I'm sorting through a bunch of Indys that used to belong to Acclaim Entertainment, the now-defunct developer of games like Turok Dinosaur Hunter and NBA Jam. It's quite a story and after years in storage the systems are finally starting to reveal their secrets.
These Indys, more than a dozen in total, came into my possession via a Russian who operated out of a warehouse in Brooklyn. I met him several years ago through Craigslist, when he was selling some old copies of Softimage and other IRIX software. He was a tough negotiator, but because he didn't specialize in retro SGI kit I was able to pick it all up for a good price.
He had purchased most of it from the Acclaim liquidation sale in 2005, and the software, hardware, and books sat collecting dust ever since. It was all stored in a big, dark room on two-story shelves running floor to ceiling. Thankfully, despite not being treated with the best of care, the Indys were in solid shape. Except one of them...
It was a treasure trove of vintage 3D - boxed sets of Softimage, Maya, Nichimen N-World, and dozens of mint CD-ROMs of PowerAnimator, Alias Wavefront, Explore, Composer, etc. It took two trips and hours climbing over industrial shelves to retrieve it all, only for it to sit silently in my storage unit until last week, when I finally started to sort through it.
Despite the fact that these systems are two decades old and use the Nidec power supplies, almost all of them boot up and run perfectly. Here's one that still has a couple of old user accounts - Mimoun Ouchaou and Nick Schipano , who according to Mobygames and LinkedIn are programmers.
Many of the systems have old source code, art assets, motion capture data, and licenses, which I will carefully preserve for posterity. It will no doubt take weeks to sift through it all. I'll post updates with interesting finds along the way.
These Indys, more than a dozen in total, came into my possession via a Russian who operated out of a warehouse in Brooklyn. I met him several years ago through Craigslist, when he was selling some old copies of Softimage and other IRIX software. He was a tough negotiator, but because he didn't specialize in retro SGI kit I was able to pick it all up for a good price.
He had purchased most of it from the Acclaim liquidation sale in 2005, and the software, hardware, and books sat collecting dust ever since. It was all stored in a big, dark room on two-story shelves running floor to ceiling. Thankfully, despite not being treated with the best of care, the Indys were in solid shape. Except one of them...
It was a treasure trove of vintage 3D - boxed sets of Softimage, Maya, Nichimen N-World, and dozens of mint CD-ROMs of PowerAnimator, Alias Wavefront, Explore, Composer, etc. It took two trips and hours climbing over industrial shelves to retrieve it all, only for it to sit silently in my storage unit until last week, when I finally started to sort through it.
Despite the fact that these systems are two decades old and use the Nidec power supplies, almost all of them boot up and run perfectly. Here's one that still has a couple of old user accounts - Mimoun Ouchaou and Nick Schipano , who according to Mobygames and LinkedIn are programmers.
Many of the systems have old source code, art assets, motion capture data, and licenses, which I will carefully preserve for posterity. It will no doubt take weeks to sift through it all. I'll post updates with interesting finds along the way.
R16000 700MHz 8GB RAM
