13 Mar
2002
13 Mar
'02
6:46 a.m.
At one of my usual haunts, while I was picking up a couple of $10 SPARC
IPXs (with lotsa RAM and interesting Sbus cards) and an HP LJIIIsi (also
$10), I ran across an unpriced Indigo. This means that it will be
available for sale next week. The trick... it's been gutted. There's
no RAM, no drives, I think no sleds, and several conspicuous empty
sockets on the motherboard. There _are_ two large PCBs inside, and the
PSU is present (but no guarantees it's working).
Is this thing even worth $10?
-ethan
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13 Mar
13 Mar
8:08 a.m.
On 2002.03.13 18:46 Ethan Dicks wrote:
There's no RAM, no drives, I think no sleds, and
several conspicuous
empty
sockets on the motherboard.
If it is a R4k
Indigo you can feed it with PS/2 parity FPM RAM. (It
needs four identical pieces per bank.) A R3k Indigo needs special SGI
SIMMs.
You can connect external drives if there are no sleds.
What you believe to be the motherboard may be the graphics system.
Remember that a "real" SGI machine is a keyboard processor (typical a
MIPS Rxxxx thing) with a graphics system. Depending on the type of
graphics it can be normal that there are empty sockets. (You may end up
with only one graphics processor instead of four, no Z buffer, only VRAM
for 8 bit color or the like.) But even with only one graphics processor
you get a decent graphics performance. Remember that it is a SGI. :-)
There _are_ two large PCBs inside,
CPU and
graphics.
Is this thing even worth $10?
Yes. The Indigo
PSU is error-prone[1], so my advice is get it at least
for the PSU. If you don't get it, you will get a offer for a full loaded
Indigo R4k Elan with dead PSU next week. ;-)
[1] We had six Indigos at the Unix-AG. Five of them have now dead PSUs.
--
tsch??,
Jochen
Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/
8:58 a.m.
On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, Jochen Kunz wrote:
The Indigo R4000 upgrade from SGI included a new, uprated PSU. You'll
probably find an R3k PSU is not adequate to run an R4k Indigo.
ok
r.
Is this thing
even worth $10?
Yes. The Indigo PSU is error-prone[1], so my advice is get it at
least
for the PSU. If you don't get it, you will get a offer for a full loaded
Indigo R4k Elan with dead PSU next week. ;-) 
8:35 a.m.
It's not worth 10 cents IMO. Unless you need some of the case parts but
even then it's not worth more than a dollar or two in this condition.
Joe
At 09:46 AM 3/13/02 -0800, you wrote:
At one of my usual haunts, while I was picking up a couple of $10 SPARC
IPXs (with lotsa RAM and interesting Sbus cards) and an HP LJIIIsi (also
$10), I ran across an unpriced Indigo. This means that it will be
available for sale next week. The trick... it's been gutted. There's
no RAM, no drives, I think no sleds, and several conspicuous empty
sockets on the motherboard. There _are_ two large PCBs inside, and the
PSU is present (but no guarantees it's working).
Is this thing even worth $10?
-ethan
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