[jan-jaap]

Oh, great system! Can you compare performance-wise it with the Indigo?

I think they're roughly equal. The GR1.5 graphics are slower than the Elan graphics from an Indigo, and the 4D/35 is internally based on the VME bus which is slower than the GIO32 bus used in the Indigo. On the other hand, the CPU of the 4D/35 runs at 36MHz (33Mhz in the Indigo R3000), and it takes the same memory, but more of it (128MB vs 96MB in the Indigo). Mind you, most of these systems shipped with 16 or 32MB RAM so I don't think this was a big problem for many people.

The 4D/35 shipped with 5.25" full height hard disks, the size of two DVD writers stacked. The Indigo used the much faster 3.5" disks, but there's nothing to stop you from using those in the 4D/35 (with an adapter).

The Indigo shrinks a lot of the functionality of the 4D/35 from TTL chips into a couple of custom ASICs. This made it a lot smaller, cheaper, and (because it uses less power) less noisy.