[vishnu]

I learned about SGI and IRIX in late 2013 and lurked Nekochan around that time until it went offline. Forgot my username there though.

Never owned a machine or used IRIX (too poor) so I experience this hobby vicariously through reading community posts, reading manuals, watching videos, looking at screenshots, etc.

The thing is, if you ever hope to own an IRIX workstation, the prices are doing nothing but going up. I bought my Octane2 in 2007 for 180 dollars US. Now try finding one (well a *working* one) for less than a thousand. They don't exist.

[Trippynet]

Yep, the prices have got silly. I've just had a look on Ian's site (where my Indigo2 and Fuel came from) and they're now around 3x the price I paid back when I got them from him.

[vishnu]

Yep, the prices have got silly. I've just had a look on Ian's site (where my Indigo2 and Fuel came from) and they're now around 3x the price I paid back when I got them from him.

And when I bought my Octane2, it had (well, it still does have), Shake 3.6 and Maya Unlimited 6.5, which, at the time, were 10's of thousands of dollars worth of software. And now, you can get those programs (and many more), and most (or all) have working licenses, you can get them from my website. If those software companies want to come at me for giving away what were once super-expensive versions of their IRIX software, let 'em come at me! Basically, they don't care. Call Autodesk and ask to buy an IRIX version of Maya, they'll just hang up on you. I know, I've tried. 😂 😆 😎 😁

[VPCII]

Joined nekochan around 2003-2004. Was a moderator, and eventually abandoned my post and sold my last SGI before the site died. Pete had to deal with a lot of challenges over the years, especially from a certain user right at the end, and I don't blame him for running for the hills. Pete was a cool dude and sent me discs through the mail. Hakimoto and I borrowed parts for dauphin dtr-1's from each other through the mail. Bought cool stuff from so many people, including an Indigo Elan from Ian. Even went and met coredog64 in peoria to pickup a trunk full of indigo2's from boeing. I miss hamei and his style. Foetz as well as everyone else in the mod team. Generatrix too. Especially everyone else I forgot to mention.

I never even wanted an SGI. I was looking for a goddamn SUN workstation like I had at my internship...

[Trippynet]

To be clear, I don't blame Pete for running for the hills either, but I do blame him for abruptly pulling the plug with zero warning, thus forcing people to use Internet Archive and the likes to try and rebuild/archive all the information that existed there (thank you to those who did manage to retrieve almost everything). If he didn't want to run it any more, he could at least have given some notice, or tried to hand the data over to someone else to run.

But anyway, yes there were good times there and I do also miss some of the regular contributors. But time moves on, and I remain glad that this place exists in its place.

[VPCII]

[...] If he didn't want to run it any more, he could at least have given some notice, or tried to hand the data over to someone else to run.

If one wanted to avoid drama and cut clean, he would do just as he did. The fact that people are still talking about it now is a perfect example. Imagine the folderol of the announcement alone. All the accompanying pearl clutching, teeth gnashing, ass kissing, finger pointing and dagger gripping... a veritable renaissance painting level of drama. Who gets the data? Is he still liable in perpetuity? Etc. Easy fix. Kill it. Besides, it gave a shot for the new community to attempt to build something for itself instead of just creating videos of things others had done. Pete owes and owed us nothing, ever.

Not mad, just the way it looked from down in the trenches.

[weblacky]

[...] If he didn't want to run it any more, he could at least have given some notice, or tried to hand the data over to someone else to run.

If one wanted to avoid drama and cut clean, he would do just as he did. The fact that people are still talking about it now is a perfect example. Imagine the folderol of the announcement alone. All the accompanying pearl clutching, teeth gnashing, ass kissing, finger pointing and dagger gripping... a veritable renaissance painting level of drama. Who gets the data? Is he still liable in perpetuity? Etc. Easy fix. Kill it. Besides, it gave a shot for the new community to attempt to build something for itself instead of just creating videos of things others had done. Pete owes and owed us nothing, ever.

Not mad, just the way it looked from down in the trenches.

Hmmmmmm.... There's one huge flaw in this argument, which otherwise makes perfect sense,"Pete" didn't produce any content. The content was produced by users under the guise of helping others and posting it in a public place. You can talk about who owns the rights to what but just like YouTube the owner, in this case, didn't generate content, he just housed it.
Because it was up for so long people trusted him to do that. If he was going to be taken it down the least he could've done was allowed users to download their own content to push up someplace else. It's akin to getting free storage at a warehouse and then having all your stuff stolen when the warehouse is decommissioned/emptied and razed to the ground.

