SGI workstation sequence

[jvdg at sparcpark.net]

Ethan Dicks wrote:

> I've had some interest, off and on, of fiddling with some SGI
> hardware.  I really wanted an Indy when they came out, but couldn't
> come close to affording it (I ended up buying a SPARC 1 for $800 the
> following year, and many, many job opportunities and good things came
> from that).  I did get to fiddle with an Indigo^2 in the mid-1990s,
> during the Virtual Reality bubble, but couldn't afford one of those at
> the time, either.

I know the feeling. I remember reading the Byte review of the Indy in 1993... I wanted one SO badly. Couldn't justify the price of several thousand dollars back then, though. I was a student at the time, and I had two classrooms full of Suns at my disposal (SPARCclassic and SPARCstation LX).

I did buy an Indy about ten years ago, though. Still paid the equivalent of about a thousand dollars for it. Seeing what they go for these days ($0 - $25) kinda hurts...

> I had the chance to pick up a discarded Indy about 4 years ago, but by
> the time I returned with wheels, someone else had carted it away.
> Given the descendent machines in the family tree in this thread, I'm
> beginning to wonder if I shouldn't go after an Octane or an O2 rather
> than an Indigo or an Indy, at least if I wanted to do more than take
> the demo programs for a spin.
> 
> So for the more experienced SGI folks - do you feel that an Indy or
> Indigo is responsive enough to be reasonable to use, or is it worth
> holding out for something newer and most likely more expensive to
> acquire?  Also, something I don't know much about, do the older
> personal graphic workstations use odd or impossible-to-find memory, or
> are they easy/cheap to load up?

O2 is cheap enough these days that I'd recommend it as the minimum config to get. And go for the R10K models, too. Even Octanes can be had cheap enough to be considered for just playing around. You gan a lot of expandibility whan going for one of those. Although they are significantly bigger, hotter and noisier. Then again, some might consider that a plus. ;-)

Indies are nice to just have, make pretty decent servers, too, but I wouldn't buy an Indy today for workstation use.

,xtG
tsooJ