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0 pointsGrosvenor2mo ago0 comments

You means SGI onyx? The cool looking purple one?

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IIRC the desk side onyx had the royal purple stripes and only accepted one CPU board, the rack mount version were that blue-purple color, more indigo (color)

GrosvenorOP2mo ago

So there were two computers made with the same bits mid 90s. Origin(compute, blue) and onyx(graphics, purple). Both had deskside and rack systems.

Onyx had a few slots reserved for graphics, original could have more compute boards. But you could certainly put two couple cpu boards in an onyx deskside or rack.

FarmerPotato2mo ago

Uhoh, I think I mistook Oxygen for Origin. It was 25 years ago.

The funny thing was that our Cray sales team, from the C90 and T3D, jumped ship from Cray to SGI before their merger.

So got to set up some Indys as web servers/ Oracle database. Surprise! Same sales team. Then the merger happened and we got the Origin boxes.

nyrikki2mo ago

It must have been more complex then that, I was at the skywalker ranch when onyx was being replaced by o200/2000 and never saw a purple onyx at Kerner(ILM), I had a purple Indy impact as my home machine and was looking for purple. I hated teal with a passion.

Perhaps all the purple rack onyx had been dumped but we dug through ILMs boneyard looking to add to our cxfs cluster, but the FC bus speed was too low.

It is possible that R10k was different or that there were multiple chassis. The desk sides I had experience with required RAM in slot 1, with CPU in slot 2, with up to 4 CPUs on the board.

o200 was more restrictive, with 2 CPUs per chassis, with the ability to cray-link two chassis for a total of 4 CPUs, more required o2000.

But this was a quarter of a century ago or more by now…so I may misremember things.

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nyrikki2mo ago

IIRC the desk side onyx had the royal purple stripes and only accepted one CPU board, the rack mount version were that blue-purple color, more indigo (color)

GrosvenorOP2mo ago

So there were two computers made with the same bits mid 90s. Origin(compute, blue) and onyx(graphics, purple). Both had deskside and rack systems.

Onyx had a few slots reserved for graphics, original could have more compute boards. But you could certainly put two couple cpu boards in an onyx deskside or rack.

FarmerPotato2mo ago

Uhoh, I think I mistook Oxygen for Origin. It was 25 years ago.

The funny thing was that our Cray sales team, from the C90 and T3D, jumped ship from Cray to SGI before their merger.

So got to set up some Indys as web servers/ Oracle database. Surprise! Same sales team. Then the merger happened and we got the Origin boxes.

nyrikki2mo ago

Perhaps all the purple rack onyx had been dumped but we dug through ILMs boneyard looking to add to our cxfs cluster, but the FC bus speed was too low.

It is possible that R10k was different or that there were multiple chassis. The desk sides I had experience with required RAM in slot 1, with CPU in slot 2, with up to 4 CPUs on the board.

o200 was more restrictive, with 2 CPUs per chassis, with the ability to cray-link two chassis for a total of 4 CPUs, more required o2000.

But this was a quarter of a century ago or more by now…so I may misremember things.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse