We had two of these maxed out with RAM and Extreme graphics at my university’s computer lab back in 1993. They were magnificent beasts. We could book time on them to work on our Computer Graphics coursework as part of our Computer Science course. They were mind bogglingly expensive, probably close to $100K in today’s money when maxed out. I’ll always have fond memories of them since I learned how to program with IrisGL on them. It’s crazy how fast technology has advanced, since even a smartphone has more 3D grunt than these now, but these machines pioneered the tech which made that advancement possible.
@@Lauren_Ctrue. And to put it in perspective, the fastest PCs back in 1993 would have had a 486 or a newly-released Pentium chip at 60-66 MHz, with no 3D hardware acceleration for graphics. Pretty much all desktop computers had single core CPUs and there was not even MMX or SSE instruction extensions, yet. 3Dfx and NVIDIA didn’t yet exist to enable real-time 3D graphics capabilities for PCs. To be able to draw 3D models with hundreds of texture-mapped polygons and rotate them around or zoom in and out in real-time, it felt like black magic or science fiction to me back then. Silicon Graphics workstations were jaw-dropping and unique in providing those capabilities, no wonder they commanded such crazy-high prices. Always dreamed of owning one, but by the time SGI went bust and their prices on the preowned market dropped to affordable levels, GPU and CPU performance on PC and Mac desktops had vastly surpassed them in every way.
I love that you're keeping this era of computing alive. We had 2MB of RAM in a 386 in that time frame, and had to upgrade to 4MB for me to write a shitty word doc with inline bitmaps.
I feel that. At the time I had an Olivetti 386 with 2mb ram and a fixed motherboard that my brother let me have to play with. My friends were going crazy because they had a Pentium that could run doom.
I love that SGI paid just as much attention to the aesthetics of the internal components as they did the external. Those PCBs and components are works of art. Apple does that as well, but SGI really perfected it.
SGI going down the drain and Apple announcing OS X in 1999 made me buy my first Mac for exactly that reason. A PowerMac G3 b&w running Linux for PPC (since OS X wasn‘t available yet). 😅😮
@19:13 - I believe you mean “jurassic park’s GUI”. Which this is SUPER cool to actually be able to connect back to that because I’ve been wondering for decades what she was using in that scene
He means FSN (filesystem navigator). It wasn't made for the movie, they just needed something geeky looking to mess around with. They're literally just browsing directories in that scene.
That's not what I or he meant. The program is real and it's called FSN, which is (probably) short for File System Navigator. He didn't mean "Jurassic Park's GUI" because it's not some interface they mocked up for the film. It's a thing on its own and that's what it's called. "FSN" isn't being used as a generic term here.
In 1992 4mb of RAM was huge. Most systems still ran 2mb or less, 286s and a scattering of 386s were pretty much the norm with 486's being relegated to that one rich friend's dad who wouldn't let anyone touch his office PC. 128mb of RAM back then would be about equivalent to 8 terabytes or so of RAM today, maybe someone somewhere has a server with that much but to the end user, that's practically a myth. Bare in mind a 1mb stick of 32pin RAM back then would run you about $30 - $50 (before adjusting for inflation) and you needed at least 2 of them in 16 bit systems and 4 in 32bit ones. Prices increased exponentially too, with 16mb RAM sticks coming in at over $500 each (sourced from magazines from the period). So yeah, 128mb would run you at least $4000 just for the RAM alone, more if it was ECC. Figured this info would lend a bit more impact to your video. These SGI systems were absolute monsters, unicorns practically. This is the kind of system you saw in a PC magazine and drooled over with the thought that even a lottery may not get you one. Not only were they expensive as all hell, they were also very difficult to actually buy. I remember when I first started in IT we did maintenance for an Add agency, must have been in around 1998, maybe 99 and they had an Indigo 2 that they absolutely wouldn't let anyone touch, even outdated it was better than anything else they could get at the time. My boss handled the service of that machine himself because he didn't trust anyone else with it, basically it was irreplaceable.
I had a self build 486DX2-66 VL Setup into Fall 1993, and 8 MB of RAM, 8x1MB SIMM modules, the faster ones with 60ns, instead of plain 70ns RAM. I paid pretty exactly 865 DM for these 8MB of RAM, something like 444 EUR, but keep the inflation into mind.
By 1992 8MB of RAM was typical in a 486 DX2 desktop. 16MB was a big upgrade, usually for all those “multimedia” games coming out on CD-ROM at the time.
@@seanwieland9763 16MB was no standard into 1992, and especially CD games came out with "Rebell Assault" from LucasArts into 1993, which pushed a lot CD Drive sales (mostly 2x speed, back then) not into 1992 - simply 1992 was still the year of games via 1.44 MB 3 1/2" Floppy Disc, stop the cap. FYI, 1993 came X-Wing also from LucasArts, and it was of course being installed via Floppy Discs. Have had computers since the C-64, Plus 4, Amiga 500, NCR 286 AT (AMD 12 MHz) and so on. 1st game console - Atari 2600 VCS.
I agree, and also: your comment is an obvious magnet for the exceptions. Just how it is :D Few PC users had multi MB systems and Windoze 3.1 certainly didn't know how to use it. My exception would be an Amiga with HDD and 9MB RAM in 1992 at half the price of a PC, and not an hourglass mouse pointer in sight. This Amiga was a $1000 wannabe workstation and could do rendering, but far from SGI.
These Indigo computers always remind me how far computers have come. A computer the price of a small pickup in 1993 can't do what a $350 computer can today. That just blows my mind sometimes. Lol
In 97 I went to a computing expo and there was a huge, I mean appliance size server all purple made by these guys. They were so expensive that it was not even considered as an option by anyone. They were in a corner all the way at the back. When I looked at it, I thought it was a data center thing that we'll never get to explore. I had no idea they were about to be extinct.
