SGI: Discussion

Part 5 of my History of SiliconGraphics series is done! Any thoughts?

This episode covers Richard Belluzo and Robert Bishop becoming CEO as well as the introduction of their x86 products and a lot of other things! Here's the link.

:Onyx: :O2000: :Fuel: :Octane: :Octane: :Octane: :O2: :O2: :Indigo2: :Indigo2: :Indy: :Indy:
and a small army of Image
Nice one! Keep going. :) When will you show off your Indys and you Indigo²? :D
:Indy: :O2: :Octane: :Octane2: :O200: = :O200: - :O200: = :O200: (O200 cluster w/2 GIGAchannel cabinets)
[ ( hp ) ] 712/80 c3000 (dead) :hpserv: (J5600) c3700 c3750 c8000 rp2470 :rx2600: (rx2620) rx4640
| d | i | g | i | t | a | l | AXPpci33 AlphaStation 200 AlphaStation 255 PWS 500au AlphaServer DS20E AlphaServer DS25
C O B A L T Qube 2 Qube 3 RaQ RaQ 2 RaQ 4r RaQ XTR
You nailed it! =)

That was very interesting and entertaining.
Image Image
johnnym wrote: Nice one! Keep going. :) When will you show off your Indys and you Indigo²? :D


Once I get the parts from Ian. The Indys have broken graphics cards (we think) and the Indigo2 has a hard drive but as far as I can tell the drive doesn't work. Same for the Fuel. It seems as if the previous owner of my SGIs (excluding the Fuel) mainly used the O2 and one of the Octanes, and left the other systems laying around long enough to develop problems without him knowing. No matter, they should work soon.
:Onyx: :O2000: :Fuel: :Octane: :Octane: :Octane: :O2: :O2: :Indigo2: :Indigo2: :Indy: :Indy:
and a small army of Image
Dodoid wrote: Once I get the parts from Ian. The Indys have broken graphics cards (we think) and the Indigo2 has a hard drive but as far as I can tell the drive doesn't work.

It might also work to netboot the Indigo² from one of your working machines. I once netbooted my Octane with loader, kernel and FS served from my Octane 2. There is a guide available for diskless operation that describes things and I believe you need to have the ONC3/NFS disk but I don't remember for sure.
:Indy: :O2: :Octane: :Octane2: :O200: = :O200: - :O200: = :O200: (O200 cluster w/2 GIGAchannel cabinets)
[ ( hp ) ] 712/80 c3000 (dead) :hpserv: (J5600) c3700 c3750 c8000 rp2470 :rx2600: (rx2620) rx4640
| d | i | g | i | t | a | l | AXPpci33 AlphaStation 200 AlphaStation 255 PWS 500au AlphaServer DS20E AlphaServer DS25
C O B A L T Qube 2 Qube 3 RaQ RaQ 2 RaQ 4r RaQ XTR
it's a good initiative, but too much generalist.... no tech details or arch analysis.

you totaly omit to talk about SGI history important part : gfx pipe history and evolution !!!!

Cheers

Eve
It is a fair point, as Belluzzo was also involved in another major shift of strategy during his time which mas often been credited as leading to SGIs downfall - he settled with Nvidia. It was the lawsuit SGI was widely expected to win, and could have meant a steady licensing revenue stream for SGI's graphics technologies. Instead, he basically gave free access to Nvidia for all of SGIs graphics technology, and SGI also handed over most of its graphics engineers to Nvidia as well. Long term, not exactly a smart move...
Systems in use:
:Indigo2IMP: - Nitrogen : R10000 195MHz CPU, 384MB RAM, SolidIMPACT Graphics, 36GB 15k HDD & 300GB 10k HDD, 100Mb/s NIC, New/quiet fans, IRIX 6.5.22
:Fuel: - Lithium : R14000 600MHz CPU, 4GB RAM, V10 Graphics, 72GB 15k HDD & 300GB 10k HDD, 1Gb/s NIC, New/quiet fans, IRIX 6.5.30
Other system in storage: :O2: R5000 200MHz, 224MB RAM, 72GB 15k HDD, PSU fan mod, IRIX 6.5.30
computron wrote: it's a good initiative, but too much generalist.... no tech details or arch analysis.

you totaly omit to talk about SGI history important part : gfx pipe history and evolution !!!!

Cheers

Eve


As much as I would like to go further into depth, it simply isn't interesting to the majority of my audience. You must remember, I post these videos to Nekochan, but the majority of my viewers are just some random guy on YouTube who probably doesn't know much about SGIs or graphics tech. That's not to say nobody who watches my channel cares, it's just not most of them. The generalist approach, as you put it, is what most people new to SGIs want to see.
:Onyx: :O2000: :Fuel: :Octane: :Octane: :Octane: :O2: :O2: :Indigo2: :Indigo2: :Indy: :Indy:
and a small army of Image
I just signed up after finding this message board watching your videos. lots of nostalgia feels!
my only comment is to slow down a bit.... us old people can have a hard time keeping up with you ha!
I still have an octane and an o2 in storage, i'm contemplating digging them out. I owned 4 indigo 2 machines but sold them in the 90's and miss them :(

I would like to see a video going over the death of sgi on the desktop. it's a sad story for sgi but an important one. I switched from SGI to a desktop NT machine because a pc with a geforce that cost me a couple grand would destroy a $60,000 sgi box. I remember setting up a render farm of overclocked celerons that cost us about 5k that outperformed anything sgi could put out, unless you were talking about unlimited funds.
the late 90's where an amazing time for computer graphics where it seemed like every day brought some new bombshell in hardware/software and things were moving so fast it's no wonder sgi couldn't keep up.

keep up the good work on the videos!