[Nohmercy]

Ive always wanted to play around with vintage 3d software. I managed to get a hold of softimage but its really limited on a virtual machine. So I found the irix version and Im looking for recommendations of for what console to buy. I looked into octane, but what I really want to know is how much should I budget to get a console running this software at high speed?

[Raion]

An SGI Octane with either TRAM on an SI or a V6 is the bare minimum I would have for texture memory.

Others will recommend the O2, but there's a lot of "Gotchas" there:

1. PSU failures. They die randomly
2. RAM and upgrades are getting expensive. The supply dried up.
3. VERY fragile. It'll basically crumble in shipping. It's better to go for the Octane.

The octane does require 13w3 adapters, but it takes standard PS/2 peripherals.

I would not advise getting an octane without TRAM on an SI at least, because the TRAM allows for texturing operations to be at a reasonable speed.

[Intuition]

Yeah, I have both O2 and Octane setups. O2 and Softimage run ok with at least an r12k 300 mhz or r12k 400mhz.

Problem is that most of the O2 you find on ebay are r5k systems running 180mhz or even 300mhz but the r5k 300mhz is considerably slower than the r12k 300 mhz.

Both my o2 setups are very fragile. If I change hard drives I have to be careful because it can be finicky if the o2 sees the drive and fires it up for boot if I don't fit it in just right.

This happens on both my o2s. Once I get one put together I don't really want to move it or change it up because they are sensitive in every way. One has to be warmed up... it just wont spool up the hard drive if it is cold. So I leave it on if it doesn't boot then after being on for a bit I can reboot and the boot drive will actually start spinning. Btw, I have multiple Irix installs for both machines and this is true no matter which drive I pick.

The Octane on the other hand is a tank. It boots every time. It felt more snappy with a single 195 mhz proc than the o2 @300mhz... which I am sure is part due to the separate graphics setup... and the dual 400mhz proc I got for it makes it great for any application. It is big and heavy though so shipping is tricky and the box was beat up because it was so heavy... BUT... it was a tank and started right up and besides needing a new power supply has been solid through and through. I updated the graphics card too.. but Softimage will run very nice on a low end Octane and really really nice on a medium spec Octane and the good news is that Octanes are still decently priced.