It's not totally sure what the content is really worth but it was made off with like a thief in the night. Well, there's not much legally you could do but there is a social and moral contract when it comes to forums. That the success of the forum and its usefulness is normally a direct result of the participation of it users who are informed and have high-level abilities to solve problems. Taking away someone's platform is worrying enough but all the literature disappeared with it.

There's still some of that we have not gotten back. I'll say that most of the technicals have been patched back together recently through scraping through personal notes and experimentation the one thing we won't get back is the personal testimonies of the people who actually lived the experiences of administration and field support for the systems. That is the on-site history of SGI as far as the public is concerned. Because it was running while SGI was still in business and even included old timers that used to be employees that would tell stories. That has its own value independent of the technical support aspect. I sincerely hope that one day somebody encounters the data dump and can publish it in some form that we can archive. It was the focused participation and effort by many thousands of people over many years. That lost effort is the true cost.

[VPCII]

The content was produced by users under the guise of helping others and posting it in a public place.

Publicly accessible is not the same as a public space. It was still privately hosted or am I mistaken?

You can talk about who owns the rights to what but just like YouTube the owner, in this case, didn't generate content, he just housed it.

YouTube has the lawyers to make that argument, and very deep pockets to dissuade bad actors from even attempting to bring it before a court.

It's akin to getting free storage at a warehouse and then having all your stuff stolen when the warehouse is decommissioned/emptied and razed to the ground.

No, it isn't akin, or even in the same ballpark. Not even the same sport. It is data. What do you do with data you don't want to lose? You make a backup. If you push things only to the web and expect them to exist in perpetuity, you must be naive or have a small sample rate. You could be arguing in bad faith, but I don't really care.

[...] the one thing we won't get back is the personal testimonies of the people who actually lived the experiences of administration and field support for the systems. That is the on-site history of SGI as far as the public is concerned. Because it was running while SGI was still in business and even included old timers that used to be employees that would tell stories. That has its own value independent of the technical support aspect.

Too bad GDPR compliance and sociopath users ruined that part of the web.

It was the focused participation and effort by many thousands of people over many years. That lost effort is the true cost.

Guess you just had to have been there. Now who will make videos for clout by reading decades old posts for some shit they never got to be a part of? Guess the MOPs and sociopaths lose again, killing the golden goose one like button at a time.

Your response encapsulated everything I said about drama. Pete did the right thing.

[Raion]

I don't blame Peter and I think continuously blaming him is unconstructive and a bit immature. Yes, the content we had there belonged to us, but by the time I arrived on the scene as a 19 year old greenhorn thanks to a certain surfer dude I worked with at InMotion Hosting in Virginia Beach, the community was in shambles. I recall that PymbleSoftware messaged me griping about Hamei and Hakimoto and a few others in the first week there. It was a useful resource but I always try to look back at what I could have done differently. I could have worked with other senior users of the site (the idea for IRIXNet came in part from a phone discussion I had with JP from WA around 2016 after months of Nekochan downtime) to convince Pete to give someone a copy of the DB. I could have reached out to him and offered to buy it. I could have done a million things differently and I have some regrets about my handling of it, though some were not something that I could han avoided. A certain piefke member there in particular turned on me and started issuing threats trying to silence discussion and promoting of IRIXNet (no it wasn't Mr. C the Lombard) and I was also way too immature and stressed to be a good leader.

For my part I think in some ways the community is healthier now. As much as I appreciate meeting Hamei in Shanghai and all the things he gave me over that time (which, Mr. Hamei if you need anything the door is always open to ask for it) I can't say I was a fan of his humor and attitude all the time. There were certain members who should have moved on. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but there was one who kept shilling Apple hard and barely offering anything to the threads he was part of. And I wish some people made the transition to this forum, namely ClassicHasClass. He was always a good friend to have in threads and he was always respectful, insightful and willing to throw people a bone.

At the end of the day though I can't control what other people do. I'm about to make a major set of changes to my life over the next decade to come and while I know things are moving very slow for most... I hope to change that in the future. We have some stuff coming soon which is exciting and fun, and I'm hoping that I will be able to bring other people into the fold and get some traction where it counts.

[mwdmeyer]

Hi All,

I'm mwdmeyer, looks like I signed up to nekochan back in 2014, I didn't post much on there but found a lot of the information very interesting. Looking forward to seeing what info there is on here.

I've got a range of o2 and Indy machines and did some youtube videos on them many years ago, haven't powered on the machines in a long time, but some should still work!

I've got a nice Indy R4400SC/200, pretty much maxed out, probably my fav machine.