Just my opinion but if no functional issue I'd probably just leave them as they are... Older SGI plastics as used on i.e. the Indigo, Indigo2, Indy seem to be pretty robust even after 20-30 years down the line (though I'm still loath to pull the cover on an Indigo2 nowadays unless I really have to because getting them lined up to put back on can be tricky and you risk breaking the tabs at the back of the top case... But the later SGI equipment... well, I am thinking of the O2s in particular, they must have changed the formulation on the plastics used for the case skins because they did not age well and became quite brittle fairly rapidly. They aged almost as poorly as the plastics in my Power Mac 8500 which are completely held together by epoxy at this point, LOL. What was Apple thinking! (cost cutting, obviously) I'm not sure if this was such an issue on the higher end systems i.e. Octane, Origin/Onyx, Tezro, etc. but if I were in your shoes, my concern would be that the side skins could fracture or shear in the process of being removed or reinstalled. SGI's case designs were so striking; I want to try and do everything I can to keep the skins in nice shape. Is the paint really very bad? I'd just consider it a little bit of character :O Best, Sean On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 5:37 PM, Jules Richardson < jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> wrote:

On 04/01/2015 01:55 AM, Pontus Pihlgren wrote: Well, I got it... I ended up removing the I/O card cage, which allowed me to reach through the holes in the framework below (the fan tray was already out, obviously) so that I could access the plastic clips on the reverse side of the rear plastic molding. There are six clips, four along the top and two farther down, but I only needed to unhook the top four (one at a time, while applying a little backward pressure to the rear molding so they didn't snap back into place) and then the panel came off. Once that real panel's off, the side panels just lift up and off very easily. Access is really tight doing it that way though, and I confess to breaking* a locating lug in the center of the rear molding while I was removing it, so I can't help but think that the official procedure is different! * not critical to reassembly, thankfully. I might glue it back on so I can break it again the next time :-) Or I might just leave the rear molding off altogether - once the machine's sitting up near a wall, it's not particularly critical to looks, other than the lower couple of inches where it just wraps around to the sides. Soap, very hot water and a toothbrush did the trick! I considered some form of more aggressive cleaning solution, but decided that I didn't want to risk it. Getting the case back on my Indigo2 was a major pain in the butt Maybe, although this (blue) Origin 2200 seems fine - perhaps there's a heat/sunlight element involved too, though. Well, see above - "solved" but I have a feeling that SGI's official procedure is different to what I did. Or maybe it just wasn't something that was ever really done in the field, and they had a special tool back at service centers to pop the tabs via the front of the fan bay (furthermore, if they were replacing side skins at a customer site I can believe that they might just replace the rear molding too, and so it wouldn't matter if they broke the old one). Makes sense! cheers Jules