What is the Rarest Piece of SGI Hardware you own?

CiaoTime

Public Enemy Number One
Jan 15, 2020
45
27
18
Vancouver, BC, Canada
My rarest is almost certainly the NTT Indy (thanks to Elf! More info here), but a one-of-350 Crimson Jurassic Classic earns an honorable mention.

Also worth an honorable mention is an O2+ that I'd happened to score an awesome deal on, thanks to the magic of Yahoo Auctions Japan. It took three months to arrive via barge, but it showed up in immaculate condition -- and with the original hard drives.

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So it turns out that this particular O2+ doesn't boot into a normal IRIX login prompt: it has a copy of CARTO, which is a wildly specialized piece of cardiology software designed to measure and display the movement of voltage across a human heart for the duration of a heartbeat. The colorful object in that third image there is a real human heart scan: this one was post-surgical, as the red marks show where a surgeon had cauterized the heart. The most recent scans on the system date back to 2008: I have no idea how a piece of decommissioned Japanese hospital equipment got out with all of its data intact, but it came as a total surprise to me when it arrived at my door.

It's certainly the machine with the most unique and slightly eerie history in my whole collection; computers with a story are always more interesting.
 

3ddoc

Member
Jan 17, 2020
46
20
8
Hi Elf! Its a great case but heavy as a tank though. I picked it up around 2002, fired it up to make sure it worked at the time and it has been sitting since. Looks like the mainboard may be custom. Ian Mapleson list an IP22 variant on his site and Mashek has an IP22 version on ebay, but I haven't run across info on an IP28 version of the GEMS I2. I need to still pull the mid-plane to get at the main board part number. The the db9 on the back runs into the custom electronics in the first picture below. Looks like there was some control boards in the card cage that I didn't get, based on the schematic.

From Ian's page:
"Motherboard for R4K Indigo2: 2750 UKP (SGI PN 030-0844-004. V11 PROM fitted, but add extra for CPU if required. This is a special board for medical systems) "


this was definitely from a ge cat scanner console, the motherboard had some "special" trace wiring on it to force people to pay ge 35k for a replacement. There might still be someone still using this old tech
 
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Jacques

Active member
Dec 21, 2019
166
65
28
Somerset, United Kingdom
Also worth an honorable mention is an O2+ that I'd happened to score an awesome deal on, thanks to the magic of Yahoo Auctions Japan. It took three months to arrive via barge, but it showed up in immaculate condition -- and with the original hard drives.
Out of interest, is it a R12k system or RM5200/R7k system?
 

Irinikus

Well-known member
Dec 16, 2019
738
553
93
South Africa
www.youtube.com
InfiniteReality4

I've just bought a pair of RM11's to upgrade my Onyx2 desk side to IR4.

I've never seen this hardware demonstrated, so it must be pretty rare!
 
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arhiman57

New member
Apr 21, 2020
9
26
3
France
Just found this topic, trully impressive stuff like the proto indigo1 with Pi color....

For my own, I think my Pi 4D/20 from 12/1988 (one or two mothn after introduction if I remember correclty, no TFLU chassis) is my "rarest machine".
 

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nevyn

Member
May 4, 2021
27
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13
Well, apart from some StereoEyes goggles and headphones which I donated to Ian Mapleson, as I never found an emitter… I’m kinda left with this as my oddball item. I’ve absolutely no idea how rare/common they are but I might as well share:

I give you a Silicon Graphics toolkit
 

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pauliedweasel

New member
Nov 25, 2023
12
6
3
70
Prescott, Arizona
Several years ago I bought an interesting Indy on EBay. It is an Indy case with an Etch-A-Sketch built into the top cover. I don’t recall if it was built into a working Indy or if it was a promo item like the Indy Briefcase or the Indigo cappuccino maker.
I still haven’t opened the box because we were starting our slow but steady move from LA to Prescott Arizona and didn’t have time.
 

mapesdhs

Member
Jul 23, 2020
38
33
18
53
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
www.sgidepot.co.uk
I have an Entry gfx board for Indigo wih an SRV1 option fitted (same as the one in TriOx's pics), also an Elan with Galileo Video.

Other stuff... an Onyx350, a Cosmo2 IMPCOM and daughtercard for Indigo2 (it's in an R10K/195 1GB system with Solid, I2V-FI and 10/100), a XL24/Cosmo1/I2V setup for Indigo2 (R4K/250 system), a Cosmo board for Indy (lacking IndyVideo though atm), several ChallengeS systems, a weird R12K/380 O2, a TimeDriver board for Indigo2, IndyPresenter (alas needs repair), a ChallengeS Vault, PI 4D/35 with a video option (another PSU job), a Ciprico UW SCSI GIO board for Indigo2, an R8K Indigo2 (not working atm), and doubtless other stuff I forget offhand (numerous owners manuals, product guides, dev stuff and so on).

I suppose Crimsons are rare, but I have four of them (intend selling three off eventually), though all need repair (PSU issues) which won't be sorted for many months. Actually one I've never tried to turn on, and I won't until I've serviced its PSU first (tons to learn on that front). Also have an Onyx rack, though I've decided to sell it next year sometime (can't get at it atm, blocked off in the garage, and really it's a task better suited to at least spring time weather). Also have what was an Onyx3800 (all the brick and cable innards from several racks, though not the racks themselves), but still not set it up, needs power mods to the garage which again needs better weather.

Do fully working original software setups count as rare? eg. I have a Barco Creator Octane, a couple of Smoke/Flame Octanes, a CADS5 Indy (the manual stack is bigger than an Octane!), two Sirix Indys with a SELAN box and all peripherals, several Alias O2s, an older Alias Indigo2, a Maya 5.0 Octane, a Smoke Tezro (has a weird power on issue which is driving me nuts), an Indigo CAD system, a Flint Indigo2 MAX/IMPVID, an Effect O2 with DIGVID, and various others. In almost all cases, I have all the orginal docs, dongles, media and manuals, even the arc studio lights for the Flint I2, and a handful of Wacom tablets. Also in theory a Maya 1.5 Indy, but I've misplaced the system disk (duh).

I have a VideoCreator for Crimson I'd love to test some day, guess that'll be a while off. :}

Hmm, possibly the rarest thing is a set of NDA docs about IR5; keep meaning to find them and scan them in, if I can remember where the heck I stored them.

Sorry for the lack of pics, most of the above are out of sight in storage.
 

botticelli

New member
Dec 15, 2023
4
3
3
Got this sweet SGI Onyx InfiniteReality4 collecting dust in my garage. It's like the unicorn of my collection—hard to come by and a pain to maintain, but man, the nostalgia hits hard when I fire it up.
 

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