siliboi
Member
Just curious who’s here who is right into sgi computers. Sound off and maybe show off your gear.
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Who are the silicon graphics enthusiast members here?
- Thread starter siliboi
- Start date
ScutBoy
Experienced Member
I"m no expert, but I have a couple SGI - Octane, Indigo, Indy. No pics handy now, perhaps in a bit.
NeXT
Veteran Member
I am, however it's weird.
I got in starting around the late 2000's when the systems were dirt cheap so I have a lot of machines and peripherals from SGI's "Golden Age" when they were still the best machines you could buy but nothing from the end of the era when it became things like the Fuel, Tezro or any of their smaller rack numalink hardware.
I was pretty active in the Nekochan days but I've always been a bit bitter about how when that went under someone decided to completely up-end the third party and community software development and forced total abandonment of Nekoware, because they said so. There's still software being developed for Irix but they sabotaged the package system in such a way (I do somewhat appreciate that one person picked up the torch after things wound down, but to then turn around and tell everyone "This is the new system. Nekoware is dead. You must port to this newer and better toolchain. Do not deviate from this spec or continue to support Nekoware and if you do I'll simply not host your packages." and break inst and swmgr support for a Debian-like package system, not because it HAD to go that way but because of your own personal opinions on how it MUST be done is almost malicious) that it completely killed it for me. As a legacy user I'm not reinstalling Irix on my machines to switch to a different software delivery system and "reinstall irix, lol" is not helpful for weird OS issues.
I have not really touched any of my machines in over a decade.
I got in starting around the late 2000's when the systems were dirt cheap so I have a lot of machines and peripherals from SGI's "Golden Age" when they were still the best machines you could buy but nothing from the end of the era when it became things like the Fuel, Tezro or any of their smaller rack numalink hardware.
I was pretty active in the Nekochan days but I've always been a bit bitter about how when that went under someone decided to completely up-end the third party and community software development and forced total abandonment of Nekoware, because they said so. There's still software being developed for Irix but they sabotaged the package system in such a way (I do somewhat appreciate that one person picked up the torch after things wound down, but to then turn around and tell everyone "This is the new system. Nekoware is dead. You must port to this newer and better toolchain. Do not deviate from this spec or continue to support Nekoware and if you do I'll simply not host your packages." and break inst and swmgr support for a Debian-like package system, not because it HAD to go that way but because of your own personal opinions on how it MUST be done is almost malicious) that it completely killed it for me. As a legacy user I'm not reinstalling Irix on my machines to switch to a different software delivery system and "reinstall irix, lol" is not helpful for weird OS issues.
I have not really touched any of my machines in over a decade.
Al Kossow
Documentation Wizard
SGI fans don't suffer cranial-rectal inversion as badly as Amigans, but they're close.
Well this System Source weekend allowed me to sell my Adams, weird DEC stuff, and the little Guillows airplane kit so I can finally *get* to my SGI gear. Currently I have a 4400 Indigo2 High Impact and a R4000 based Indigo Elan that I should plug in and see what is on them.
They were good computers, but pretty heavy if I recall. On a positive note I sold the other spare High Impact board for $75 to a guy who has a SGI with a dead framebuffer so I made someone's life better.
They were good computers, but pretty heavy if I recall. On a positive note I sold the other spare High Impact board for $75 to a guy who has a SGI with a dead framebuffer so I made someone's life better.
siliboi
Member
So who did that was it the site owner?
siliboi
Member
haha what do you mean thats pretty funny
NeXT
Veteran Member
Pete? No. The death of Nekochan ultimately stemmed from several things that developed over time:
-Nekochan's core userbase was for many years system administrators for in-production SGI installations. As those systems were retired many of them had no reason to hang around and left. Additionally many of these users also helped develop Nekoware and in turn Nekoware was the only third party software channel approved by Silicon Graphics at the time. SGI.com's links page had a button for Nekochan.
-Nekochan's admin (Pete) was getting out of Silicon Graphics himself as a hobby and was spending less and less time running and maintaining the forum.
-This was at a time when HTTPS and GDPR was really becoming enforced. One member who I shall not name was unhappy with the forum and wanted their account deleted, instead of just leaving like a civilized person. Well at that time forum software could not handle entire user and post tree deletions and there was no interest in upgrading the forum just to satisfy one brat who was at the point of harassing Pete in his private life. So Pete pushed the button and deleted the forum, the image archive, the IRC server and shutdown the primary Nekoware server for /dev and /current, leaving (for a while) the Nekoware mirrors running until they too were shutdown.
