Disclaimer: the Fuel is in fact humorously based on the carcass of the SGI 230, but the story here is purely for comedic purposes. Any similarities to what actually happened at SGI are a mere coincidence.
It was the year Y2K. SGI decided to release an IBM PC clone on a clone motherboard, the SGI Visual Workstation 230!
http://hardware.localhost.nl/pictures/20..._board.jpg
Customers
were happy and in total awe at how much performance was packed in that VIA motherboard and conventional graphics, the machine was a hit; "now we can use Microsoft Windows instead of that pesky Irix operating system" they told themselves, while they struggled to work with their NTFS file system and System registry inherited from Windows 3.1. Richard Belluzzo was proud, not only did he get his cheque from Bill Gates, he now had the whole SGI community running with his preferred OS of choice, Windows! Later that evening Belluzzo patted the SGI 230 on his office desk and quietly murmured "good job little buddy, you'll make me successful".
Two years passed and one SGI manager was fiddling his thumbs "we're trying to retire those pesky Irix based SGIs but they're still vaguely profitable so we have to release something" he thought to himself. "I know!" he shouted with glee, "
we can re-use the SGI 230 chassis and stuff in a cheap MIPS board and a few hot running parts that the anemic Pentium 3 case was never designed to handle!" He rushed to Richard Belluzo (who was still using his Visual Workstation 230 for his personal taxes and corporate email) and got approval for the Fuel, Belluzo heaved a sigh: "make it a quick production, I don't want us wasting that much time in furthering Irix, it's just a dead-end--Microsoft Windows will forever be the dominant platform: just like Novell NetWare".
One lone SGI engineer was tasked with quickly slapping on a front panel, "but sir what colour should I choose?" the Engineer asked while fiddling with the CAD drawings on his RS/6000 in CATIA. "Make it red, bright red, so that customers will be instantly attracted to it, and give it curves lots of curves". The CAD Engineer followed his boss' orders and finalized the finishing touches in CATIA. Meanwhile he noticed that the TDP was not suitable for this otherwise low-end chassis, the Dallas chips were of low quality and all of the surface mount capacitors were just a disaster waiting to happen--worse yet the cheapest fans were slated to be used as well. The engineer bursted into Belluzzo's office: "sir sir! We can't ship the Fuel, it's awful! They will suffer from thermal issues, IC failures, capacitor failu~~" Belluzzo cut in "I don't care! It's just a stupid MIPS computer, SGI's future is with MICROSOFT, MICROSOFT is the way to the future. I don't know how many times I've told you stupid engineers, we're doing things the Novell NetWare way. I am the CEO and you will do as I say".
And that's how the SGI Fuel became stuffed inside an SGI 230 chassis with poorly sourced parts.
Fin.
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