Finally got a workstation!

Karpour

New member
Aug 13, 2020
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Hi, here's my intro post :)

After many years of having "owning an SGI machine" on my bucket list, I finally found an O2 listed somewhat locally (only a 4 hour drive).
In Austria, SGI machines are extremely rare, and I'd bet that even in the 90s only a few dozen were used here.

Anyway, I am both a cartoon artist and a developer, and my plan with this is to set it up as an authentic 90s digital art workstation and see what it's like to do digital art in 1997 :)
Also, I'd like to do some development on there for fun!

Anyway, next steps: Get the 1600SW interface card so I can hoop it up directly to the 1600SW I bought, get a mouse, keyboard and O2 cam, and get this little machine up and running! I'm excited!
 

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Karpour

New member
Aug 13, 2020
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Fairly low for O2 standards I guess...? 195Mhz R10k, 192MB RAM, hopefully still fun to play with and make art on :)
 
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drmadison

Member
Jun 30, 2020
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Honestly that 195mhz R10k is as fast or faster than the 300mhz RM5200 - so it's a pretty nice starting point for an O2.
More ram is the first thing I'd look for, but otherwise, enjoy it!
 

Karpour

New member
Aug 13, 2020
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Ah that's good to know :)
I just spun it up, but apparently I gave away all my PS2 nice a while ago, oops. It boots up fine, but gives me a persistent ECC error in one of the RAM sticks. Hopefully this is just bad contact that can be solved with reseating the module. It's nice that Irix tells me which module is the issue!
 

Jacques

Active member
Dec 21, 2019
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Somerset, United Kingdom
I know my R10k 250Mhz cpu is MUCH faster than the RM5200 300Mhz version, the latter runs much cooler though and I can have two drives. Also, I can run a quieter fan in the PSU for the RM5200, the R10k needs the stock fan for cooling. I'd like to eventually get to 512/768mb ram on my O2, but finding cheap ish O2 ram is quite difficult. But yes, you should be good to go, try not to go below 128mb ram on 6.5 though.
 

Jinroh

Member
Jun 12, 2020
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USA
carrotkingdom.net
Oh hey! Karpour! Funny to see you here! We both have the same thing on our bucket list. x3

Happy to see you got a beautiful machine for your collection! I want to get one for similar reasons as well! :D
 

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