23 Dec
2022
23 Dec
'22
6:57 p.m.
An Indy for instance, is it much faster then a similarly clocked PowerMac? What about an
Indigo 2 IMPACT 10000. Does that blow most PMs away?
Anyone using an I2 or Indy with regularity? I have a purple box somewhere. I foumd the
teal boxes much more visually appealing.
23 Dec
23 Dec
9:36 p.m.
I was using an Octane regularly up to about a month ago
b
On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 9:57 PM Chris via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
An Indy for instance, is it much faster then a
similarly clocked
PowerMac? What about an Indigo 2 IMPACT 10000. Does that blow most PMs away?
Anyone using an I2 or Indy with regularity? I have a purple box somewhere.
I foumd the teal boxes much more visually appealing.
10:01 p.m.
Ok. Did you love it? Was it fun? What were you using it for?
As I've said I have an I2 and 2 Indy's here. The Indy's are just, well, so
nifty and sleek. 1 of the Indy's has a nice graphics card. The I2 is maxed out I
think.
I always said if I were going to go retro Unix, other then playing around with Linux,
I'd opt for HP-UX. But the Indy's I've held onto for some reason. The I2 will
be rehomed before very long. I think the damned thing is missing the door. And to think I
once had stacks of the things.
I got rid of my Sun stash ages ago.
24 Dec
24 Dec
2:14 a.m.
Hi There!
An Indy for instance, is it much faster then a
similarly clocked
PowerMac? What about an Indigo 2 IMPACT 10000. Does that blow most PMs
away?
Hmm, never used MACs of that generation. Graphics performance of
the SGIs was awesome for its day. Still using an Octane (2*R12k)
from time to time with old software I compiled for it and very
impressive still is the responsiveness of the OS: Most other OSes
still today let you feet that there is load on the CPU. With the
SGIs you do not feel that so much if working in a terminal for
example.
I also have got dual monitors, video compressor and crystal
eyes on the Octane ;-)
Octane greatly improved in memory performance (well above GB/s) over
the earlier SGIs and I lot of other competitors...
Unfortunately my maxed out Indigo2 suffered a maniboard failure
recently and does not boot any more...
Best wishes and merry Xmas,
Erik.
''~``
( o o )
+------------------------.oooO--(_)--Oooo.---------------------------+
| Dr. Erik Baigar Inertial Navigation & |
| Salzstrasse 1 .oooO Vintage Computer |
| D87616 Marktoberdorf ( ) Oooo. Hobbyist / Physicist |
| erik(a)baigar.de +----\ (----( )-----------------------------+
| www.baigar.de | \_) ) /
+----------------------+ (_/
7:21 a.m.
I still use my Indigo Elan from time to time. Oddly enough it was I who
discovered the interesting issue that ultimately sank SGI's graphics
market when evaluating Hollidance on the Elan vs a baseline Indy.
Nice little system and runs SimCity.
C
On 12/23/2022 9:57 PM, Chris via cctalk wrote:
An Indy for instance, is it much faster then a
similarly clocked PowerMac? What about an Indigo 2 IMPACT 10000. Does that blow most PMs
away?
Anyone using an I2 or Indy with regularity? I have a purple box somewhere. I foumd the
teal boxes much more visually appealing.
7:26 a.m.
You're single-handedly responsible for the downfall of SGI?
Do tell.
Sellam
On Sat, Dec 24, 2022, 7:21 AM Chris Zach via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
I still use my Indigo Elan from time to time. Oddly
enough it was I who
discovered the interesting issue that ultimately sank SGI's graphics
market when evaluating Hollidance on the Elan vs a baseline Indy.
Nice little system and runs SimCity.
C
On 12/23/2022 9:57 PM, Chris via cctalk wrote:
An Indy for instance, is it much faster then a
similarly clocked
PowerMac? What about an Indigo 2 IMPACT 10000. Does that blow most PMs away?
Anyone using an I2 or Indy with regularity? I have a purple box
somewhere. I foumd the teal boxes much more visually appealing.
7:34 a.m.
No, but I found that even the incredible graphics cards they built
couldn't keep up with the pace of generic processors just increasing in
speed at an exponential rate. This also took out chips like the Elsa
Gloria cards, exceptionally fast, but eclipsed by Pentium processors
pretty quickly.
Was interesting to go back and forth before we figured this out.
C
On 12/24/2022 10:26 AM, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:
You're single-handedly responsible for the
downfall of SGI?
Do tell.
Sellam
On Sat, Dec 24, 2022, 7:21 AM Chris Zach via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
> I still use my Indigo Elan from time to time. Oddly enough it was I who
> discovered the interesting issue that ultimately sank SGI's graphics
> market when evaluating Hollidance on the Elan vs a baseline Indy.
>
> Nice little system and runs SimCity.
>
> C
>
> On 12/23/2022 9:57 PM, Chris via cctalk wrote:
>> An Indy for instance, is it much faster then a similarly clocked
> PowerMac? What about an Indigo 2 IMPACT 10000. Does that blow most PMs away?
>>
>> Anyone using an I2 or Indy with regularity? I have a purple box
> somewhere. I foumd the teal boxes much more visually appealing.
>
9:02 a.m.
Don"t know what an Elan is. I do seem to recall suddenly an Indy with no graphics
output, intended to be used as a headless server.
On Saturday, December 24, 2022, 10:21:36 AM EST, Chris Zach via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I still use my Indigo Elan from time to time. Oddly enough it was I who
discovered the interesting issue that ultimately sank SGI's graphics
market when evaluating Hollidance on the Elan vs a baseline Indy.
Nice little system and runs SimCity.
