Unpopular opinion

[stiles]

I'm glad there's a new generation of furries getting into SGI's and I hate to sound like a gatekeeper...

...but things were a lot better before YouTube retrocomputing personalities* showed off these machines to the masses. It also kept the prices low--5 years ago you could find good spec workstations on ebay for the cost of one day at Disneyland.

Oh well.

*it started with that one teen (forgot his name) showing off his SGI collection and it all went downhill from there.

 

[twylo]

I've been interested in vintage computers in one way or another since 1994, when I found a MicroPDP-11/23 that was being thrown out in college and asked if I could have it. I've enjoyed the hobby tremendously since then, but the fun is basically gone for me because none of this stuff is easy to come by any more. For me, the real fun was just finding it, playing with it and hacking on it with friends, and then passing it on (for free) to anyone else who wanted to play with it.

SGI in particular is very weird for me because I worked for SGI straight out of college. "Vintage" at that time meant Personal IRISes that were basically free for the taking because why would anyone want one in 1996 or 1997? Again, fun to play with, fun to pass on for free once I'd gotten my enjoyment out of them. But the the Indigo2's and Indys and Octanes and O2s, that stuff was brand-spanking-new! There's still a part of my brain that doesn't think of it as vintage. I'm old.

The days of easy to get hardware are gone. I guess we just have to accept that nothing lasts forever. I'm unwilling to pay $1200 to satisfy my nostalgia, but I know other people are willing to pay that amount or more just to have a cool collectible. It feels strange, but you're right, I don't want to be a gatekeeper, so I'll bite my tongue and just let people enjoy things. I can still be a little sad about it, though, as a treat.

 

[midnight.mangler]

I must confess to being one of the furries.

I am grateful to be able to own an SGI machine, something I always wanted since I saw one as a kid. So don’t be too hard on us, our hearts are in the right place. I do agree prices are bananas - and it’s all over the retrocomputing field. I can understand the high prices for SGI machines as there is some mystique associated with them - but AMIGA 1200’s regularly go for 600 - 1000 USD on eBay these days. This is insane. A year ago it was about half that.

 

[midnight.mangler]

*it started with that one teen (forgot his name) showing off his SGI collection and it all went downhill from there.

His name was Dodoid. The irony is it was his video on the Onyx that reminded me of my unrequited love for SGI and spurred me on to seek them out. So, yeah. You were right ;-)

 

[weblacky]

I don't see a direct correlation between new interest in SGI and machine prices. Every 10 years you're going to get not only a huge inflation of our currency but you're also going to see a number of units destroyed or let go as they don't make them anymore, so the inventory will always shrink over time.

I'll say that what you're used to is the disgorging of inventory during SGI's last hurrah. Considering that from about the late 90s to 2010 you could easily find companies upgrading SGI's or getting rid of the final set of SGI's on many different B2B platforms. Now all the businesses that needed to get rid of the machines have done so at least 10 years ago. 2013 was just as everyone was throwing in the towel along with SGI itself. Now you're dealing with collectors or warehouse dealers. And all of us are trying to get our money because it's a question of "find another". You used to buy SGI's by the pallet load when they were used for CAD/CAM work in our aerospace industry here in Washington state. That was 20 years ago.

 

[ghost180sx]

I just refuse to pay inflated prices for vintage computers, because like you @twylo , I have found a lot of discarded and free hardware to hack over the years. SGI is an exception, but I still pay as little as I can get away with. I'm also conscious of the fact that none of these will last forever, despite best efforts to keep them alive. But the satisfaction of having visual super computing a la '90s is pretty irresistible. SGIs in my view are the ultimate true UNIX workstations, and nothing else comes close.

 

[mapesdhs]

It has little to do with YT persons such as Dodoid. Rather, it has far more to do with the combined effects of general lack of supply (re weblacky's comments) and continued commercial demand for SGIs within a number of industries that still use them, most of which are beyond the awareness of typical hobbyists. Calling SGIs vintage doesn't automatically mean they must be cheap or readily available, especially specific parts or systems.

The reality is, any hobbyist looking for certain kinds of SGI item are competing with companies that still use them, many of which operate under extreme cost pressures as regards consideration of replacements, especially in the medical, textile, PCB manufacturing and defense industries. Such companies will pay a great deal of money for the items they want, inparticular the PCB industry which is the prime driver of persistent demand for Fuels and related parts.

An item is only ever worth what someone is willing to pay. SGis are unique in this regard, as they persist in commercial use extensively, but in sectors that most hobbyists know little about. There's no such thing as an inflated price, there's just supply & demand in a free market. 5 to 10 years ago there was a lot of SGI dumping by sectors that could sensibly move on, ie. where performance was paramount (general 3D, CAD, video, animation, rendering, games design, etc.), but these were same fields that had high public exposure through SGI's marketing and popular culture (movies, vfx, games, etc.)

Thus, hobbyists tend to view the SGI usage spectrum through a very narrow lense, missing out what actually matters the most in the current market. You want a V12, DCD or DM6 for Fuel? Good luck, because you'll be competing with half a dozen PCB manufacturers around the world who all want them aswell; I get asked about these regurlarly, especially from factories in Israel, but also the US, Singapore, South Korea and elsewhere.

Old big iron SGIs are also still in use, mainly for vis sim, defense and air traffic control, the deskside Onyx being the most common.

Btw, textile companies are still using systems as old as 12MHz Personal IRIS and R3K Indigo, mainly in the US.

 

[botticelli]

The good ol' days of snagging a sweet SGI deal on eBay seem like a distant memory now. The exposure from YouTube definitely brought in a wave of new enthusiasts, but hey, more people enjoying the retro tech scene isn't all bad, right?