4 ms·

In 1993 I bought a used SGI Personal Iris for 10k. 32mb Ram, 1GB hard drive, 19”monitor. Monitor and system weight 80lbs if I remember correctly. Alias was an

by jweir 5y ago

In 1993 I bought a used SGI Personal Iris for 10k. 32mb Ram, 1GB hard drive, 19”monitor. Monitor and system weight 80lbs if I remember correctly. Alias was an additional 16k. It sounded like a jet engine. I loved it.

holoduke 5y ago
I wonder where all those machines ended up. Would love to get one and play with them.
- smm11 5y ago
  I gave one away several years back to a high school art department. The other one is in my garage under two inches of dust.
  - tomatowurst 5y ago
    well you should consider auctioning that, it will fetch lot of eager attention
    - notreallyserio 5y ago
      Including the dust, if it is from the same era!
      - tomatowurst 5y ago
        put that in a non-descript zip bag and include it in the shipping box!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mysterydip 5y ago
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/index.html http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/index.html Contact him if you're interested, nice to talk to!
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  I got a Sun Sparcstation for free off my country's version of craigslist. I also got some other things like old mac machines and such for free like this. This was really out of necessity because I never had any money. That was 20 years ago, when these machines were "only" 10 years old. Amazing how quickly things developed during the 90s; the Sparcstation 5 started at $3,995 (over $7k in today's money, and the sales price was probably higher still here in Europe), and ten years later you could get it for free! I ended up giving it all away to a friend; when I was young I had a lot of time and interest to play around with this sort of stuff. These days, not so much.
- Tor3 5y ago
  > I wonder where all those machines ended up. Would love to get one and play with them. A lot of them (probably the vast majority) simply got dumped, alas. I personally decided to dump a Challenge (basically an Onyx without the Reality Engine graphics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Onyx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Onyx). As in: I could have it if I wanted it, I used it for years but it had to go when it was obsoleted. I could have put the rack in my basement, but I'm not young anymore and it wouldn't be that many years before it would be a headache to get it out. So I said: "Sorry. Dump it." Smaller is more manageable of course - I have a number of O2, O2+, Indy computers and an Octane. And a Fuel. At work we had a bunch of Origin servers as well. All dumped. Back to the Onyx - when it came out in 1993 I had some access to one, I worked in the same computer room for weeks at the time on an off. Played with the various graphics demos, mostly. But I watched what the guys were doing with it. It was very impressive, a huge step up from anything else, and the sheer performance and memory bandwidth of the thing was one big reason I argued for getting an SGI Challenge for a later technical project. And I was right on that, as it turned out. Nothing else could do the job at the time (in this price segment, at least). As for the CPU speed - Like the R4000, the R4400 internal pipeline ran at a higher rate (internal multiplier): https://www.cpushack.com/MIPSCPU.html https://www.cpushack.com/MIPSCPU.html
- andylynch 5y ago
  There is a story from Weta Digital that by they time LOTR was in production they were using their first SGI box (used for Heavenly Creatures) as a doorstop.
tomatowurst 5y ago
omg. i have magazines from this era. what were you using it for ? tell us more!
- jweir 5y ago
  After high school I got a job as video game artist for Virgin Games (in 92). While there another artist brought in an SGI that he was borrowing from a friend and demo'd it. I fell in love with it. So a year later, after being rejected from art school, I used my bit of college savings to buy the SGI and Alias. I used it for a few small video projects and animations, and then started contracting for SGI doing design work for their website. They even gave me an old Indigo to work on. I kept both machines for about 10 years and then finally gave away them away to a collector.
  - tomatowurst 5y ago
    thanks for sharing.
  - madengr 5y ago
    I picked up an Indigo^2 with monitor in 1997 for $250. Had to buy IRIX CDs for $200 in eBay, but it was a nice machine. Gave it to a guy several years later, along with several other classic Unix workstations. Kind of wish I had them now.
  - boopmaster 5y ago
    That's awesome that your passion became your paycheck.

by jweir 5y ago

holoduke 5y ago

I wonder where all those machines ended up. Would love to get one and play with them.

smm11 5y ago
I gave one away several years back to a high school art department. The other one is in my garage under two inches of dust.
- tomatowurst 5y ago
  well you should consider auctioning that, it will fetch lot of eager attention
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    Including the dust, if it is from the same era!
    - tomatowurst 5y ago
      put that in a non-descript zip bag and include it in the shipping box!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mysterydip 5y ago
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/index.html http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/index.html Contact him if you're interested, nice to talk to!
Beltalowda 5y ago
I got a Sun Sparcstation for free off my country's version of craigslist. I also got some other things like old mac machines and such for free like this. This was really out of necessity because I never had any money. That was 20 years ago, when these machines were "only" 10 years old. Amazing how quickly things developed during the 90s; the Sparcstation 5 started at $3,995 (over $7k in today's money, and the sales price was probably higher still here in Europe), and ten years later you could get it for free! I ended up giving it all away to a friend; when I was young I had a lot of time and interest to play around with this sort of stuff. These days, not so much.
Tor3 5y ago
> I wonder where all those machines ended up. Would love to get one and play with them. A lot of them (probably the vast majority) simply got dumped, alas. I personally decided to dump a Challenge (basically an Onyx without the Reality Engine graphics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Onyx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Onyx). As in: I could have it if I wanted it, I used it for years but it had to go when it was obsoleted. I could have put the rack in my basement, but I'm not young anymore and it wouldn't be that many years before it would be a headache to get it out. So I said: "Sorry. Dump it." Smaller is more manageable of course - I have a number of O2, O2+, Indy computers and an Octane. And a Fuel. At work we had a bunch of Origin servers as well. All dumped. Back to the Onyx - when it came out in 1993 I had some access to one, I worked in the same computer room for weeks at the time on an off. Played with the various graphics demos, mostly. But I watched what the guys were doing with it. It was very impressive, a huge step up from anything else, and the sheer performance and memory bandwidth of the thing was one big reason I argued for getting an SGI Challenge for a later technical project. And I was right on that, as it turned out. Nothing else could do the job at the time (in this price segment, at least). As for the CPU speed - Like the R4000, the R4400 internal pipeline ran at a higher rate (internal multiplier): https://www.cpushack.com/MIPSCPU.html https://www.cpushack.com/MIPSCPU.html
andylynch 5y ago
There is a story from Weta Digital that by they time LOTR was in production they were using their first SGI box (used for Heavenly Creatures) as a doorstop.

tomatowurst 5y ago

omg. i have magazines from this era. what were you using it for ? tell us more!

jweir 5y ago
After high school I got a job as video game artist for Virgin Games (in 92). While there another artist brought in an SGI that he was borrowing from a friend and demo'd it. I fell in love with it. So a year later, after being rejected from art school, I used my bit of college savings to buy the SGI and Alias. I used it for a few small video projects and animations, and then started contracting for SGI doing design work for their website. They even gave me an old Indigo to work on. I kept both machines for about 10 years and then finally gave away them away to a collector.
- tomatowurst 5y ago
  thanks for sharing.
- madengr 5y ago
  I picked up an Indigo^2 with monitor in 1997 for $250. Had to buy IRIX CDs for $200 in eBay, but it was a nice machine. Gave it to a guy several years later, along with several other classic Unix workstations. Kind of wish I had them now.
- boopmaster 5y ago
  That's awesome that your passion became your paycheck.