Classics long overdue a Boot.

[Swift Griggs]

On Fri, 20 May 2016, ethan at 757.org wrote:
> FWIW, everyone loves the Crimson. I like the Challenge L and Onyx 
> deskside better.

They love them because they are Awesome. :-)

> I know that one of my old Onyx's is in New Mexico, not sure where the 
> others are these days.

People love them. I just wish folks would take better care of the skins.

> I gave away *four* Challenge Ls. Not sure if the one guy still uses them 
> as a table end or not.

Damn, Ethan, you have had more SGI's than I have. That's freakin' saying 
something, and you don't seem to mind the big ones, either. Then again, 
all you British folks live in large country estates, right? :-) 

In the USA, we just name apartment complexes like we wish it was medieval 
times in rural Britain. Ie.. "Willowmanor Estates", "Manorwood Manor", 
"Blokehappy Hollow" etc.. However, despite the name, they frequently don't 
have 220v L630 twist lock whips, 3-phase power, or anything else that 
makes life as a Big-SGI collector easy. :-P 

My favorite is actually the Tezro. I love the crossbar architecture, and 
it's basically (same procs same RAM etc..) a mini Origin 3k supercomputer. 
It's just a brusin' bad-dude of a graphics workstation. Stick a dmedia rig 
on there and it's graphics/video heaven (even HD). The machine feels much 
faster than 4x1Ghz. Even browsers run fast. To me, this is the "high art" 
intersection of electrical engineering, Unix, and design-friendly 
philosophy. I just need to get mine to 16GB of RAM and I'll be in 
hog-heaven (a very loud fan-blown heaven, but still). I've got my Tezro 
all beefed up with SSD drives too (acard 3.5" converters used and work 
very nicely). Yesterday I put it on my living room coffee table to cheer 
me up when I come home from work (I have no kids, dog, life, hehe). Is 
that a bit much ?

The Octane is also a really wonderful platform for many of the same 
reasons as the Tezro. I don't currently own one, but I've got room for one 
more SGI, and I think it'll be either a Fuel or an Octane2. I just need to 
find one with skins in good condition and a decent CPU. It'll probably be 
an Octane2 because the Fuel reminds me too much of a PeeCee. It's like 
when Sun came out with UltraSPARCs and started in with cheapened PeeCee 
sparcstations (my opinion from looking at the guts of those machines and 
comparing with older machines such as the venerable SS10). Still, the 
Fuels are fast and take commodity hardware very easily.

-Swift

PS: I'm never selling my SGIs unless something exceedingly horrible 
happens. I've even got them in my will. I want them to go to people I 
trust. etc... Nutty? Probably. Such is my life. 

PPS: You guys got me all paranoid with your battery horror stories. I 
stayed up late last night powering on Indys. Whew! Everything is working, 
including my Sega 32X!