In grad school, I ended up borrowing an old teal Indigo2, with graphics upgrade, that my research group had sitting around, to use from my dorm room, mainly as a terminal.
(I owned almost nothing in the world at the time, not even a computer, having shed my possessions in a "Gattaca" kind of way, of not saving anything for the swim back from grad school. But an SGI Indigo2 is more than powerful enough to be an SSH terminal, and my electricity use wasn't metered. And, unlike the laptops I'd borrowed, no one would want the Indigo2 back.)
Getting IRIX installed involved multiple installation tapes (or was it CD-ROMs?) that some kind person in the lab happened to still have.
An admin later offered to give me this Indigo2 that I was borrowing, but they first needed me to bring it back in for inventory. Around then, I'd finally built (or was about to build) a Linux box, and hauling the Indigo2 and its huge CRT anywhere was a chore without a car, and I'd soon be graduating, and moving away lightly. So I carted the Indigo2 back across campus, and left it for good. Hopefully it ended up with someone who preserved it, as the author here does.
I used an Indy with X11 forwarding for a while, I could run a modern Firefox from my Linux machine, which worked nicely. As much as it looked like it was running natively, it really wasn't, so downloads would end up on the other computer, and sound would also play remotely.
Because I never throw anything away I still have a small bunch of these machines in the attic (apart from the Indigo they are all teal though) waiting for this kind of treatment, which have been super high on my to-do list.
Same for me circa 1993 in my uni a friend got a dumped vaxstation running Ultrix from the IT department, this was my first PC as I had no money at the time.
It had two stacked large PCB, the upper one was full of RAM chips totalling a whoping 8 MByte of RAM ;)
Really liked your post, the way you brought that old Indigo back to life was super fun to read. I totally agree that the magic is in seeing the machine actually run again, not just sitting on a shelf.
For me, I’ve messed with a couple of old PCs before, but nothing as cool as an SGI box. Reading this makes me think I should try grabbing one if I ever spot it cheap.
Thanks for sharing the journey—would love to see more pics of the messy steps too, not just the polished result. Feels like hanging out with a fellow retro nerd.
Quite interesting read, like many on those days, I really looked up for SGI, and visited regularly their site due to them being the host for original C++ STL documentation.
You can use it as an SSH terminal. :)
In grad school, I ended up borrowing an old teal Indigo2, with graphics upgrade, that my research group had sitting around, to use from my dorm room, mainly as a terminal.
(I owned almost nothing in the world at the time, not even a computer, having shed my possessions in a "Gattaca" kind of way, of not saving anything for the swim back from grad school. But an SGI Indigo2 is more than powerful enough to be an SSH terminal, and my electricity use wasn't metered. And, unlike the laptops I'd borrowed, no one would want the Indigo2 back.)
Getting IRIX installed involved multiple installation tapes (or was it CD-ROMs?) that some kind person in the lab happened to still have.
An admin later offered to give me this Indigo2 that I was borrowing, but they first needed me to bring it back in for inventory. Around then, I'd finally built (or was about to build) a Linux box, and hauling the Indigo2 and its huge CRT anywhere was a chore without a car, and I'd soon be graduating, and moving away lightly. So I carted the Indigo2 back across campus, and left it for good. Hopefully it ended up with someone who preserved it, as the author here does.
I used an Indy with X11 forwarding for a while, I could run a modern Firefox from my Linux machine, which worked nicely. As much as it looked like it was running natively, it really wasn't, so downloads would end up on the other computer, and sound would also play remotely. Because I never throw anything away I still have a small bunch of these machines in the attic (apart from the Indigo they are all teal though) waiting for this kind of treatment, which have been super high on my to-do list.
Same for me circa 1993 in my uni a friend got a dumped vaxstation running Ultrix from the IT department, this was my first PC as I had no money at the time.
It had two stacked large PCB, the upper one was full of RAM chips totalling a whoping 8 MByte of RAM ;)
Really liked your post, the way you brought that old Indigo back to life was super fun to read. I totally agree that the magic is in seeing the machine actually run again, not just sitting on a shelf. For me, I’ve messed with a couple of old PCs before, but nothing as cool as an SGI box. Reading this makes me think I should try grabbing one if I ever spot it cheap. Thanks for sharing the journey—would love to see more pics of the messy steps too, not just the polished result. Feels like hanging out with a fellow retro nerd.
Author here - thanks a lot! Glad you enjoyed it.
Interesting to see an old Unix box with EISA slots .. I would have thought that was "too PC".
Quite interesting read, like many on those days, I really looked up for SGI, and visited regularly their site due to them being the host for original C++ STL documentation.
Nothing beats the SGI desktop.
Their cases were designed in those days. Today all computers look the same.
Will always have a soft spot for Indigo2 10k.