I remember my mom use to own a maintence business and we had access to a few very large companies corporate offices. There was one room, in particular, that had SEVERAL of these in it ( this would have been 93 or 94 ). I was floored by them back then. Crazy to see one now.
in the late 2000s, in my early 20s, i lived in detroit for a few years and i remember a batch of these coming up for super cheap on the local craigslist. i think an automotive-related design firm had done a huge upgrade and was selling the old stuff for pennies. i tried to pick one up but they were gone by the time the guy responded to my email. really cool to see what they can do - i've had that same feeling of excitement getting something working again and it's such a satisfying vibe
Look at that topology inside that case! Well engineered modularity, none of the inadequacies of today’s ATX design, which are stagnant since the early 2000s. The OS is simply awesome, provides that thin layer what it needs to be between the user and the hardware. I think even the Mac has gone a bit downhill in terms of GUI consistency when Ive Cartoon Network-ed the system. This GUI is simple, straightforward, but not cartoonish at all. To have everything be accessible for anybody made the computing experience so much worse.
Old computer graphics is the best. I still get goosebumps when I watch old Amiga demos with simple vector graphics :-D Watching "Quest: A Long Ray's Journey Into Light" and "The Mind's Eye" series on the telly in 80's-90's really blew me away.
Wow, love your excitement. It reminds me of how excited I was when I would dream of owning such a powerful PC. I still have the 1st PC I bought brand new. The Gateway 386 SZ was my pride and joy. She still boots and runs perfectly. It's so cool to see young people appreciating the PCs I grew up with.
We used SGI for Discreet (Autodesk) Flint systems for TV Broadcast graphics work. We gave one of our SGIs to a film and TV museum as it had worked on provding so many famous TV show title sequences.
Indigo2 Extrame was our basic artist workstation at Digital Domain 1.0 when we started up in the Summer of 1993. I don't recall how much memory I had, but I'm pretty sure it was 256Mb, and I was surprised to find out that our Challenge render and disc servers actually had less RAM per CPU if all CPUs were maxed by individual tasks.
That's totally awesome, great to see. I'm so pissed I got rid of my Indy years ago. You have to get some Quake 2 benched on both of those graphics cards. GL applications are an absolute must to see what the card can do. Nice to see some SGI stuff appearing on my recommended.
In 1993 i had a 486 with 4! Megs of ram! I remember admiring the SGI machines at the time. I once head over to their offices in LA and got a few booklets.
re: thrown out SGIs, here in a certain part of Central Florida in around 1995ish or so Time Warner Cable had a test run of broadband they offered to a very limited number of customers. The "cable modem" was a headless SGI Indy (not a full Indigo). From what I have heard, when the test was over (it would be another 7 or so years before they rolled out broadband for the whole market area), they got the data they wanted off of the systems remotely and told the now broad-band-less users they could just dispose of them. I imagine somewhere in a landfill 'round here are the rusting decayed remains of more than a few :(
Thank you for this! Im going to share a story: in my career, I worked in the Silicon Graphics buildings in Mountain View, now the Googleplex. Since I was a 90s teenager into computer graphics, this was an incredible feeling. I never forgot that fact, and loved it. Basically a bucket list item I never thought of, until I realized it was happening / being “checked” 🙏 I grew up in a very poor neighborhood and such things didn’t seem to be “in the cards”
Awesome video. SGI's were the machines to get back in the day. Voodoo, Nintendo and even some movies were morphed and were created on these systems. While dated now they still are impressive. The build quality and the weight of these things alone almost makes their insane prices justifiable. I love watching these videos over the years and the odd guy usually that can source these beasts. Nice video and nice acquisition young man by the sound of it.
I was lucky to rescue an SGI O2 from my last job, they were going to scrap it. I can tell you though, installing Irix was the most painful and aggravating experiences I've had!
I wrote my PhD thesis (in biophysics, using TeX and ) on an Indigo2 ImpactR10K - and I still have it because I was able to save it from being scrapped by my institute... Also saved a complete Crimson/RE from the same scrapyard - which was a real pain during each of the five relocations I did afterwards, but hey, it's worth it! 🤓 There was fun picture of me in the local newspaper at the time with the President of Bulgaria (who visited our institute campus as well as Zeiss in Jena around 1999) - showing him some 3D molecular models on that Indigo2 with him wearing 3D glasses 😎 We also did some public science shows in the local shopping mall which were quite popular. Ah the fun SGI times!
I had a tremendous collection of SGI tin (Octane2, O2, Indigo2, Indigo, Origin 200, Indy) and had to sell it all years ago when my kids came along and house space was at a premium. I miss having the Octane humming away on the desk!
Try CLR (Calcium Limescale Rust) remover on rust (like on those back connectors) and crust buildup (like on the top of the CPU heatsink). Careful not to got it in nooks and crannies and on electrical components. Used with care it can work miracles! An Indigo2 Extreme 150mhz R4400 was my first personal workstation on my first real job circa 1994 at FASA, the Battletech folks. I have about 12 SGIs. Indigos to Octanes. Mostly all pristine, mostly maxed out or high specced, obtained from 1999 to around 2006. Incredible machines from an incredible time in workstation history! Thanks for keeping these awesome machines in the public consciousness!
I think we had about 40 of them in labs at Ringling back in the day - I recall when we converted them into a racked render farm... much like that un-cased one you had there. Man those were fun times!
You should get the other Indigo 2 running (with the old video card, of course - keep the Extreme graphics in the good system)! And I should try again to install IRIX onto my Octane… sooner rather than later.
I used to work at Compaq as an artist in 1994; we started using these to do our manuals and setup posters in 3D instead of line art. My boss took me aside during a slow period, and told me to go across the hall, learn how to use that weird blue computer and Alias/Wavefront Power Animator to draw up a 3D model of a desktop computer. Within six months, all of our documentation was being done in 3D
I still have a PowerIndigo2 (but with a purple case from a R10000 machine) with a 75MHz R8000 w/ ExtremeGfx in my basement: 128MB RAM, a 3Com 3c597 EISA FastEthernet card (hacked Phobos), a FDDI GIO network card (not installed) and IRIX 6.5 on its original 4.3GB Quantum Atlas II drive. I power it up every 3-4 months just to make sure it works and the drive doesn't clog up.
i see SGI im watching it. Used one in the early 2000's planning Radiation Therapy brain cases as a student at the Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick. Saw another at Newcastle Mater Hospital.
