Getting Started, Documentation, Tips & Tricks

Good afternoon neighbors,

Just wanted to say "hello" and introduce myself to the community here, looks like a fine place.

I am *hoping* to find/put together an Indigo2 or O2 system of the R10000 persuasion, to use for some hobby projects and indulge in a bit of nostalgia from my college days. From what I gather looking on eBay and craigslist/Atlanta, it seems it is going to be a bit of a scavenger hunt to find all the pieces, so any suggestions on other places to look and scavenge would be much appreciated.

In the meantime, nice to meet you folks

-Matt

Welcome! can't help you with the hardware, I'm afraid, but I'd agree it's a fine place, and the nekoware repository is an excellent resource. As a relative newbie myself (some experience as a Linux user, but inspired to get an I2 by seeing one in action, quite briefly, in 1995ish rather than by past familiarity - and because I had a couple of empty ports on a KVM and was looking for something interesting with PS/2 KM that would fit on a desktop!) I can testify to the openness and helpfulness of the guys on here.

Andrew

Welcome! Coincidentally, this video was posted today... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt2swW5JesE

<insert default reference to Ian Mapleson's SGI depot>

I can personally attest that the I2 is a great machine (having owned two purple ones myself), and a nice entry point to sgi hardware. Beware that the 250MHz version of the R4400 has an interesting bug (ISTR someone saying it's because the 250MHz version is essentially factory overclocked and thus is a little quirky) that it will recoverably freeze if left running and only resume when it gets network, keyboard or mouse input. At the time I set up one of my servers to ping the I2 every second so that I wouldn't have to get up and poke it while listening to music...

Welcome to the machine(s)!

Much obliged folks, thanks for the kind welcomes and good advice!

In college back in the 90's we were using Indigo2 XZ's with PowerAnimator, then a little later O2's with Maya. I recently moved to a new apartment, and in unboxing things I've been finding all sorts of SGI and A/W swag that I accumulated during that time and its gotten me to thinking I'd like to find some sort of IRIX box I can play around with.

I'm leaning hard toward hunting for a purple Indigo2 Impact 10000, just because I was always enamored with the looks of them. The few I have seen on eBay though looked like rubbish (missing doors, logo's, badges, etc), so this might take a while. But that's ok, I'm not punching a time clock, this is strictly for fun and learning.

Looking forward to a geeky adventure!

-Matt

Greetings and solicitations! I meant salutations...

Just as an aside, if your heart is really set on an I2 then by all means go for it, but a far more generally useful machine would be a newer O2. Or an Octane or a Fuel. Or a Tezro. Thanks for signing up and welcome to the site!

Can I have some of your sgi/aw swag? Kidding! I only kid. No seriously...

Thanks for the kind words and advice also, vishnu!

I'm not at all averse to an O2 if I find one that strikes my fancy. Since I'm not pressed for time though, I shall bide my time and shop a bit. I'll see what I can do about posting some pics of the swag in the meantime if you are curious though

-Matt

Somebody's got to document that stuff before it's lost to history, might as well be you...

Back when A/W was still A/W they sold Maya t-shirts in their webstore. If I'd have known Autodesk was going to put an end to that I'd have bought a lifetime supply...

yeah i'd like to see that stuff, too

Okie dokie, I should have some time this weekend and I'll see about snapping some pics and posting

-Matt