9 Nov
2005
9 Nov
'05
5:38 p.m.
Lyle Bickley wrote:
On Wednesday 09 November 2005 07:46, John Allain
wrote:
The Computer History Museum purchased the building directly from SGI.
See: http://www.computerhistory.org/bldg/
Some of us here in Silicon Valley have been collecting and preserving SGI
boxes and software for a very long time.
It's good to hear. It's a relatively hard brand to get hold of in the
UK, plus boxes usually show up stripped of memory and hard disk (and of
proprietary keyboards in the case of older models).
A few years back the company I was working for at the time did a few
projects in partnership with SGI because it was 'showcase' type work; I
used to hear tales of obselete kit getting thrown out at SGI and even
the employees weren't allowed to rescue it from the crusher.
Of course
if they're going to implode I hope someone can save archives
of software + docs from the days when they *did* make decent machines!
There's a joke in there somewhere.
The leading history archive center building was donated by SGI to
Computerhistory.org, now all the boxes they moved out of Moffett
field they may have to move right back in. I have at least one of every system
that SGI produced from the "lowly" PI to the "mainframe" Onyx
Infinite
Reality with Sirius Video - and much additional optional hardware and its
associated software.
Wow, that's pretty awesome. They did some very cool stuff - I was in the
game too late to see the earlier stuff and only worked with the Origin
200 / 2000 hardware. At the museum we've gained a 4D/25, pair of
Indigos, various Indys and an Indigo2 - but I'd love to get hold of some
of the larger / older systems. It's not much to show for a company who's
name lots of people have heard of.
(I haven't, however, tried contacting SGI UK directly in a museum
capacity and see if I can resuce anything - which might be worth a try)
AFAIK, I have a copy of just about all of the
software
that they SGI produced from IRIX to specialized graphics software for
specialized hardware and networking.
I'm glad someone's got it - even if it is presumably copyrighted to hell
and back right now! :)
The largest repository of SGI documentation outside of
SGI itself is:
http://futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/sgi.html
Initial glance and that looks like a useful resource!
It might be worthwhile for Ian to contact Weta Digital in NZ (Lord of
the Rings fame) - they had a *huge* amount of SGI hardware when I saw it
a few years ago and their machine room was most impressive (lots of blue ;)
They may well be interested in supplying some details / photos though
for posterity. Might make for an interesting article / feature.
(unfortunately according to
http://www.top500.org/sublist/Site.php?id=2343 it looks like they might
have gone the IBM route in the last couple of years)
cheers
Jules