SGI: Computer Graphics

I found these on YouTube , these are videos are from 1995. The period when M$ apparently owned S OFTIMAGE |3D for a short while. At first it seemed like your ordinary promotion & testimonial material, but it was really just a bunch of anti- SGI drivel. Constantly harping on how “NT” gave ‘you’ so much more ‘choice’ and lots of the usual jargon-laden buzzwords on alleged performance-benefits and so on.

Anyway, here they are:

• № 1 / 2
• № 2 / 2

I find it cool that Mainframe Entertainment got a part in that video. I always wondered why the feel to ReBoot changed midway through season 2 and I guess it was because they started transitioning over to PC's for all their work and their rendering.

A bit less cool that they had to slag off SGI with all the throwing of meaningless ‘company man’ jargon, whilst still big on SGI (as can be seen in the footage), with S OFTIMAGE eventually reverting back to being recognized as superior on IRIX (even on the O2 , compared to some big and expensive Intergraph peecees that were no match for it).

I remember how amazed I was at how speedy the O2 was back then, I first saw them at work at a graphic design college here in the Netherlands. I found it hard to believe such a ‘small computer’ (although one I couldn't afford, I had learned that much about it by then!) harnessed so much power and in such an appealing ‘shell’ too...

bah! save your passion for better things. why worry about the typical "business" 5 year old pissing contest between 2 logos?


brand names, logos and other subjective preferences aside, do you also remember the feeling?

i mean, we would just sit in front of a computer and we would start working on it. we wouldn't care much about numbers. and it would take some time to "render"/output our final work. so what? no one ever died and some really decent work(s) came out.

It's not the brand, well, not so much as it is — indeed — the feeling.

that's why i asked you -i gather from your posts that you're an artist/designer-

just wanted to hear your pov

Yes, I am, but also a technical background (graphic design done, graduated, and still busy with software engineering at university). I have a wide array of interests and hopefully a wide curriculum to provide with that too.

As for my preference and passion for MIPS/IRIX, well, is there anything with the same nowadays? Even the so-called “Linux advantage” that was promised to IFFFS customers doesn't even come close to what IRIX used to and still provides.

sounds interesting, you can make the best of sweetspots or favour one and drop the other but choice is there


uhmm dunno, your passion comes from you, only you can find out what fits your taste/needs.

i guess that the (feeling) word i picked a few posts up was wrong. i mean that everything gets to be whatever you treat it to.

a few years ago all this was kinda exotic. we would sit down to work with computers and then go home or to a bar. now we have a bunch of computers in every form/size and we're talking numbers more than just using them. glut ruins the kicks we used to get. fan noise too, most likely.


why give 2 funks about sales talk?

i bet that most sgi hw will end up to nekochan members, so you can still run your ifffs setup on irix and shift your passion to your design technique/ideas or to that blonde/brunette/whatever across the bar

would you be unhappy if you'd work w/ a linux-based ifffs @work and an irix-based one @home?

btw, the typical ifffs customers circle does not include anyone who can get a rack of equipment for $50 and put it in his bedroom.

(blame kbrd fro all typos)