new unit

[blakespot]

I collect mainly Apple's and Apple-related products, but I drifted a bit recently and grabbed an SGI. Put up some photos:


http://www.blakespot.com/sgi




blakespot

[Mr. Anderson]

Damn, now what are you going to do with that? Software is a bit pricey, no?

[blakespot]

Originally posted by dukestreet
Damn, now what are you going to do with that? Software is a bit pricey, no?

Commercial software, yea. Some of the commercial apps have disabled demo versions or free private versions you can play with. I just did a batch install of 4GB of common Linux-style freeware which I'm still playing with. It's quite a snappy machine -- about the speed of a P3 733 for standard desktop operations. I always wanted an SGI, and now I've got one.

Note they just ceased production of the O2 this past May. The guy I got it from used it for iMovie-style video work. It has a basic video editing suite and the unit has composite & s-video & audio in/out, etc.



blakespot

[Chaszmyr]

That thing is sweet looking. Nice relic.

[Mr. Anderson]

I really like seeing the maxed out RAM - what's in there, SIMMs? And its at 256, right?

The screen is nice too.

D

[blakespot]

It's at 256MB -- tho that's not maxed out. All 8 SIMM slots are filled tho. The machine is quite good about memory usage. I've never used any swap tho I have allocated a 1.5GB swap partition on that 36GB, 10,000 RPM drive in there. Maya runs quite smoothly in 256MB on an IRIX machine, apparently. Not that I have Maya for it. No Personal Edition for SGI...

Rather fun to play with currently.



blakespot

[funkywhat2]

What exactly do you do with it?

Also, what OS do machines like that run? A version of Unix, or Linux?

[iShater]

Aaaaaaaaaaaah! SGI!

I used to admin an Iris workstaion back in college for the chemistry department, that baby was nice. The same kinda machine they used to make Jurassic Park.

How much did you get it for? R u running IRIX or MIPS Linux?

[iShater]

Is that a NeXt machine in the middle?! What about the machine onthe right? I can see something 2000 ... Amiga? what other machines do you have?

[blakespot]

Originally posted by funkywhat2
What exactly do you do with it?

Also, what OS do machines like that run? A version of Unix, or Linux?

I just play with it.

It runs IRIX, SGI's UNIX based on System V, with BSD Enhancements. Closer to Solaris than OS X in structure, really -- but they're all UNIX. I have IRIX 6.5 with 6.5.17m overlays installed (rather recent).

SGI offers lots of shareware (4-5GB), precompiled, for easy install on their FTP server, all of which I batch installed. It runs standard X-Windows and supports Gnome toolkit, KDE toolkit, etc. so compiling current Linux apps for it is pretty painless. And X-Windows on the unit is _fast_.

Interestingly, the machine sports SGI's Unified Memory Architecture wich can best be described with a quote from Tom Furlong, SGI's VP and deskside systems general manager at the time of O2's introduction:

"We got rid of the bus because current bus based systems reached their [bandwidth] limit to CPU and standard I/O; when you add 3-D image processing or audio they start to fall apart, wasting precious bandwidth copying data around. O2 is based on a new unified memory architecture that puts 2.1 gigabytes of system bandwidth right where the computation is done, that's 20 times the bandwidth of today's [1996] fastest PC. 02 doesn't waste any of its bandwidth moving the data around the system. Instead it has multiple computational memory, the CPU coordinates the work of graphics I/O video compression to accomplish the computation without extraneous data movements; with 20 times bandwidth and no wasted data movements it can handle monstrously large data sets, movies, and hugely complicated special effects without missing a beat. To get the massive amounts of data O2 implements standard I/O that includes serial, parallel and embedded CD-ROM, two 40 Megabytes per second SCSI channels, auto sensing, 100 megabit ethernet connection, two channel audio I/O, two video channels, one video output and we have thrown in a 64-bit PCI for anything left out. It's really a technology tour de force."

...so despite the fact that this unit came out in '98-'99 or so, and is running a 175MHz R10K CPU, it feels and is a very swift-running machine.

Here's a link to a very thorough overview of the O2's system architecture, if interested.


blakespot

[blakespot]

Originally posted by iShater
Is that a NeXt machine in the middle?! What about the machine onthe right? I can see something 2000 ... Amiga? what other machines do you have?

Indeed that is a NeXTStation Turbo Color unit in the middle. And yes, an Amiga 2000 on the far right.

Here is a list of the other machines you've asked about...



blakespot

[Chrisnorth]

That's a great collection! Of course, it begs the question, what's your favourite machine and why? It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on component quality, and operating system impressions.

My own collection -- much hated by my wife -- is much less impressive and presently consists of two SE-30's, one SE, two 580CD's, one Classic, one 500 MHz "Flower Power" iMac (that one should be rare one day!), and a PC that I built from parts several years ago during a weak moment in my life.

[FelixDerKater]

Originally posted by blakespot
I collect mainly Apple's and Apple-related products, but I drifted a bit recently and grabbed an SGI.

What did that thing cost?