The person who picked up the development side of things, reached out to other former Nekochan users and brought it all back together using archive.org scrapes and people's private copies of nekoware and some of the earliest attempts to phase out MipsPRO with GCC (there was a time when GCC on Irix was incredibly worse than the native compiler tools and a lot of then modern software couldn't build because of the lack of GCC) was another individual entirely. I cannot be absolutely rude to that person considering they went through the effort to reconstruct the community, but I find it was done so scrictly that within a year or two of the new community being created, the SGI community splintered off into their own groups because they were so dissatisfied with the new direction.
Silicon Graphics only became trendy in the last five years. I don't blame Clint for this. They're pretty, many of them are fragile, they can run some neato modern software, there was that Nintendo partnership for a while and they are maturing in value at a staggering rate.
Anyways, I have many, many machines. Back in the Nekochan days the list was so long I designed a set of pixel art icons to represent the entire SGI family as to fit them in my signature.
2 x Personal Iris 4D/20 (TG)
1 x IRIS Crimson (R4000 RE)
3 x Iris Indigo (R3K, R4K and R4400)
2 x Indigo2 (Teal)
2 x Indigo2 IMPACT (purple)
3 x Indy (R4600SC, R4400 and R5000)
1 x O2
1 x Onyx (R10000 RE2)
1 x Origin 2000
2 x Origin 200 + Craylink
2 x Origin 200 + Craylink + Gigachannel
15 years ago, most SGI hardware was damn-near free. The Galileo Video + Cosmo Compression for one of the Indigo2's was $70. An EXtreme boardset for another was $40 in 2006. My eyes water at some of the prices people want now.
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I remember people playing around with free or close to it SGI machines 15-20 years ago and they did frequent Nekoware for help with hardware and software. That era was a hoarder's paradise because pretty much anything was free or cheap to play with (Atari ST, Amiga, old PC, SUN, SGI). The downside is people got bored and traded gear around until it broke or they had to move and trashed it. Prices today reflect the massive amount of gear that got recycled or hoarded (in bad condition) leaving slim pickings for new collectors today.
Hey, that's me!
I've yet to throw the High Impact into my Indigo2 - need to get some other projects out of the way. I plan on using it to develop some demo software for the Indigo2 at the VCF museum in wall, where I volunteer.
Aside from the Indigo2 I've got an Octane2, an O2, and a Personal IRIS (which I'm also working on for the museum).
They're pretty competent UNIX machines, and IRIX's 4dwm has a far more pleasant user interface design than the standard CDE. Plus, they all double as effective space heaters.
paul
Veteran Member
I purchased an Indy system in 2009 for NZ$101 from a teenager who was selling it on behave of his dad, an industrial designer. It's hardly been used and has no UV damage or significant wear on the keyboard, mouse, 19" monitor or Indycam. I just keep it running at a basic level for display in my flat. When the Indy came out (in the US) at $5,000 (in base trim) around 1995 it certainly piqued my interest so it was great to see what the fuss was all about.
I also have an O2 (box-only) that was gifted to me from a family member about 2014 who has an industrial design company and used these systems to run Alias Designer. Since he had quite a few of these I have many spare parts as well. The power supply and CDROM have both needed work. For fun I installed SoftWIndows 95 on it last week but my only goal is to keep it operational as long as I can. But the plastics are fragile and both computers need to be handled very carefully.
In early 1995 at work (SoCal) my mechanical engineering group was still running DOS but I was looking for a way to transition our AutoCAD users to something more advanced and that could handle larger 3-D models. Our software engineers used SUNs, publications used Macs and admin used a VAX. Our products used Microware OS-9 RTOS on multiprocessor 68000 SBCs on VME. No one was able to help me decide what to do and we didn't have much of a budget so I decided to buy a new PC with NT 3.51 and AutoCAD 13 to try out, despite resistance from the Unix admin and purchasing. That turned out to be the right move for us and we never looked back. The introduction of Solidworks fixed much that was wrong with AutoCAD as well. I like collecting UNIX workstations because that was the path we didn't take, plus there's so much history embedded in these machines.
I also have an O2 (box-only) that was gifted to me from a family member about 2014 who has an industrial design company and used these systems to run Alias Designer. Since he had quite a few of these I have many spare parts as well. The power supply and CDROM have both needed work. For fun I installed SoftWIndows 95 on it last week but my only goal is to keep it operational as long as I can. But the plastics are fragile and both computers need to be handled very carefully.
In early 1995 at work (SoCal) my mechanical engineering group was still running DOS but I was looking for a way to transition our AutoCAD users to something more advanced and that could handle larger 3-D models. Our software engineers used SUNs, publications used Macs and admin used a VAX. Our products used Microware OS-9 RTOS on multiprocessor 68000 SBCs on VME. No one was able to help me decide what to do and we didn't have much of a budget so I decided to buy a new PC with NT 3.51 and AutoCAD 13 to try out, despite resistance from the Unix admin and purchasing. That turned out to be the right move for us and we never looked back. The introduction of Solidworks fixed much that was wrong with AutoCAD as well. I like collecting UNIX workstations because that was the path we didn't take, plus there's so much history embedded in these machines.
