SGI....

[Lyle Bickley]

On Wednesday 09 November 2005 09:38, Jules Richardson wrote:
> Lyle Bickley wrote:
---snip--
> > 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).

Fortunately, I live and work in Mountain View - about 5 minutes from sgi's 
headquarters. The combination of easy access to sgi directly and some large 
sgi brokers in the immediate area helps. Some brokers and scrappers have 
literally given me free sgi gear. Unfortunately, it's getting more and more 
difficult to find the older systems - particularly high end graphics - as 
most have been scrapped by both sgi and brokers over the years. The "server" 
class systems are still relatively abundant (Challenge, Origin, etc.).

> 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.

That was certainly true for a period of time - sgi was concerned about older 
(obsolete) gear competing with newer gear - and scrapped a lot a stuff. I 
suspect some of the gear I have was "supposed" to have been scrapped...

Later on (way too late), sgi realized they had a gold mine in their older gear 
- and began selling older stuff at reasonable prices from their huge 
warehouse here in Mountain View. They still do so...

> > 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.

They're larger systems have simply awesome graphics - I've benchmarked modern 
PC based NVIDIA, ATI etc. vs an Onyx Infinite Reality and the sgi will 
overall whip the PC stuff. Of course, the price-performance ratio is a "bit" 
different ;-)

> (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! :)

It is copyrighted, bigtime...

> > 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 ;)
>

I pass that on to him.

Cheers,
Lyle
-- 
Lyle Bickley
Bickley Consulting West Inc.
Mountain View, CA
http://bickleywest.com

"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"