When I worked with contractors for EA in 95-99, the lead artists had both PCs and Indigos. I forget the nomenclature, but some had the blue cases and some purple. They used Alias, and I believe another product in them, with IRIX OS. We also had a Challenge rendering box in the server roon. I thought they were l33t!
The Indigo 2 (with Extreme Graphics) has approximately 100-200 MFLOPS compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s estimated performance of over 500 GFLOPS. That's 2.5 to 5 THOUSAND times as much processing power in a modern cellphone versus this very expensive unit. If you spent the modern equivalent in price, I would imagine you would be in the millions of times more powerful. Insane.
it starts to hurt my brain doing the math from a 30 year leap in compute. The standard from the best 1990's computer of any kind to the best single computer today is a billion times increase in compute. The math seems to work out around a million times greater compute over 10 years and a billion over 30 years. Exponential growth just does my head in trying to intuitively see it. But the graphs don't lie hehe.
@@ClayMann yeah, when I saw The Graph showing power on a logarithmic scale I was floored to see that the Pentium 4 was visually totally flat from the very first 8086/8088 units now... In like, 2012-2015, they were close but there was still a bit of a visible gap.
Nice video! I've actually got a pair of Indigo 2 10ks with Impact graphics, haven't used them in a long time though. The Indy is one of my fav machines due to the size. Unfortunately I'm in Australia, otherwise would be interested to maybe offload some. I've still go like 10 Indys, 2-3 O2s, Octane etc.
In 1997 I worked in a university computer lab that had an Indigo 2 and a brand new Octane. They mostly ran Lightwave.. but we also installed FSN for Jurassic Park fans.
I had no idea back in 1993 this was an actual SGi setup in Jurassic Park. They used the setup to create the dinosaurs and other graphics in most of the scenes in the movie. They also had the entire setup with the workstations in the main operations office. I remember seeing the logo's on the systems and wondered WTH was that super computer setup. Another period correct scene was when she had to pump the main contactor disconnect in the electrical room. This was an actually main panel that was feeding the set. The load spring on the contactor had to be preloaded with the primer handle before you could close the contactor. When he said "That green button that says push to close....Push it". Someone mentioned in another video this electrical panel was from Westinghouse and state of the art of its time. Only the best for Hollywood.
We had several of these (and an onyx and indy2) in 1995 for 3d design on vr headsets. I was lucky enough to have an account on the Indy (web server) but never got to play with the Indigos.
One of the aspects that can affect speed as well is if you're using anything that requires texture mapping. None of the XZ to Extreme Graphics cards could do that in hardware, so it required some extra processing, such as mapping, clipping, transformation and lighting on the CPU and then overlay it on top of the scene. That's why you don't see a lot of texture mapped stuff from this era as it bottoms out the performance on anything greater than static scenes.
i bet you could convince Geekenspiel to make a reproduction of the Extreme badge, he does a lot of different repros of old computer badges and such i have a classic intel-styled "core i7" badge on my laptop, it's great and, i love pumpkin pie. it's my fave
being grown already and being able to buy the best parts i always wanted in the past for couple of bucks feels so perfect. i always wanted a Q9650 back in the day and try to OC it until it's like a QX9650 , my younger self wouldn't believe that i got a Q9650 +16GB DDR3 @ 2000+MHz system at home and it's not even my main :D. 1.5TB also sounded almost unbelievable to me back then now it's real
I find it helps to turn the government mind-probes off. Just flat-out lie and tell em you're chaning the batteries for a few minutes and couldn't find your glasses so had to fiddle. Peace and quiet..
Great machine! I would add 19-21" CRT and a few apps for 3d modeling and animation. Alias 3/4/5 will work best on this system. Also Softimage 2 and Wavefront TAV. 16:05 ask Doug from Mashek Systems, he might have one of those
At 09:00 It's 'Ga Le Lay o', as in Galileo Galilei, Florentine astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath from the late 1500's.
Dude, you should install Quake I-II even Quake Arena on that thing to really see what that card can do. I used to have an IP28 with the max impact card. It ran Quake 1-2 perfectly and Arena was on the playable realm. Truly impressive.
Those SGI machines are so cool! If you can find it, try and get the N64 dev boards for those boxes, imagine making something for the N64 on period correct hardware!!
I found an Indy on Craigslist maybe 5 years ago with the N64 dev board on it! I gave that board to someone who already had some N64 games up and running on properly equipped Indy.
We used these for CFD results vizualisation in the early 90's and the glorious tiles screensaver. Typically I would get a new one every couple of months and give the old ones to the customers. Even had the purple ones too.
It's interesting that these machines were very expensive at the time, but today they have no value, but digital musical instruments from the 80s and 90s, such as synthesizers and drum machines, are now worth a lot of money. A Korg M1 or Yamaha DX7 here in Brazil is more expensive than new equipment. This never happens with native computers; many end up in the trash.
> It's interesting that these machines were very expensive at the time, but today they have no value Not the case. SGI Indigo 2s, like in the video, sell for no less than about $1,250 complete with the base ELAN graphics. They're highly sought after. The version he has in the video would sell for no less than $2,000 to $3,500 depending on specifics.