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Al Kossow
Documentation Wizard
Sun-3's for example.
massiverobot
Member
This is uh wrong in so many levels it's beyond ranting. RSE is based on RPM. It 100% co-exists with both Necroware and inst. The group was and is 100% open and made no dictates outside the decisions for implementing RSE. You were always free to do it your way or engage and help out. It would require you to touch your machines to help out though.
-andy
I've been an SGI user since the early 1990s, and currently have a couple of Indys, an R5k O2, and an R12k O2+.
- Alex
- Alex
NeXT
Veteran Member
My bad. Still doesn't make it better. I love loading all my software from SGI using swmgr, then needing to turn around and use another package manager and hoping that everything plays nice with eachother.
The hell is that? Why did you ever think that was a great idea as a collective?? Do you actively WANT to make people hate getting software for Irix?
Well, you did and it's been a thing for more than half a decade now with most of Nekoware either ported or abandoned so you can't be told again to start over, but with a brain. Good job killing my interest in the community software.
No. I'm pretty vivid that Raion after reviving the community made sure to then tell everyone to go HIS way or bugger off, hence two communities and the death of Nekoware (nice calling it Necroware. Got any other graves to dance on?) I don't consider it open if there's transparent guidelines specifically placed so that all development going forward has to take the absolutely stupid route. See above with package management.
Also, the fact Raion would reject new software if you didn't clean directories to save inodes and initially new software had to be uploaded in an archive format which a traditional irix install can't even read. Taking advice from MacintoshGarden?
1 - I'm not a software developer, so I'm not 70% of the people who still think SGI's are still cool. I think the hardware is really cool.
2 - I don't like it that with machines I do own I get snarky and resentful remarks about "buying-in" when they were still cheap, because they paid $$$. I had no control over that. I don't appreciate being judged because of how little I paid for my hardware. This was never a contest.
3 - My suggestions have been largely ignored either because it didn't align with Raion's vision of the future or because what I was hoping to do was not possible because my SGI was "too old". I'm sorry I don't have at least a 300 series Origin.
With that tone I'll let most of them sit in storage. Try asking again in ten years. What systems I do have out and setup have suffered from hardware or UI problems for years, in part because the community has no answers and I've tried and have not been able to fix it myself. Amazingly with all these people who are smarter than me the only solution to a CD drive not appearing on the desktop and automounting with mediad is "reinstall irix"?
I'm with Al on this one. I'm just a lot more verbose about my opinion.
siliboi
Member
Well like you said most seem to be hoarders so they dont need to or want to fix anything just reinstall or swap. That being said it seems like some repairers are coming up. I personally Like to repair old electronics and do it for fun. Someone else named weblacky has some pretty impressive gear and has been fault finding mostly on fuels. I SURE WOULD LOVE TO FIX THAT O2 dead motherboard thing aka the red light of death. There solution is: swap every component and move every pin and clean everything until you have schizophrenia. Not making fun of a mental disease but I think some fellows in SGI collection have OCD. No sir ive already swapped in good components lets work on actual repair.
Some people dislike Raions way of doing things which is why there is an alternate community. I do like how he pays people/has bounties for things he wants to change or remake.
SGUG seems more like an add features to Irix distro and Raions more of a replace guy each have their merits in my eyes, I think his wiki is quite nice as well but his community may be a little over moderated like a Hen constantly going at its eggs and shifting them so much that nobody hatches because of the way over attentiveness but i do think people give him way too much flak lol just let him go about his business and contribute in both forums, or one or the other all are good options.
Sgug on the other hand is relaxed almost to a fault. I've been trying to get into contributing but they have a few missing packages for contribution from their wiki guide and its been what now few months and I keep asking but its still not up. Id love to contribute but if you cant because nothing gets done its kind of bad in the other direction. That being said the actual devs have done a lot with their sgug platform its quite nice. I like to keep it separate because rn I have one main machine If something breaks I DO NOT WANT TO REINSTALL 100 gigs of crap and everything I've been saving for years. A bootstrap or dualboot would be nice if you want to do the replacement route but either way people can pick what they like most. I havent had anything go massively wrong from rai's or sgugs releases yet.
siliboi
Member
what did you use them for usually
siliboi
Member
dng i need to get autocad thats so sweet
siliboi
Member
did you start development on anything neat yet?
NeXT
Veteran Member
There's actually been recent developments on that in relation to cratered 74 series logic around the edge connector. I'm hoping to deliver a donor O2 to midwest this year to verify if this was a one-off or if this one blown chip might be the source of the fault.