4 ms·

Old workstations that were purposely designed to run proprietary UNIX(r) were also, coincidentally, super-proprietary. If you could install IRIX on junk commod

Old workstations that were purposely designed to run proprietary UNIX(r) were also, coincidentally, super-proprietary. If you could install IRIX on junk commodity hardware no one would have a reason to pay SGI $100k for one of theirs.

theodric 1y ago
But they were really, really good. An Indigo² Solid Impact R4400SC 250 was my main PC from 1998 until I left the US in late 2003. Built like a tank. Incredibly smooth in operation. Rang rings around my iMac G4, which ended up just sitting on top of the SGI's Trinitron running iTunes. I loved that machine, and I will go retrieve it in a few months. Now the Fuel, of the final MIPS generation, was hot garbage. Early-2000s PC crap plus SGI does not equal awesome. Fast, but flaky, stuttery, and with too many graphical artifacts for the price. Maybe the V12 was better than the V10. I don't care to find out.
- classichasclass 1y ago
  I've got a 900MHz Fuel with a V12 DCD. It runs fine, though I never ran a V10 in it. Biggest problem with it is the power supply so I find myself using the Indy more these days.
chihuahua 1y ago
This makes it sound like being able to run IRIX was what got people to buy SGI. But I think the reason why people bought $100k SGI machines was for the graphics hardware, not for IRIX.
- eschaton 1y ago
  Six of one, half a dozen of the other: The software that took advantage of the graphics hardware ran on IRIX, and your system administrators and software developers would also probably need IRIX systems, but without as much need for the graphics functionality. This was one of the reasons for the Solaris x86 port: It might still be useful for people who didn’t need a Sun to run Solaris.
- spacedcowboy 1y ago
  IRIX was so far ahead of its time that the software was a real selling point. We had a bunch of different unix workstations in my PhD group, but as soon as someone got an Indy, it was SGI all the way. No-one wanted anything else.
hapless 1y ago
Back in 1993, a $5k SGI had ~5x as much CPU power as a $10k x86 PC. Not a joke. You could get a 100 MHz R4000PC that would happily drive a display at 1280x1024 for the price of a 33 MHz 486 that would run Windows 3.x at 640x480 They worked very hard to make IRIX a competitive advantage over other UNIX vendors, but it was never a reason to buy SGI over "commodity" If anything, IRIX was a hindrance to adoption, because UNIX was notoriously RAM-hungry, and the early 1990s had a horrible, horrible price crunch on RAM.
- nathan_douglas 1y ago
  My first computer was a Packard Bell 486-33 with 4MB RAM, purchased in 1993. I can still remember my widowed schoolteacher mother's pursed lips as she paid $1600 - an outrageous sum of money - for it at Walmart. I don't know who was paying $10K for PCs in 1993, but it wasn't anybody I knew.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
    Walmart vs. IBM, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Apricot and the likes. I remember this, because around that time I got my first PC(not my first computer), which was a 25Mhz 486. For 5000.- Deutsche Mark. At that time such systems from IBM, Compaq and so on sold for 15.000.- Deutsche Mark. My system lacked the cache RAMs for the L2, and the tag RAM for these, though I could, and did plug these in afterwards, for actually not that much money(about 80 Deutschmarks). It also had a slow and small PATA disk, on a mediocre mainboard. Just 80MB. The VGA screen I initially got with it was also mediocre at best, as was the ISA VGA in a VESA Local Bus system... For the 15.000 of whicheveruniversalcreditunits at the time, vs. just 5000 of them, you'd gotten a more balanced system from IBM, Compaq, etc., with larger and faster disk(s), more RAM, working L2-cache, maybe even SCSI, better graphics, probably better screen, keyboard & mouse.

theodric 1y ago

But they were really, really good. An Indigo² Solid Impact R4400SC 250 was my main PC from 1998 until I left the US in late 2003. Built like a tank. Incredibly smooth in operation. Rang rings around my iMac G4, which ended up just sitting on top of the SGI's Trinitron running iTunes. I loved that machine, and I will go retrieve it in a few months. Now the Fuel, of the final MIPS generation, was hot garbage. Early-2000s PC crap plus SGI does not equal awesome. Fast, but flaky, stuttery, and with too many graphical artifacts for the price. Maybe the V12 was better than the V10. I don't care to find out.

classichasclass 1y ago
I've got a 900MHz Fuel with a V12 DCD. It runs fine, though I never ran a V10 in it. Biggest problem with it is the power supply so I find myself using the Indy more these days.

chihuahua 1y ago

This makes it sound like being able to run IRIX was what got people to buy SGI. But I think the reason why people bought $100k SGI machines was for the graphics hardware, not for IRIX.

eschaton 1y ago
Six of one, half a dozen of the other: The software that took advantage of the graphics hardware ran on IRIX, and your system administrators and software developers would also probably need IRIX systems, but without as much need for the graphics functionality. This was one of the reasons for the Solaris x86 port: It might still be useful for people who didn’t need a Sun to run Solaris.
spacedcowboy 1y ago
IRIX was so far ahead of its time that the software was a real selling point. We had a bunch of different unix workstations in my PhD group, but as soon as someone got an Indy, it was SGI all the way. No-one wanted anything else.

hapless 1y ago

Back in 1993, a $5k SGI had ~5x as much CPU power as a $10k x86 PC. Not a joke. You could get a 100 MHz R4000PC that would happily drive a display at 1280x1024 for the price of a 33 MHz 486 that would run Windows 3.x at 640x480 They worked very hard to make IRIX a competitive advantage over other UNIX vendors, but it was never a reason to buy SGI over "commodity" If anything, IRIX was a hindrance to adoption, because UNIX was notoriously RAM-hungry, and the early 1990s had a horrible, horrible price crunch on RAM.

nathan_douglas 1y ago
My first computer was a Packard Bell 486-33 with 4MB RAM, purchased in 1993. I can still remember my widowed schoolteacher mother's pursed lips as she paid $1600 - an outrageous sum of money - for it at Walmart. I don't know who was paying $10K for PCs in 1993, but it wasn't anybody I knew.
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
  Walmart vs. IBM, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Apricot and the likes. I remember this, because around that time I got my first PC(not my first computer), which was a 25Mhz 486. For 5000.- Deutsche Mark. At that time such systems from IBM, Compaq and so on sold for 15.000.- Deutsche Mark. My system lacked the cache RAMs for the L2, and the tag RAM for these, though I could, and did plug these in afterwards, for actually not that much money(about 80 Deutschmarks). It also had a slow and small PATA disk, on a mediocre mainboard. Just 80MB. The VGA screen I initially got with it was also mediocre at best, as was the ISA VGA in a VESA Local Bus system... For the 15.000 of whicheveruniversalcreditunits at the time, vs. just 5000 of them, you'd gotten a more balanced system from IBM, Compaq, etc., with larger and faster disk(s), more RAM, working L2-cache, maybe even SCSI, better graphics, probably better screen, keyboard & mouse.