23 Oct
2007
23 Oct
'07
5:04 a.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
I've had some interest, off and on, of fiddling
with some SGI
hardware. I really wanted an Indy when they came out, but couldn't
come close to affording it (I ended up buying a SPARC 1 for $800 the
following year, and many, many job opportunities and good things came
from that). I did get to fiddle with an Indigo^2 in the mid-1990s,
during the Virtual Reality bubble, but couldn't afford one of those at
the time, either.
I know the feeling. I remember reading the Byte review of the Indy in 1993... I wanted one
SO badly. Couldn't justify the price of several thousand dollars back then, though. I
was a student at the time, and I had two classrooms full of Suns at my disposal
(SPARCclassic and SPARCstation LX).
I did buy an Indy about ten years ago, though. Still paid the equivalent of about a
thousand dollars for it. Seeing what they go for these days ($0 - $25) kinda hurts...
I had the chance to pick up a discarded Indy about 4
years ago, but by
the time I returned with wheels, someone else had carted it away.
Given the descendent machines in the family tree in this thread, I'm
beginning to wonder if I shouldn't go after an Octane or an O2 rather
than an Indigo or an Indy, at least if I wanted to do more than take
the demo programs for a spin.
So for the more experienced SGI folks - do you feel that an Indy or
Indigo is responsive enough to be reasonable to use, or is it worth
holding out for something newer and most likely more expensive to
acquire? Also, something I don't know much about, do the older
personal graphic workstations use odd or impossible-to-find memory, or
are they easy/cheap to load up?
O2 is cheap enough these days that I'd recommend it as the minimum config to get. And
go for the R10K models, too. Even Octanes can be had cheap enough to be considered for
just playing around. You gan a lot of expandibility whan going for one of those. Although
they are significantly bigger, hotter and noisier. Then again, some might consider that a
plus. ;-)
Indies are nice to just have, make pretty decent servers, too, but I wouldn't buy an
Indy today for workstation use.
,xtG
tsooJ
23 Oct
23 Oct
5:57 a.m.
On 23/10/2007 13:04, jvdg at sparcpark.net wrote:
Ethan Dicks wrote:
I pretty much agree with the above. I still run an Indy (R5000, though
bought in about 1995 as an R4600SC and later upgraded) as a
mail/file/print server and for text editing but I rarely run other apps
on it now. I have an O2 R10K for that. I do have another R5K Indy in
the workshop, running zmail, netscape and comms stuff but it's not used
as a serious workstation any longer. I also have several Indigos which
are rarely used, and a rackmount Origin 2000 which has enough crunch
power but rarely gets turned on unless I want to warm the room.
The fastest official O2 (I think) is R12000 400Mhz, but there was a DIY
RM7000 600MHz upgrade for 300MHz R5ks.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
I had the chance to pick up a discarded Indy
about 4 years ago, but
by the time I returned with wheels, someone else had carted it
away. Given the descendent machines in the family tree in this
thread, I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't go after an Octane
or an O2 rather than an Indigo or an Indy, at least if I wanted to
do more than take the demo programs for a spin.
So for the more experienced SGI folks - do you feel that an Indy or
Indigo is responsive enough to be reasonable to use, or is it
worth holding out for something newer and most likely more
expensive to acquire? Also, something I don't know much about, do
the older personal graphic workstations use odd or
impossible-to-find memory, or are they easy/cheap to load up?
O2 is cheap enough these days that I'd recommend it as the minimum
config to get. And go for the R10K models, too. Even Octanes can be
had cheap enough to be considered for just playing around. You gan a
lot of expandibility whan going for one of those. Although they are
significantly bigger, hotter and noisier. Then again, some might
consider that a plus. ;-)
Indies are nice to just have, make pretty decent servers, too, but I
wouldn't buy an Indy today for workstation use. 
6:09 a.m.
I own several SGI boxes:
1. Two Indy's a R4k and a R5k example
2. Eight Indigo's but have only found the time to install an OS on three of
them
3. Two Indigo2's one of which is a refugee from Disney's animation
department
4. One Octane (ex-Lockheed-Martin) which actually does some work
5. Two R5k O2 which never get turned on
6. One R10K O2 which is a work in progress
7. Two O200's. One of which hosts my blackcube website and one rack system
that is still waiting to be reassembled and turned on. It has 2 O200
Gigachannel chassis, a XBox expansion chassis and 6 Anadatco RAID cabinets
in a full glass doored rack. I haven't figured out a use for that one yet
other than Pete's room heater.
--
www.blackcube.org - The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers
8:14 a.m.
On 23/10/2007 14:09, James Rice wrote:
one rack system
that is still waiting to be reassembled and turned on. It has 2 O200
Gigachannel chassis, a XBox expansion chassis and 6 Anadatco RAID cabinets
in a full glass doored rack. I haven't figured out a use for that one yet
other than Pete's room heater.
My "room heater" came with a state-of-the-art-when-new dual
fibre-channel RAID chassis. Unfortunately its 88GB of disk gives me
slightly less useful storage than I have on my laptop :-(
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
8:32 a.m.
On 23/10/2007 16:14, Pete Turnbull wrote:
My "room heater" came with a
state-of-the-art-when-new dual
fibre-channel RAID chassis. Unfortunately its 88GB of disk gives me
slightly less useful storage than I have on my laptop :-(
OTOH, it is attached to a machine with a DLT8000 with a pile of DLT-IVs,
and a sensible operating system that understands backups, none of which
can be said for the laptop :-)
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
6459
days inactive
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james.rice＠gmail.com -
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pete＠dunnington.plus.com