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I bought an Octane case many years ago because I wanted to build a new PC in it. I soon realized that it was oddly small for such a big case and would take a lo

I bought an Octane case many years ago because I wanted to build a new PC in it. I soon realized that it was oddly small for such a big case and would take a lot of work. I sadly lost it, and now that I have more time and inclination, it’s a lot harder to find Octane cases. I spent a lot of time in college computer labs filled with Indys. A good computer, with great monitors and keyboards.

jonstewart 4y ago
Oh, I remembered, the Octane had its power supply at the -bottom- of the case, heating everything above it. From what I’ve read, Octane fans don’t have any variable speed control, they just run full tilt all the time.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  On the plus side, it made them pretty stable, but thermally that was definitely a mistake.
- somat 4y ago
  The Octane fan actually had two speeds, "loud" and "concorde taking off in a hurricane". The high speed fan mode would enable once you put enough expansion cards into the system. there was a pci card cage that would enable high speed and there were 4 proprietary slots where if more than two were inserted the system would get noisy(errr, more noisy). apocryphal story, the graphics came in two sizes and two speeds. the large size was literally two of the small ones on one board but interleaved so while it had 8 mb of high speed rambus memory you could only use 4. anyway, the story goes that there was a very real risk on the large high speed gfx board of the memory getting so hot it would desolder itself from the board. Edit: on the power supply location, I don't think that mattered, sgi's were not like a pc, they have an engineered airflow. air entered from the front and was forced through the compartments independently, on the left was the mainboard, in the middle there were three, bottom to top was the power supply, pci expansion, drive trays. and on the right a mainboard sized graphics card.
jacquesm 4y ago
My Indy keyboard lasted from the day I bought my first Indy all the way up to about five years ago and I miss it still. Built like a tank, doesn't slide around the desk while using it, super nice keyboard action and with a little ps2/USB adapter still perfectly usable. My eldest (re)built me an IBM keyboard that I hope to start using one of these days (the adapter seems to not like the keyboard all that much and it misses characters every now and then).

jonstewart 4y ago

Oh, I remembered, the Octane had its power supply at the -bottom- of the case, heating everything above it. From what I’ve read, Octane fans don’t have any variable speed control, they just run full tilt all the time.

jacquesm 4y ago
On the plus side, it made them pretty stable, but thermally that was definitely a mistake.
somat 4y ago
The Octane fan actually had two speeds, "loud" and "concorde taking off in a hurricane". The high speed fan mode would enable once you put enough expansion cards into the system. there was a pci card cage that would enable high speed and there were 4 proprietary slots where if more than two were inserted the system would get noisy(errr, more noisy). apocryphal story, the graphics came in two sizes and two speeds. the large size was literally two of the small ones on one board but interleaved so while it had 8 mb of high speed rambus memory you could only use 4. anyway, the story goes that there was a very real risk on the large high speed gfx board of the memory getting so hot it would desolder itself from the board. Edit: on the power supply location, I don't think that mattered, sgi's were not like a pc, they have an engineered airflow. air entered from the front and was forced through the compartments independently, on the left was the mainboard, in the middle there were three, bottom to top was the power supply, pci expansion, drive trays. and on the right a mainboard sized graphics card.

jacquesm 4y ago

My Indy keyboard lasted from the day I bought my first Indy all the way up to about five years ago and I miss it still. Built like a tank, doesn't slide around the desk while using it, super nice keyboard action and with a little ps2/USB adapter still perfectly usable. My eldest (re)built me an IBM keyboard that I hope to start using one of these days (the adapter seems to not like the keyboard all that much and it misses characters every now and then).