The SGI Buyer's Guide (2003) (opens in new tab)

Hadn't really heard of SGI too much, going down the rabbit hole I thought this snippet from the Wikipedia page was especially interesting

"For eight consecutive years (1995–2002), all films nominated for an Academy Award for Distinguished Achievement in Visual Effects were created on Silicon Graphics computer systems"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Graphics#Entertainment...

I used to dream of owning an O2, in no small part due to it being the host of Erwin from UserFriendly. And then I managed to score multiple out of the trash years later in college, funny how the world works. :)

Although it is stupid I can't stop searching Ebay for SGI machines. I have fond memories of running an Indy on my desktop and operating some Onyx machines. Now they are overpriced and it really doesn't make much sense to own one, apart from maybe the latest Origin 2 with R12000 but even this in the end would only catch dust. Even the best Buttonfly demos on the latest and greatest machines get a bit tired after a while.

I wish SGI would return and make a laptop.

I've got a beefy Octane (4GB of RAM! dual R12000! MXE graphics!) but I honestly don't do much... At a time I used it as an X11 terminal but it's a bit too hot and loud even for that :)

When I was a teenager my dad brought me to the 7th floor of the Daily News building in Philly. This floor was a kind of skunk labs - tasked with digitizing the paper for their new “website.”

This experience brought a couple of firsts:

My first time using the internet on a screaming fast, dedicated T1 line. Unbelievable to see Netscape load a site so quickly.

And: my first time seeing an SGI Indy. A row of them, in fact. This set off a fascination with operating systems outside System 7. I was so excited to get my hands on MkLinux, BeOS and later Rhapsody/OS X developer preview.

(2003)

I started checking after it said "these systems are six years old". Yeah, it's been a bit longer than that...