[robespierre]

That's cool, I remember browsing the Viewpoint catalog (and hearing about them at SIGGRAPH '94). There was a browser plugin for viewing the models, right?

[lorddoomicus]

A friend of mine worked for a UNIX var in the early '90's.  He was totally freaked out over this thing called an "Iris Indigo." So one Saturday afternoon, we paid visit to his office and he showed me an Indigo and a bunch of cool demos it had running on it.  That particular system was for a customer at some studio to use for digital audio mastering to DAT tape, if I remember correctly. 

I was pretty blown away too. It was pretty damn cool for the time.

[gmcenroe]

My first encounter with SGI computers was in biotech/pharma job that I had. We looked at a number of computational chemistry software products that did molecular modeling, protein visualization software, that was being sold for exorbitant yearly contract fees. Some of the software was so bad, that the software would crash after a few minutes. Some was decent but was based upon some proprietary structure activity calculations what was based upon what I would call unproven value. Since this was popular in theory our company did eventually buy an SGI Crimson, later we merged with another company that ran on 8 processor machine that was the size of a refrigerator, with programmers writing there own software. It was pretty bogus. But in the long run I did like the hardware. Most of the modeling software was used to create narratives about drug design accelerated by computation chemistry. We all knew these stories were made up after the fact to glorify some research projects. In the end I did like the hardware and bought my own SGI Indigo 2 that I still have running.

The company that I worked at was less than a mile away from SGI headquarters in Mountain View Calif. It was a modern building with Indigo color on it's exterior. I always wanted to tour that building but I didn't know anyone who worked there. It was a sad day when they closed down and Google started devouring all of the buildings to build their campus.

[indigofan]

My first encounter with SGI computers was in biotech/pharma job that I had. We looked at a number of computational chemistry software products that did molecular modeling, protein visualization software, that was being sold for exorbitant yearly contract fees. Some of the software was so bad, that the software would crash after a few minutes. Some was decent but was based upon some proprietary structure activity calculations what was based upon what I would call unproven value. Since this was popular in theory our company did eventually buy an SGI Crimson, later we merged with another company that ran on 8 processor machine that was the size of a refrigerator, with programmers writing there own software. It was pretty bogus. But in the long run I did like the hardware. Most of the modeling software was used to create narratives about drug design accelerated by computation chemistry. We all knew these stories were made up after the fact to glorify some research projects. In the end I did like the hardware and bought my own SGI Indigo 2 that I still have running.

The company that I worked at was less than a mile away from SGI headquarters in Mountain View Calif. It was a modern building with Indigo color on it's exterior. I always wanted to tour that building but I didn't know anyone who worked there. It was a sad day when they closed down and Google started devouring all of the buildings to build their campus.

Did you ever make it over to the Magic Edge which was right around the corner and play the flight simulator? I used to go out to the SGI campus quite a few times before I moved to Cali from Illinois back in '99 right at the halcyon days of SGI. What I loved living in the bay area was how easy it was to find extremely cheap SGI hardware once Sun took their lunch and before they started to really tank. At one point I had something like 10 boxes but they were taking up way too much space so I started to shed them in the late 2000's. About 10 years got the bug again and now have 7 machines. There is something truly unique about SGI hardware, having owned Next, Apple and other vintage gear, the one that really caught me was Silicon Graphics.

[gmcenroe]

My first encounter with SGI computers was in biotech/pharma job that I had. We looked at a number of computational chemistry software products that did molecular modeling, protein visualization software, that was being sold for exorbitant yearly contract fees. Some of the software was so bad, that the software would crash after a few minutes. Some was decent but was based upon some proprietary structure activity calculations what was based upon what I would call unproven value. Since this was popular in theory our company did eventually buy an SGI Crimson, later we merged with another company that ran on 8 processor machine that was the size of a refrigerator, with programmers writing there own software. It was pretty bogus. But in the long run I did like the hardware. Most of the modeling software was used to create narratives about drug design accelerated by computation chemistry. We all knew these stories were made up after the fact to glorify some research projects. In the end I did like the hardware and bought my own SGI Indigo 2 that I still have running.

The company that I worked at was less than a mile away from SGI headquarters in Mountain View Calif. It was a modern building with Indigo color on it's exterior. I always wanted to tour that building but I didn't know anyone who worked there. It was a sad day when they closed down and Google started devouring all of the buildings to build their campus.

Did you ever make it over to the Magic Edge which was right around the corner and play the flight simulator? I used to go out to the SGI campus quite a few times before I moved to Cali from Illinois back in '99 right at the halcyon days of SGI. What I loved living in the bay area was how easy it was to find extremely cheap SGI hardware once Sun took their lunch and before they started to really tank. At one point I had something like 10 boxes but they were taking up way too much space so I started to shed them in the late 2000's. About 10 years got the bug again and now have 7 machines. There is something truly unique about SGI hardware, having owned Next, Apple and other vintage gear, the one that really caught me was Silicon Graphics.

No I never went to the Magic Edge. I didn't know about it. On another note, the biotech company I worked for in Mountain View was across the parking lot from the original Sun Microsystems building, when they were just in one building. SGI was definitely a class company until graphics cards for PC took their business model down.

[trixster]

My first SGI experience was at University in York where in 1997 the CompSci dept had rooms full of Indy workstations. That was very cool compared to my K6-200 Matrox Mystique and Voodoo 1 powered PC!