@@adamsfusion I sell an R4K/200 Extreme system for about $500. :D What really escalates the value though is cosmetics, some will pay a lot for good condition plastics, or for individual parts, especially the front panel and/or front flap. Purple systems are more prone to scratching and discolouration, though in either case one can do a lot with careful use of T-cut. Later IMPACT systems though (High/Max, with TRAM) are indeed a lot more valuable, and true enough will top out around the 3K mark atm, but this is very subjective. Kinda funny really, I have an Onyx2 deskside which will be listed cheaper than a max-spec Indigo2 or Octane2. Other optional items for Indigo2 also scale up the cost very quickly, inparticular the CDROM sled, G160 10/100 card and perhaps most of all the IMPACT Compression board which in working condition is very rare. Some SGI models are still in commercial use, mainly Indy, O2, Octane, Fuel and Onyx systems, in the textile, medical, PCB, defense and vis sim markets, which maintains pricing pressure on related systems and parts, especially V12 boards, DM6, DCD, etc. Most hobbyists don't know this is the case and thus don't understand why certain items have become so expensive, likewise unaware that modern "hobbyists" include now retired professionals who can afford to splurge on the SGI of their dreams, reliving their early careers in vfx or whatever. Octane/Fuel systems with V12/DCD are used in the PCB manufacturing industry, mainly in Israel, but also in the US and elsewhere (AMAT NanoSEM systems). Indy and O2 persist in the textile industry (Stoll/SIRIX systems), but also includes Personal IRIS and IRIS Indigo. In the defense sector it can be almost anything, going all the way back to 4D Series, but usually Challenge/Onyx. In general, SGIs are still used in sectors that involve extensive industrial process control with costly external equipment. In the hobbyist space, collector pressure varies over time, atm focused more on O2, Indigo2 and IRIS Indigo for relevant parts, especially plastics. Come back in a couple of years and this sentence will likely be again out of date. :D
12:36 What's really incredible is apart from the very high resolution and colour depth, running it windowed and the shading, my Acorn from 1989 was more than capable of rendering flat real-time 3D games at a high framerate. That's not a criticism of the the SGI, just how ludicrously fast ARM was compared to everything else at the price point.
Amazing that you could fit all of the tech on those 3 boards onto something as small as an NVME PCB, have it be a single chip, have a single chip with hundreds of GPU cores 40x more VRAM, and blast that entire computer into oblivion in terms of performance on everything, **on the low end**, today.
The old pc’s were built tougher than pc’s today. The components were soldered way better . Today’s pc boards and gpu boards sometimes come with capacitors loose
So.. Quake2. Get that. Quake1 usually is software rendering. Quake2 runs on everything from indy up with some fondling. Great for getting FPS in timedemo and crusher. That's how we used to benchmark Indy/I^2/Moosehead or the Racers at uni club. Then watched Onyx(1) deskside with IR and just wept...
i love my ip28, but good lord the thing is an absolute unit. literally the heaviest desktop i own. i have towers 3 times the size that are lighter. need to get around to maxing the ram in it, and finding a sled to install a cdrom.
Your average Android phone BLOWS THIS THING AWAY in terms of computing, graphics power generally by much more than 20 times, but would vary by the exact calculations done. I tried simply playing an MP3 on my first R3000 Indigo (granted a lot slower than this Indigo2 and probably not good MP3 playback code), but it could not play it in real time!
I think that for the Doom port the best graphic accelerator card is the worst one available for the Indigo2, because it was better on 2D than the other cards.
@@little_fluffy_clouds His point is that the 2D fill rate is important because of the scaling used, and XL has a very high 2D fill rate, much higher than Extreme.
Bare in mind they would only run in software-made (Extreme doesn't support hw texture mapping) so it would really be more of a CPU test. Also, at that time the gfx was IrisGL.
if you get the donor indigo 2 running with your old graphics card, you may consider to find a 19" rack case and mount it inside it. It would get this professional look, if you know what I mean...
you may have to get someone to make you a custom sticker ie send them a picture of the logo, it may have to be bulk purchase it depends on the company.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
We had two of these maxed out with RAM and Extreme graphics at my university’s computer lab back in 1993. They were magnificent beasts. We could book time on them to work on our Computer Graphics coursework as part of our Computer Science course. They were mind bogglingly expensive, probably close to $100K in today’s money when maxed out.
I’ll always have fond memories of them since I learned how to program with IrisGL on them. It’s crazy how fast technology has advanced, since even a smartphone has more 3D grunt than these now, but these machines pioneered the tech which made that advancement possible.
A smartphone must have about 1000x as many FLOPS than this, at least, right? If not 10 or 100 times that, even.
@@skillzorz1011000x would have the geometry performance of the PS3 and Xbox 360. Smartphones have advanced past those considerably.
@@Lauren_Ctrue. And to put it in perspective, the fastest PCs back in 1993 would have had a 486 or a newly-released Pentium chip at 60-66 MHz, with no 3D hardware acceleration for graphics. Pretty much all desktop computers had single core CPUs and there was not even MMX or SSE instruction extensions, yet. 3Dfx and NVIDIA didn’t yet exist to enable real-time 3D graphics capabilities for PCs.
To be able to draw 3D models with hundreds of texture-mapped polygons and rotate them around or zoom in and out in real-time, it felt like black magic or science fiction to me back then. Silicon Graphics workstations were jaw-dropping and unique in providing those capabilities, no wonder they commanded such crazy-high prices.
Always dreamed of owning one, but by the time SGI went bust and their prices on the preowned market dropped to affordable levels, GPU and CPU performance on PC and Mac desktops had vastly surpassed them in every way.
We had some of these at Iowa State around that timeframe. Donated by Silicon Graphics because I think the CEO was an ISU alumni.
I love that you're keeping this era of computing alive. We had 2MB of RAM in a 386 in that time frame, and had to upgrade to 4MB for me to write a shitty word doc with inline bitmaps.
I feel that. At the time I had an Olivetti 386 with 2mb ram and a fixed motherboard that my brother let me have to play with. My friends were going crazy because they had a Pentium that could run doom.
i can dig your excitement.. being if you had the money to buy one of these when it was new you had enough money to buy a house.
i guess accounting for inflation such a beast would have been around 60 grand if it was new today
@@homelessEh that's almost as much as a stand for an iMac! 😂
Even a regular home PC was the price of a decent second hand car back then
@@homelessEhalmost as much as pickup truck!
@@homelessEh Alrededor de 90000 seria mas exacto, seria casi el triple de caro que una H200 de Nvidia.
I love that SGI paid just as much attention to the aesthetics of the internal components as they did the external. Those PCBs and components are works of art. Apple does that as well, but SGI really perfected it.
SGI going down the drain and Apple announcing OS X in 1999 made me buy my first Mac for exactly that reason. A PowerMac G3 b&w running Linux for PPC (since OS X wasn‘t available yet). 😅😮
@19:13 - I believe you mean “jurassic park’s GUI”. Which this is SUPER cool to actually be able to connect back to that because I’ve been wondering for decades what she was using in that scene
right i was about to say that is the same GUI that Jurassic park computer system used
"It's a unix system, I know this" *Rolls chair up to the workstation and sits down*
He means FSN (filesystem navigator). It wasn't made for the movie, they just needed something geeky looking to mess around with. They're literally just browsing directories in that scene.
