SGI: Hardware

This is an Origin 200. I thought I'd start with a picture of what one of these is supposed to look like. Because of the ridiculously fragile skins, most of them look a little different... search eBay.com if you know what I mean.


This is a detail of an Origin 200 foot. The foot itself is ~ 1mm thick ABS plastic, the little knobs are all there is to fixate the 25kg system. Brilliant design ... not . That's why most of them look like this:

Believe me, I'm very careful and protective of my systems, but this is just too much. It's like balancing a 19" rackmount server on 4 crystal glasses -- no matter what you do, you will loose.

Here's how I fixed the feet. Carefully drill a 5mm hole though the broken knob. Flatten the remains of the knob to roughly the thickness of the bottom plate of the Origin. Now it looks like this:

Now you can put an M5 * 15mm bolt (with a washer) through the foot. Use a washer and a self locking M5 nut on the other side. Much more solid than the original design!

Finally, a shot of the last original knob left in my Origin 200:

Really, what were they thinking??

I should have just reworked that one too, but I couldn't. Of course I'm going to pay dearly for this mistake because it will self destruct in a year or so, and then I'll have to take the front off (which will splinter into many fragments when I do) in order to remove the bottom plate. The front door is an even bigger catastrophe then the feet

I have an O200 which came to me in very good condition. When moving houses I took great care to ensure that only I handled the O200. But I looked away for a few seconds and my father picked it up with one hand on the door.... sigh..

With great beauty comes great tenderness!

Same here. Found an intact O200, seller demonstrated it, and broke the hinge of the door right there and then

Glued it back together, it was fine for a while, then one day my wife walks along my desk and lightly brushed the side of the O200 -- *snap* the other hinge

Left it like that during the construction of my new computer room but now I wanted to put it back together again (it's my install server). Glued the hinges again, try to click the door in -- *crack* door broken.

Glued that, try again the next evening real careful, *crack* the other side of the door breaks

This time I glued it 'in place'. That thing is maddening. It's just crazy. I hear people complain about the fragility of O2s, but really, the O200 is in a class of it's own. I've never seen anything like it.

That's why no cats & no kids are allowed in my computer room, and the O200 is 'out of the way' in the room. Actually, I think I'll hook it up to one of my APC PDUs and a console server so I don't have to touch it *at all* to power it or operate it

Normally I am not a fan of the 3D printer hysteria. But in this case, one would be nice

The design of the feet isn't bad, it's the philosophy behind it. Fasteners cost money. The skins have to be molded anyhow, .0003 g of ABS costs nothing. Assembly is push-and-twist instead of collecting four screws, eight washers, and four nuts which are not free, then putting it together with a torque-controlled screwdriver.

But in the long run, customers take it up the arse.

Not sure whose fault that is ... people are self-punishingly short-sighted, while companies would and do screw us for $ .0005 per unit no matter what.

Hunt and gather, I say. Let's live in teepees and spend our spare time making whoopee

I read the title as Origin "200 feet" repair, and was looking forward to a description on how to fix an Origin (or anything else) from 200 feet away