5 ms·

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.

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.