Hi everyone! Many years ago when I lived in Albuquerque I picked up a sweet SGI Indigo2 at a surplus sale. Mine was originally owned by MIT, going by the inventory stickers on the back. I've got the Indigo2 itself, plus a nice SGI keyboard and mouse to match. The whole kit has been in storage for 12-13 years and I'm honestly not sure if I ever spent any time with it even when it was "new to me" - I bought it in a large lot of vintage / surplus computers, and other machines pulled my attention before I had a kid, moved multiple times, started a new career, etc.
Anyway. I've been able to power the machine on and connect via Serial from my MacBook Pro, from the PROM Monitor I learned that the machine is equipped with the following:
195MHz R10000 CPU with FPU
256 megs RAM
"High Impact" graphics system
1 SCSI CD-ROM drive
1 SCSI hard drive
So all-in-all, not a bad configuration to play with! Unfortunately, this is as far as I've been able to get. I have a monitor which (as best I can tell) should be compatible with "Sync on Green" video (I've tested with 3 LCD panels, but the one I'm most confident in is the NEC MultiSync 1700M+ seen in my pic above - it specifically says "composite sync on green compatible" in the product documentation), but I just cannot get the damn SGI to show an image on any display I've tried. I bought a 13w3-to-VGA adapter on eBay which was specifically noted for being SGI-compatible - it looks like it's had the necessary pins removed to make it compliant with this generally-reputable article.
Any suggestions here? I can sorta watch the machine booting while connected via Serial terminal, but that's where I'm getting stuck and I'd really like to explore the machine and OS further than this.
Thanks for any guidance you can provide!
Huxley
Anyway. I've been able to power the machine on and connect via Serial from my MacBook Pro, from the PROM Monitor I learned that the machine is equipped with the following:
195MHz R10000 CPU with FPU
256 megs RAM
"High Impact" graphics system
1 SCSI CD-ROM drive
1 SCSI hard drive
So all-in-all, not a bad configuration to play with! Unfortunately, this is as far as I've been able to get. I have a monitor which (as best I can tell) should be compatible with "Sync on Green" video (I've tested with 3 LCD panels, but the one I'm most confident in is the NEC MultiSync 1700M+ seen in my pic above - it specifically says "composite sync on green compatible" in the product documentation), but I just cannot get the damn SGI to show an image on any display I've tried. I bought a 13w3-to-VGA adapter on eBay which was specifically noted for being SGI-compatible - it looks like it's had the necessary pins removed to make it compliant with this generally-reputable article.
Any suggestions here? I can sorta watch the machine booting while connected via Serial terminal, but that's where I'm getting stuck and I'd really like to explore the machine and OS further than this.
Thanks for any guidance you can provide!
Huxley