[jan-jaap]

I'll probably have to go to Ian or Mashek in the future for the TRAMs!

This is what Ian sells them for: TRAM module for High/MaxIMPACT: 250 UKP (SGI PN 030-0676-003. NOTE: MaxIMPACT needs two TRAM modules)

Don't forget that every MaxIMPACT has 1MB TRAM already, the option cards add 3MB more for a total of 4MB.

That's not too bad at all for a MaxIMPACT system, good find!

I got my own MaxIMPACT as a total bargain, by accident. In my first 'real' job I had an Indy on my desk and a 486 class PC. The Indy was the stuff of dreams: 21" screen, camera, and an OS that wouldn't crash if you put it to work. And all in a blue pizzabox instead of a beige tower. If only I could own such system myself ... Fast forward one or two years, one of my former room mates from my college days was now living in Utrecht and would always celebrate his birthday in the weekend of the "HCC Dagen", an annual 3-day computer fair. We would always drink hard on the Saturday evening and crash the final day of the "HCC Dagen" on Sunday when sellers would try to unload whatever they had left for little money. I would always come home with something insane and usually quite useless.

This year I overheard someone ask "how much for this blue thing?" and spotted a stack of at least a dozen Indys on a pallet. The answer: HFL 25,= (so a little over € 10 a piece). I decided to take two, in case there was something broken or missing. The same guy had two "green things" as well, and since they were bigger, heavier boxes he wanted HFL 50,= for them. I haggled him down to 125,= (around € 56) for two Indys and two teal Indigo2's (that's what they were of course, except at the time I had no idea). My first SGI's I had to buy a shopping trolley on site to get the whole stack home. By train.

One of the teal Indigo2's had been upgraded with MaxIMPACT/TRAM graphics, plus matching PSU and IMPACT riser. Jackpot!

That was in 1998 I think, the year after I got a freebie stripped down Indigo2 R10000 chassis from a CAD/CAM office across the hallway where I worked and I was the proud owner of my very own Indigo2 R10000 MaxIMPACT. Still a very capable system at the time. Our cats at the time loved to bask in the hot air from that Indigo2. I still have it of course!