That's not what I or he meant. The program is real and it's called FSN, which is (probably) short for File System Navigator. He didn't mean "Jurassic Park's GUI" because it's not some interface they mocked up for the film. It's a thing on its own and that's what it's called. "FSN" isn't being used as a generic term here.
In 1992 4mb of RAM was huge. Most systems still ran 2mb or less, 286s and a scattering of 386s were pretty much the norm with 486's being relegated to that one rich friend's dad who wouldn't let anyone touch his office PC. 128mb of RAM back then would be about equivalent to 8 terabytes or so of RAM today, maybe someone somewhere has a server with that much but to the end user, that's practically a myth. Bare in mind a 1mb stick of 32pin RAM back then would run you about $30 - $50 (before adjusting for inflation) and you needed at least 2 of them in 16 bit systems and 4 in 32bit ones. Prices increased exponentially too, with 16mb RAM sticks coming in at over $500 each (sourced from magazines from the period). So yeah, 128mb would run you at least $4000 just for the RAM alone, more if it was ECC.
Figured this info would lend a bit more impact to your video. These SGI systems were absolute monsters, unicorns practically. This is the kind of system you saw in a PC magazine and drooled over with the thought that even a lottery may not get you one. Not only were they expensive as all hell, they were also very difficult to actually buy. I remember when I first started in IT we did maintenance for an Add agency, must have been in around 1998, maybe 99 and they had an Indigo 2 that they absolutely wouldn't let anyone touch, even outdated it was better than anything else they could get at the time. My boss handled the service of that machine himself because he didn't trust anyone else with it, basically it was irreplaceable.
My 1994 Mac had 112MB of RAM
I had a self build 486DX2-66 VL Setup into Fall 1993, and 8 MB of RAM, 8x1MB SIMM modules, the faster ones with 60ns, instead of plain 70ns RAM. I paid pretty exactly 865 DM for these 8MB of RAM, something like 444 EUR, but keep the inflation into mind.
By 1992 8MB of RAM was typical in a 486 DX2 desktop. 16MB was a big upgrade, usually for all those “multimedia” games coming out on CD-ROM at the time.
@@seanwieland9763 16MB was no standard into 1992, and especially CD games came out with "Rebell Assault" from LucasArts into 1993, which pushed a lot CD Drive sales (mostly 2x speed, back then) not into 1992 - simply 1992 was still the year of games via 1.44 MB 3 1/2" Floppy Disc, stop the cap. FYI, 1993 came X-Wing also from LucasArts, and it was of course being installed via Floppy Discs.
Have had computers since the C-64, Plus 4, Amiga 500, NCR 286 AT (AMD 12 MHz) and so on. 1st game console - Atari 2600 VCS.
I agree, and also: your comment is an obvious magnet for the exceptions. Just how it is :D Few PC users had multi MB systems and Windoze 3.1 certainly didn't know how to use it. My exception would be an Amiga with HDD and 9MB RAM in 1992 at half the price of a PC, and not an hourglass mouse pointer in sight. This Amiga was a $1000 wannabe workstation and could do rendering, but far from SGI.
These Indigo computers always remind me how far computers have come. A computer the price of a small pickup in 1993 can't do what a $350 computer can today. That just blows my mind sometimes. Lol
That's the price of a small house in 1993. A flagship top of the line GM truck cost 10k less than this computer in 1993. That's crazy huh!?
@EngineHeadCW Oh geez, even worse! xD
@@BigDrewski1000 for reals
Someone benchmarked an Octane against a Pi Zero.
@@Chalisque really? Lol
This is so cool, I always wondered what SGI stuff was and did back in the day. It all seemed mythological, making games and movie graphics.
In 97 I went to a computing expo and there was a huge, I mean appliance size server all purple made by these guys. They were so expensive that it was not even considered as an option by anyone. They were in a corner all the way at the back. When I looked at it, I thought it was a data center thing that we'll never get to explore. I had no idea they were about to be extinct.
That was either an Origin 2000 or an Onyx 2000 (Origin 2000 with the Onyx graphics pipeline(s) added).
the RAM isn't proprietary, it is standard FastPage 72pin SIMMs with parity. but the machine prefers 60ns and gold plated contacts :)
Good to know,
I remember my mom use to own a maintence business and we had access to a few very large companies corporate offices. There was one room, in particular, that had SEVERAL of these in it ( this would have been 93 or 94 ). I was floored by them back then. Crazy to see one now.
in the late 2000s, in my early 20s, i lived in detroit for a few years and i remember a batch of these coming up for super cheap on the local craigslist. i think an automotive-related design firm had done a huge upgrade and was selling the old stuff for pennies. i tried to pick one up but they were gone by the time the guy responded to my email. really cool to see what they can do - i've had that same feeling of excitement getting something working again and it's such a satisfying vibe
Look at that topology inside that case! Well engineered modularity, none of the inadequacies of today’s ATX design, which are stagnant since the early 2000s. The OS is simply awesome, provides that thin layer what it needs to be between the user and the hardware. I think even the Mac has gone a bit downhill in terms of GUI consistency when Ive Cartoon Network-ed the system. This GUI is simple, straightforward, but not cartoonish at all. To have everything be accessible for anybody made the computing experience so much worse.
Old computer graphics is the best. I still get goosebumps when I watch old Amiga demos with simple vector graphics :-D Watching "Quest: A Long Ray's Journey Into Light" and "The Mind's Eye" series on the telly in 80's-90's really blew me away.
Wow, love your excitement. It reminds me of how excited I was when I would dream of owning such a powerful PC.
I still have the 1st PC I bought brand new. The Gateway 386 SZ was my pride and joy. She still boots and runs perfectly.
It's so cool to see young people appreciating the PCs I grew up with.
We used SGI for Discreet (Autodesk) Flint systems for TV Broadcast graphics work. We gave one of our SGIs to a film and TV museum as it had worked on provding so many famous TV show title sequences.