C
On 12/23/2022 9:57 PM, Chris via cctalk wrote:
An Indy for instance, is it much faster then a
similarly clocked PowerMac? What about an Indigo 2 IMPACT 10000. Does that blow most PMs
away?
Anyone using an I2 or Indy with regularity? I have a purple box somewhere. I foumd the
teal boxes much more visually appealing.
9:22 a.m.
Elan is a class of graphics chips in a given (early) SGI. It's the top level of the
Express set.
http://archive.irixnet.org/sgistuff/hardware/graphics/express.html
<http://archive.irixnet.org/sgistuff/hardware/graphics/express.html>
I thought the end of SGI hinged on two things: banking on the Itanium and giving up on
MIPS, and their Graphics experts went off to found a company called Nvidia... the rest was
inevitable.
For anyone that still uses a SGI and has a later IRIX installed I've worked with a
team that has ported a whole slew of modern software over to IRIX to make them fairly
useable today. Later systems mostly - but quite a few people love their Indys and are
running what we built: SGUG-RSE (Silicon Graphics User Group's RPM Software Env).
How to setup RSE:
https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/setup-the-official-sgug-repo-upgrad…
<https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/setup-the-official-sgug-repo-upgrade-openssh.660/>
RSE sources:
https://github.com/sgidevnet/sgug-rse <https://github.com/sgidevnet/sgug-rse>
It's fun if you are into SGI and want to run some stuff that is slightly relevant.
On Dec 24, 2022, at 12:02 PM, Chris via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Don"t know what an Elan is. I do seem to recall suddenly an Indy with no graphics
output, intended to be used as a headless server.
> Anyone using an I2 or Indy with regularity? I have a purple box somewhere. I foumd
the teal boxes much more visually appealing.
I use my Fuel and my teal Indigo2 pretty regularly- there is a of course a group of people
who do CGI work on these old systems for the authentic feels and I dabble in that and IRIX
sysadmin- it's a refreshing change from Linux and systemd lol.
-andy
1:15 p.m.
I thought the end of SGI hinged on two things: banking
on the Itanium
and giving up on MIPS, and their Graphics experts went off to found a
company called Nvidia... the rest was inevitable.
Founder of SGI wrote a book and in it he said he wanted to get into the PC
Graphics card market and thought the writing was on the wall but the gravy
train from the gov buyers was too good. Until it wasn't.
I remember (in the workplace) when we started seeing PC clusters take the
place of the big SGI boxes. For a while there was a claim that the
graphics output on SGI was more accurate and the PC stuff fudged it
(important in sims I guess) but we see where it all ended up.
Really without the US government as a customer I wonder how many of these
companies could have made it on industry alone.
- Ethan
30 Dec
30 Dec
7:48 p.m.
I went to Onyx2/Origin 2000 training in Mountain View in the building that
is now the Computer History Museum and I met a lot of Gov folks but I also
met a lot of oil people who used SGIs to crunch data. At the time no one
could touch them but that too changed
As for workstations the one I remember being a real competitor was
Intergraph. They had dual pentium pro boxes with proprietary cards that ran
NT and Softimage. Microsoft bought Softimage to compete with SGI and SGI
bought Alias Wavefront
On Sat, Dec 24, 2022, 4:15 PM Ethan O'Toole via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Really without the US government as a customer I wonder how many of these
companies could have made it on industry alone.
- Ethan
24 Dec
24 Dec
12:17 p.m.
It was the top of the line SGI Indigo/Iris series. 4 GE7 Geometry
engines (50mflops each), Z buffer, Raster manager, and 24 bit video. A
worthy system without a doubt.
The big thing missing was texture memory, it didn't have it. Still I
think it could do 4 light sources on the cars and neat stuff like that.
The Indigo2 Extreme was in the I2 platform but with 8 GE7's. They made a
half chip version of it that they called Elan. The GE11+Texture memory
of the High and Max Impact systems was a lot better.
CZ
On 12/24/2022 12:02 PM, Chris via cctalk wrote:
Don"t know what an Elan is. I do seem to recall
suddenly an Indy with no graphics output, intended to be used as a headless server.
On Saturday, December 24, 2022, 10:21:36 AM EST, Chris Zach via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I still use my Indigo Elan from time to time. Oddly enough it was I who
discovered the interesting issue that ultimately sank SGI's graphics
market when evaluating Hollidance on the Elan vs a baseline Indy.
Nice little system and runs SimCity.
C
On 12/23/2022 9:57 PM, Chris via cctalk wrote:
An Indy for instance, is it much faster then a
similarly clocked PowerMac? What about an Indigo 2 IMPACT 10000. Does that blow most PMs
away?
Anyone using an I2 or Indy with regularity? I have a purple box somewhere. I foumd the
teal boxes much more visually appealing.
1:12 p.m.
Don"t know what an Elan is. I do seem to recall
suddenly an Indy with no graphics output, intended to be used as a headless server.
The SGI Challenge S is an Indy sized machine that is meant as a server.
They get rid of the graphics and replace it with a board that adds a 2nd
network interface and two additional differental SCSI interfaces.
- Ethan
1:23 p.m.
On 24/12/2022 17:02, Chris via cctalk wrote:
Don"t know what an Elan is. I do seem to recall
suddenly an Indy with no graphics output, intended to be used as a headless server.
That was a Challenge. the Indigo Elan is an Indigo with a particular
higher-end graphics card.
I still have an Indy running 24/7, providing various services on my
network. It has 24-bit graphics and a 100baseT Ethernet interface, but
it's not much used other than as a server these days. Not the most
efficient but somehow it's always seemed like more trouble to migrate
things.
--
Pete
Pete Turnbull
490
days inactive
497
days old
13 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
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Dr. Erik Baigar -
Ethan O'Toole -
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