jan-jaap wrote:
The old hardware may have been constructed with a longer service life in mind than the current "cheap x86 junk", I doubt it was designed for an expected lifetime of 15 ~ 20years, the age of the average Indigo2/Octane today. Even the best elcos have a limited lifespan before they can expected to fail. The same for mechanical bits, fans, disks etc.
Also, while reliability of current hardware may be limited by the relentless pressure to keep prices down, the reliability of SGI hardware was often limited by the fact they were pushing the technological limits. Already back then the RMs of Onyxes would fail, and you were crazy to let the service contract expire if you depended on the machine. But people accepted it because the Onyx could do things no other system could. IIRC the entire first run of R10K CPUs was replaced, and the R8K wasn't all that reliable either. I think they even gave free upgrades to R10K to some customers.
of course they're not immortal. yet as mentioned as far as my stuff is concerned so far it has proven to be significantly more reliable than commodity stuff. to underline that, this very post is sent through the proxy running on my server-octane which has a 4gb system disk from 1998.
IAMNOTDEFECTIVE wrote:
I should consider getting the Fuel if I want less sound emitting from the unit (as well as to not have it dramatise the electricity bills
![Wink ;)](../../../static/8b88af19-6581-4ee9-9cd5-4e7a54cf22a3.gif)
)
unfortunately, thinking of what's been posted here over the years, the fuel seems to be quite a troublesome machine in comparison to other sgi models.
however you have to decide what you actually want. if noise and power comsumption are major factors for you then an sgi or any other "real" workstation (or even bigger) is just not the right thing for you.