Indigo2 Extrame was our basic artist workstation at Digital Domain 1.0 when we started up in the Summer of 1993. I don't recall how much memory I had, but I'm pretty sure it was 256Mb, and I was surprised to find out that our Challenge render and disc servers actually had less RAM per CPU if all CPUs were maxed by individual tasks.
That's totally awesome, great to see. I'm so pissed I got rid of my Indy years ago. You have to get some Quake 2 benched on both of those graphics cards. GL applications are an absolute must to see what the card can do. Nice to see some SGI stuff appearing on my recommended.
SGI computers are fucking badass. Love seeing any video involving them. Good shit
In 1993 i had a 486 with 4! Megs of ram! I remember admiring the SGI machines at the time. I once head over to their offices in LA and got a few booklets.
re: thrown out SGIs, here in a certain part of Central Florida in around 1995ish or so Time Warner Cable had a test run of broadband they offered to a very limited number of customers. The "cable modem" was a headless SGI Indy (not a full Indigo). From what I have heard, when the test was over (it would be another 7 or so years before they rolled out broadband for the whole market area), they got the data they wanted off of the systems remotely and told the now broad-band-less users they could just dispose of them.
I imagine somewhere in a landfill 'round here are the rusting decayed remains of more than a few :(
Nice seeing some are still running. By the late 90s we used these as doorstops in our studio.
Very nice rig purchase.
Also, I have that same Astolfo figure sitting on my computer desk at home! :3
Thank you for this! Im going to share a story: in my career, I worked in the Silicon Graphics buildings in Mountain View, now the Googleplex. Since I was a 90s teenager into computer graphics, this was an incredible feeling. I never forgot that fact, and loved it. Basically a bucket list item I never thought of, until I realized it was happening / being “checked” 🙏 I grew up in a very poor neighborhood and such things didn’t seem to be “in the cards”
Awesome video. SGI's were the machines to get back in the day. Voodoo, Nintendo and even some movies were morphed and were created on these systems. While dated now they still are impressive. The build quality and the weight of these things alone almost makes their insane prices justifiable. I love watching these videos over the years and the odd guy usually that can source these beasts. Nice video and nice acquisition young man by the sound of it.
I was lucky to rescue an SGI O2 from my last job, they were going to scrap it. I can tell you though, installing Irix was the most painful and aggravating experiences I've had!
I wrote my PhD thesis (in biophysics, using TeX and ) on an Indigo2 ImpactR10K - and I still have it because I was able to save it from being scrapped by my institute... Also saved a complete Crimson/RE from the same scrapyard - which was a real pain during each of the five relocations I did afterwards, but hey, it's worth it! 🤓
There was fun picture of me in the local newspaper at the time with the President of Bulgaria (who visited our institute campus as well as Zeiss in Jena around 1999) - showing him some 3D molecular models on that Indigo2 with him wearing 3D glasses 😎
We also did some public science shows in the local shopping mall which were quite popular. Ah the fun SGI times!
I had a tremendous collection of SGI tin (Octane2, O2, Indigo2, Indigo, Origin 200, Indy) and had to sell it all years ago when my kids came along and house space was at a premium. I miss having the Octane humming away on the desk!
Try CLR (Calcium Limescale Rust) remover on rust (like on those back connectors) and crust buildup (like on the top of the CPU heatsink). Careful not to got it in nooks and crannies and on electrical components. Used with care it can work miracles!
An Indigo2 Extreme 150mhz R4400 was my first personal workstation on my first real job circa 1994 at FASA, the Battletech folks. I have about 12 SGIs. Indigos to Octanes. Mostly all pristine, mostly maxed out or high specced, obtained from 1999 to around 2006. Incredible machines from an incredible time in workstation history!
Thanks for keeping these awesome machines in the public consciousness!
I think we had about 40 of them in labs at Ringling back in the day - I recall when we converted them into a racked render farm... much like that un-cased one you had there. Man those were fun times!
17:39 You said exactly what that game developer roommate said when he was testing his game.
You should get the other Indigo 2 running (with the old video card, of course - keep the Extreme graphics in the good system)!
And I should try again to install IRIX onto my Octane… sooner rather than later.
Somebody needs to recreate these cases... so beautiful!
I used to work at Compaq as an artist in 1994; we started using these to do our manuals and setup posters in 3D instead of line art.
My boss took me aside during a slow period, and told me to go across the hall, learn how to use that weird blue computer and Alias/Wavefront Power Animator to draw up a 3D model of a desktop computer.
Within six months, all of our documentation was being done in 3D
I still have a PowerIndigo2 (but with a purple case from a R10000 machine) with a 75MHz R8000 w/ ExtremeGfx in my basement: 128MB RAM, a 3Com 3c597 EISA FastEthernet card (hacked Phobos), a FDDI GIO network card (not installed) and IRIX 6.5 on its original 4.3GB Quantum Atlas II drive. I power it up every 3-4 months just to make sure it works and the drive doesn't clog up.
R8000 was a rare and strange oddball!
Great stuff, bro!!! I loved playing with these old SGI's back in the day.
i see SGI im watching it. Used one in the early 2000's planning Radiation Therapy brain cases as a student at the Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick. Saw another at Newcastle Mater Hospital.
Great trip down memory lane. We ran CATIA (French CAD/CAM) on SGIs Octanes and O2s (the ‘toaster’) - they were Nvidia of the time.
6:48 Ionic1k briefly turns into bringus studios for a moment.
I remember when I worked at Capstone games we used one of these to do the morph animations used by the aliens in Corridor 7.
When I worked with contractors for EA in 95-99, the lead artists had both PCs and Indigos. I forget the nomenclature, but some had the blue cases and some purple. They used Alias, and I believe another product in them, with IRIX OS. We also had a Challenge rendering box in the server roon. I thought they were l33t!
I had one of these back in the 90s. It was a pretty sweet machine.
The Indigo 2 (with Extreme Graphics) has approximately 100-200 MFLOPS compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s estimated performance of over 500 GFLOPS. That's 2.5 to 5 THOUSAND times as much processing power in a modern cellphone versus this very expensive unit. If you spent the modern equivalent in price, I would imagine you would be in the millions of times more powerful. Insane.
