wonder about what the connector on the bottom of a N64 could be used for? Lots of fun expansions for N64 in the lab. Did enjoy my 3 sabbaticals while working there.

[@olldomu5790]

for the 64DD, but please share any info about other expansions, ive scrolled all the way down the comments to find one about project reality (ultra / n64) and here youi are with lots of unreleased n64 expansion tech in your garage?

[@kd6lor]

Amazing amount of research. New subscriber.