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The Long Road for the Onyx2 - Printable Version

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The Long Road for the Onyx2 - Raion - 05-23-2019

Hey fellas,

Well, I've done it. I now own my dream Silicon Graphics machine. An Onyx2 Deskside. 

But let's back up a bit to nearly 2 weeks ago.    

https://www.ebay.com/itm/293083364511

This was shared on discord in sale-sharing (for you boomers not on Discord yet, come join us, it's a lot of fun)

I decided to drive from my home in rural Eastern VA, to Hialeah, FL (A part of the Miami-Dade County area). 

I set out this past Monday, the 20th, at 8AM with a few towels, $400 + gas/incidentals money, and a single goal.

I drove 14 hours down 95 and the Florida Turnpike, until I reached Miami. Now, I was jaded about Miami. It's a dirty, drug-riddled city that's kind of like Guatemala City to me. There were two naked people at one intersection screeching at each other like it was Jurassic Park or something. People were just watching. Probably some kind of A-PVP shit or something. 

Anyways, I finally made it to E-Scrap at Hialeah, FL. I met the boss, Dante. He's a nice guy, a big teddy bear of sorts. He showed me the Onyx2, which turns out is from Florida Atlantic University. I paid for that, and he also gave me a Personal Iris 4D/35, which is going to MassiveRobot (I'll post pics of that shortly).


First issue: It wouldn't fit upright in my car. So I laid down some towels, and we carefully wedged it in place. It spent 2 days laying on its side without a lot of damage. 

Now at 9AM on Tuesday I could head home. I got on the Turnpike, and headed to meet JackNet, to give him a cheap O2 on the way back. He's a nice young dude, and I enjoyed meeting him. 

Heading back home, the heaviness of the Onyx2 made it not slide around. 

   

Finally, at 1AM EST Wednesday, I arrived home, and promptly slept until 1PM. 

Today I finally got it indoors. It's a masterpiece.

I have NOT Powered it up yet, and I cannot thus provide any detailed specs. I have to buy a C19 power cord and figure out how to get the wires routed around my room without it being a trip hazard. 

The name of the computer will be "Passion Lip" which is from a series I watch (FATE). Passion Lip is this character:

   

And her chibi form:

   

And here's how the actual machine sits:


   

RE: The Long Road for the Onyx2 - Raion - 05-23-2019

For the Personal Iris, this was an afterthought because Mr. Dante had it for sale in the recycler. I picked it up, and promptly have resold it to MassiveRobot, and I will be delivering it to him in June. 

According to the stickers, this came from a GE plant, and was abandoned property. It still has the original drives with it. No kb/mouse :/


Will be restoring the plastics, will share pics of that too.

RE: The Long Road for the Onyx2 - gijoe77 - 05-24-2019

Very nice!! Awesome score on both the PI and Onyx2!!

RE: The Long Road for the Onyx2 - jan-jaap - 05-24-2019

Nice haul!

Regarding the Iris: it says 4D/25 on the chassis, but the E-module looks more like a 4D/35 (it has the audio option).

The 4D/35 is "thermally challenged" to put it mildly. To avoid thermal death of the CPU there's a silly little fan against the lid of the E-module and the chassis fan has a higher CFM rating than that of earlier Personal Irises. Before running this system for any serious amount of time, better check that the E-module fan still works and that the higher CFM fan was mounted when the E-module was upgraded.

NB: the rust on the E-module is something you see a lot on these and doesn't mean much.

RE: The Long Road for the Onyx2 - Raion - 05-24-2019

The Personal Iris is going straight to Massive without any testing due to how these PSUs have a tendency to blow up. He is aware of what he gets.

The case actually says 35, but the plastic has a few gouges. I see the back sticker says 25 now though.

RE: The Long Road for the Onyx2 - Jacques - 05-25-2019

Very nice! As with all big iron, what will you use it for, if anything? Or is it a case of "I've always wanted one...", a bit like my cube O2. My last two wanted items would be an Indigo2 and I'd dearly love an A1200 again.

RE: The Long Road for the Onyx2 - Irinikus - 05-25-2019

The really nice thing about the desk side Onyx2 is that, it's really not such a big machine and it possesses the properties of a supercomputer. It possesses all the properties of a huge Origin/Infinite Reality system and takes up very little space. (or a fraction of the space)

You also don't need to rewire your house with 3 phase power in order to run it.

There's allot to play with in one of these little boxes, making them very interesting! Smile

In winter time, it can also serve as a heater that gives you warmth as well as entertainment for your money! Wink

RE: The Long Road for the Onyx2 - Intuition - 05-30-2019

I remember when I first saw one of these running at a place called RFX in Hollywood. They were a distributer of SGI machines, Dec Alphas, and the many cg software packages back in the early 90s.

They still have a website. https://www.rfx.com/about

That building was the place where I first saw an Onyx2 running and was watching them give a demo with Softimage. It was mid 1996 I think. It had a surfing character rigged with an inverse kinematics rig showing the animation playing in realtime because the graphics engine could run the animation playback in the GL window at 24fps without being prerendered.

They were so expensive though. Like $100k+ if I remember correctly. Ridiculous money projects like feature films were likely the only buyers.

RE: The Long Road for the Onyx2 - Trippynet - 05-30-2019

Probably more expensive than that even. I remember the VR centre at Teesside University had an Onyx2 rack which I believe cost £1.6m. It powered 7 projectors and could show an image wrapped around a fully hemispherical screen. Staggering stuff for the mid-late 90s!

RE: The Long Road for the Onyx2 - Raion - 06-10-2019

Ive updated the config to 4x400MHz, 4G RAM.

The graphics are DG5-2 "Reality" graphics.

The unit still isn't powered on because I'm still working on that,but it's coming along.