Y solo para hacer fotos y usar whatsapp. XD
it starts to hurt my brain doing the math from a 30 year leap in compute. The standard from the best 1990's computer of any kind to the best single computer today is a billion times increase in compute. The math seems to work out around a million times greater compute over 10 years and a billion over 30 years. Exponential growth just does my head in trying to intuitively see it. But the graphs don't lie hehe.
@@ClayMann yeah, when I saw The Graph showing power on a logarithmic scale I was floored to see that the Pentium 4 was visually totally flat from the very first 8086/8088 units now...
In like, 2012-2015, they were close but there was still a bit of a visible gap.
I used one of these as my home desktop in the late 90s. By the time I picked it up, the price on the secondhand market had come down to about $3k.
I have mine sitting on a shelf in my garage. I'm highly tempted to take it out of mothballs, give it a hard drive and install IRIX on it.
Nice video! I've actually got a pair of Indigo 2 10ks with Impact graphics, haven't used them in a long time though. The Indy is one of my fav machines due to the size. Unfortunately I'm in Australia, otherwise would be interested to maybe offload some. I've still go like 10 Indys, 2-3 O2s, Octane etc.
Any for sale in Australia, I live in Melbourne, wondering if there is a group or something to get into for the sgi machines 😊
@@andreaspapadopoulos7502 Sorry I'm in Sydney.
In 1997 I worked in a university computer lab that had an Indigo 2 and a brand new Octane. They mostly ran Lightwave.. but we also installed FSN for Jurassic Park fans.
I had no idea back in 1993 this was an actual SGi setup in Jurassic Park. They used the setup to create the dinosaurs and other graphics in most of the scenes in the movie. They also had the entire setup with the workstations in the main operations office. I remember seeing the logo's on the systems and wondered WTH was that super computer setup. Another period correct scene was when she had to pump the main contactor disconnect in the electrical room. This was an actually main panel that was feeding the set. The load spring on the contactor had to be preloaded with the primer handle before you could close the contactor. When he said "That green button that says push to close....Push it". Someone mentioned in another video this electrical panel was from Westinghouse and state of the art of its time. Only the best for Hollywood.
I had my fingers crossed on that boot up. Nice job buddy.
OMG I worked on one of these - seems like another universe - BTW the keyboard rocked
You had me as SGI Indigo
Excellent presentation. Thank you.
We had several of these (and an onyx and indy2) in 1995 for 3d design on vr headsets. I was lucky enough to have an account on the Indy (web server) but never got to play with the Indigos.
One of the aspects that can affect speed as well is if you're using anything that requires texture mapping. None of the XZ to Extreme Graphics cards could do that in hardware, so it required some extra processing, such as mapping, clipping, transformation and lighting on the CPU and then overlay it on top of the scene. That's why you don't see a lot of texture mapped stuff from this era as it bottoms out the performance on anything greater than static scenes.
Love the video. Thank you for putting this together. Chuckled at “highnev”. 😊
i bet you could convince Geekenspiel to make a reproduction of the Extreme badge, he does a lot of different repros of old computer badges and such
i have a classic intel-styled "core i7" badge on my laptop, it's great
and, i love pumpkin pie. it's my fave
being grown already and being able to buy the best parts i always wanted in the past for couple of bucks feels so perfect. i always wanted a Q9650 back in the day and try to OC it until it's like a QX9650 , my younger self wouldn't believe that i got a Q9650 +16GB DDR3 @ 2000+MHz system at home and it's not even my main :D. 1.5TB also sounded almost unbelievable to me back then now it's real
That background noise is doing my head in lol
I find it helps to turn the government mind-probes off. Just flat-out lie and tell em you're chaning the batteries for a few minutes and couldn't find your glasses so had to fiddle. Peace and quiet..
Such a good looking PC case too.
I remember having that exact monitor... LOVED IT!
Great machine! I would add 19-21" CRT and a few apps for 3d modeling and animation. Alias 3/4/5 will work best on this system. Also Softimage 2 and Wavefront TAV.
16:05 ask Doug from Mashek Systems, he might have one of those
At 09:00 It's 'Ga Le Lay o', as in Galileo Galilei, Florentine astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath from the late 1500's.
I had 17 or 18 of these at one time, I’m now down to around 10 or 12.
Currently at 60+. :D
@@mapesdhs597 Ian???! This MUST be you!!! :)
@@Dylanear Indeed. :D
@@mapesdhs597 We should catch up! Life's been crazy!
@@mapesdhs597 Hahaha, we also had contact back in the day (I'm the "GigaRAM" guy) 🤓
Dude, you should install Quake I-II even Quake Arena on that thing to really see what that card can do. I used to have an IP28 with the max impact card. It ran Quake 1-2 perfectly and Arena was on the playable realm. Truly impressive.
Q1 will run on this machine, but not Q2/Q3A because Extreme GFX lacks texture memory
In 1993 16MB was a lot of ram. More like 8MB paired with the brand new intel pentium 60 or 66Mhz. That was a high end home PC.
Back when I worked at uni, got a tossed out Octane. IRIX seemed cool, but I mostly used Solaris. Plus I had a whole stack of Sun pizza boxes.
this one is probably my dream machine. fire up softimage or 3d studio, a C compiler, and do some mind-boggling graphics.
the 90s were wild
Those SGI machines are so cool! If you can find it, try and get the N64 dev boards for those boxes, imagine making something for the N64 on period correct hardware!!
I found an Indy on Craigslist maybe 5 years ago with the N64 dev board on it! I gave that board to someone who already had some N64 games up and running on properly equipped Indy.
We used these for CFD results vizualisation in the early 90's and the glorious tiles screensaver. Typically I would get a new one every couple of months and give the old ones to the customers. Even had the purple ones too.
It's interesting that these machines were very expensive at the time, but today they have no value, but digital musical instruments from the 80s and 90s, such as synthesizers and drum machines, are now worth a lot of money. A Korg M1 or Yamaha DX7 here in Brazil is more expensive than new equipment. This never happens with native computers; many end up in the trash.
> It's interesting that these machines were very expensive at the time, but today they have no value
Not the case.
SGI Indigo 2s, like in the video, sell for no less than about $1,250 complete with the base ELAN graphics. They're highly sought after. The version he has in the video would sell for no less than $2,000 to $3,500 depending on specifics.
@@adamsfusion I sell an R4K/200 Extreme system for about $500. :D What really escalates the value though is cosmetics, some will pay a lot for good condition plastics, or for individual parts, especially the front panel and/or front flap. Purple systems are more prone to scratching and discolouration, though in either case one can do a lot with careful use of T-cut.
Later IMPACT systems though (High/Max, with TRAM) are indeed a lot more valuable, and true enough will top out around the 3K mark atm, but this is very subjective. Kinda funny really, I have an Onyx2 deskside which will be listed cheaper than a max-spec Indigo2 or Octane2.
Other optional items for Indigo2 also scale up the cost very quickly, inparticular the CDROM sled, G160 10/100 card and perhaps most of all the IMPACT Compression board which in working condition is very rare.
Some SGI models are still in commercial use, mainly Indy, O2, Octane, Fuel and Onyx systems, in the textile, medical, PCB, defense and vis sim markets, which maintains pricing pressure on related systems and parts, especially V12 boards, DM6, DCD, etc. Most hobbyists don't know this is the case and thus don't understand why certain items have become so expensive, likewise unaware that modern "hobbyists" include now retired professionals who can afford to splurge on the SGI of their dreams, reliving their early careers in vfx or whatever.
Octane/Fuel systems with V12/DCD are used in the PCB manufacturing industry, mainly in Israel, but also in the US and elsewhere (AMAT NanoSEM systems). Indy and O2 persist in the textile industry (Stoll/SIRIX systems), but also includes Personal IRIS and IRIS Indigo. In the defense sector it can be almost anything, going all the way back to 4D Series, but usually Challenge/Onyx.
In general, SGIs are still used in sectors that involve extensive industrial process control with costly external equipment.
In the hobbyist space, collector pressure varies over time, atm focused more on O2, Indigo2 and IRIS Indigo for relevant parts, especially plastics. Come back in a couple of years and this sentence will likely be again out of date. :D
Yeah dude, I just subbed, save that beast! Grind all that rust off, make it a beauty again
My goat. Told you I’d tune in
A spectacle of graphics and sound.
12:36 What's really incredible is apart from the very high resolution and colour depth, running it windowed and the shading, my Acorn from 1989 was more than capable of rendering flat real-time 3D games at a high framerate.
That's not a criticism of the the SGI, just how ludicrously fast ARM was compared to everything else at the price point.
Worth noting of course flat shading is a much easier computational process. Extreme can do a lot more than that. :)
dude has gone EXTREME! ...now you can hack the planet.
Amazing that you could fit all of the tech on those 3 boards onto something as small as an NVME PCB, have it be a single chip, have a single chip with hundreds of GPU cores 40x more VRAM, and blast that entire computer into oblivion in terms of performance on everything, **on the low end**, today.
Question: Do you have a blog or wiki of all the games that can be played on this system? - Would be cool to have that exist on the internet archive!
Shout out for the CB and scanner radios as extras.
I...I think I was looking at that exact machine!
Old times, I worked with this a lot when I worked at Oracle
I got the card and breakout box, still new oldstock if you want it, and the other 256 memory
Shoot me an email! ionic1kbusiness@gmail.com
The old pc’s were built tougher than pc’s today. The components were soldered way better . Today’s pc boards and gpu boards sometimes come with capacitors loose
figure on the desk... " I know what kind of man you are"
very beautiful
You should definitely go all out and upgrade that thing to the max
I had that exact ViewSonic monitor!
64-bit with 128MB of RAM from 1993 would of even crushed the N64.
love old computers for animation i love to animate something on that computer
So.. Quake2. Get that. Quake1 usually is software rendering. Quake2 runs on everything from indy up with some fondling. Great for getting FPS in timedemo and crusher. That's how we used to benchmark Indy/I^2/Moosehead or the Racers at uni club. Then watched Onyx(1) deskside with IR and just wept...
Q2 wouldn't run on Extreme GFX unfortunately, because it lacks texture memory. It'll be just a slideshow at best.
i love my ip28, but good lord the thing is an absolute unit. literally the heaviest desktop i own. i have towers 3 times the size that are lighter.
need to get around to maxing the ram in it, and finding a sled to install a cdrom.
I love how we have literally 20 times the power now!
It’s actually more like 20000 times.
@ true. lol
Your average Android phone BLOWS THIS THING AWAY in terms of computing, graphics power generally by much more than 20 times, but would vary by the exact calculations done. I tried simply playing an MP3 on my first R3000 Indigo (granted a lot slower than this Indigo2 and probably not good MP3 playback code), but it could not play it in real time!
@@Dylanear we’ve come so far bro!
My first SGI!!! 1993 as well my Onyx!!!
We just got the 5090?in for review yet here I am watching a video about a graphics card from 1993😂
I think that for the Doom port the best graphic accelerator card is the worst one available for the Indigo2, because it was better on 2D than the other cards.
Doom doesn’t use 3D hardware acceleration so fast CPU and faster bandwidth to the graphics card determine overall performance
@@little_fluffy_clouds His point is that the 2D fill rate is important because of the scaling used, and XL has a very high 2D fill rate, much higher than Extreme.
GL Quake and its sequels would be a good test!
Bare in mind they would only run in software-made (Extreme doesn't support hw texture mapping) so it would really be more of a CPU test. Also, at that time the gfx was IrisGL.
if you get the donor indigo 2 running with your old graphics card, you may consider to find a 19" rack case and mount it inside it. It would get this professional look, if you know what I mean...
perhaps
you may have to get someone to make you a custom sticker ie send them a picture of the logo, it may have to be bulk purchase it depends on the company.
Wow. This thing can ray trace better then todays gpus can lol.
14:30 … no way…… NO WAY! 🎉
Lol. My grandfather sold PCs in 93. And had several desktops. His top of the line one had 16 MB of RAM