[mchartmann]

For me the first time was mid 90s at the Maui High Performance Computing center. The had and still have racks of SGI supercomputers and smaller systems depending on work needed to be done. I bought a couple Indigos and software at that time. From there bought Indigo 2s for my self and a Indy. Worked at Ford later and got a Octane. One of my favorites is original Indigo running 5.3 with a good chess game and some other demos that worked well despite the 33mhz cpu. :Octane: :Indigo: :O2: :Onyx: :Indigo2-IMP: :Indigo2: :Indy:

[matyas]

I was hoping to find Sound Designer for IRIX, but no success. Sound Designer was for Mac SEs and directly connected the E-Mu line of sampling keyboards via RS422. It allowed you to edit create your own samples/waveforms.

I remember Sound Desiger on Mac well. Used SDII on PowerMac to connect to a Kurzweil K2000 via SCSI ca 1996 in the electronic music studios in college. I don’t think there were any commercial sound editing apps like that for IRIX. Most people I knew of doing audio on IRIX were using open source apps of generally academic origin, some of which still exist (mostly on Linux or OSX). Snd was a reasonably popular program that came out of CCRMA at Stanford (the same lab that did the original research that led to the Yamaha DX7).

[BrainStorm]

Atari -> controller -> MooG

Das funny shit right thar  

I'll eventually get into this realm. I have some decent equipment either picked up or given to me from my mother (who actually can play a keyboard)

My stuff: 2x SIEL DK600, DK 700, SIEL MIDI Expander, Yamaha SY-35, Yamaha PSS-680, Mac Pismo w/ MIDI interface, some other crap... Plus mom's Madison and Yamaha 88 key boards, pretty sweet.

[VeKTeReX]

I was hoping to find Sound Designer for IRIX, but no success.  Sound Designer was for Mac SEs and directly connected the E-Mu line of sampling keyboards via RS422.  It allowed you to edit create your own samples/waveforms.

Did they actually sell an IRIX version of Sound Designer? I don't recall that. Spent many many hours in SDII on a Mac IIci.
FYI: the open source MIDI sequencer Rose Garden started on IRIX.
/KRM

[Intuition]

Same story I told at Nekochan.

I moved to Los Angeles to do computer animation/3d VFX etc. The o2 and Octane hadn't come out yet. I was using a program called Crystal Topas 3D.
It was decent for the early jobs when just having some text with a soft drop shadow was enough. Having anything 3D animation in 1995 was still considered pretty high end.

In 1996 I went to Siggraph in Los Angeles at the Staples Center. Siggraph was really something to behold back then. The big Softimage booths, Renderman/Pixar Booth, Alias/WAvefront Booth, and Silicon Graphics booths. I remember seeing the o2 and Octane and had just saved what I thought was a fat $12,000 from a few recent 3d jobs.

I met with the Silicon Graphics guys, played with Softimage, and they told me to meet them at their Olympic/Bundy office in Santa Monica.
Went there a week or so later. Can't remember which floor. They had a full on interactive experience where you check which software and which computer with which ram/cpus/hard drives etc.

They brought out donuts, coffee, etc.

When I was finished I was quoted like $22,000ish for Softimage and around $44,000ish for the computer.
I was hopelessly depressed. My measely $12,000 was able to get a decent early model o2 but then no Softimage. :(

I ended up buying into Lightwave 3D for like $1000-ish and got a top notch Intel computer.
Later that year the guys across the hall got an Octane and I was able to use it to mess with Softimage here and there.

Never really was able to use an SGI for a paying gig. My first Maya and Softimage gigs were on a PC later as well.
The o2 I bought in 2009 was a kind of retro gift to my younger self. The Octane I acquired last year from Fox was really the Octane I wanted back then.
It is snappy and runs really nice and is the proper SGI experience I was hoping for back in 1996.

It is pure pleasure making tutorials on them and using the IRIX OS. Getting to try Houdini on Irix was a big surprise as well as Alias in this last year.
Maya and Softimage were far more capable than I thought they would be after having run them through the paces trying to make them behave like modern software.

They still do very well considering it was on hardware/software that is 20ish years ago now.

[matyas]

Did they actually sell an IRIX version of Sound Designer? I don't recall that. Spent many many hours in SDII on a Mac IIci.
FYI: the open source MIDI sequencer Rose Garden started on IRIX.
/KRM

Not as far as I know. As I mentioned above, I might be wrong, but anyone who was doing audio on IRIX (and quite a few people were) was using open source tools of mostly academic origin or possibly in-house developed tools.

Steinberg's Nuendo was famously initially developed on IRIX and I believe demonstrated on that platform, but the first commercial release was for Windows NT. There used to be screenshots if Nuendo running on IRIX floating around the internet, but I'm pretty sure it was never offered for sale.

Having said that, I've been searching for a copy of Nuendo for IRIX for years, so if anyone happens to have one lying around, do tell!

[Trippynet]

Are there any good audio tools for IRIX around that people are aware of, other of course than Audacity and the built-in IRIX audio editing apps? I do quite a bit of audio work with Adobe Audition 1.5 on my PC (basically Cool Edit Pro in other words), but always struggled to find decent audio apps under IRIX.

[bjames]

Same story I told at Nekochan.

I moved to Los Angeles to do computer animation/3d VFX etc. The o2 and Octane hadn't come out yet. I was using a program called Crystal Topas 3D.
It was decent for the early jobs when just having some text with a soft drop shadow was enough. Having anything 3D animation in 1995 was still considered pretty high end.

In 1996 I went to Siggraph in Los Angeles at the Staples Center. Siggraph was really something to behold back then. The big Softimage booths, Renderman/Pixar Booth, Alias/WAvefront Booth, and Silicon Graphics booths. I remember seeing the o2 and Octane and had just saved what I thought was a fat $12,000 from a few recent 3d jobs.

I met with the Silicon Graphics guys, played with Softimage, and they told me to meet them at their Olympic/Bundy office in Santa Monica.
Went there a week or so later. Can't remember which floor. They had a full on interactive experience where you check which software and which computer with which ram/cpus/hard drives etc.

They brought out donuts, coffee, etc.

When I was finished I was quoted like $22,000ish for Softimage and around $44,000ish for the computer.
I was hopelessly depressed. My measely $12,000 was able to get a decent early model o2 but then no Softimage. :(

I ended up buying into Lightwave 3D for like $1000-ish and got a top notch Intel computer.
Later that year the guys across the hall got an Octane and I was able to use it to mess with Softimage here and there.

Never really was able to use an SGI for a paying gig. My first Maya and Softimage gigs were on a PC later as well.
The o2 I bought in 2009 was a kind of retro gift to my younger self. The Octane I acquired last year from Fox was really the Octane I wanted back then.
It is snappy and runs really nice and is the proper SGI experience I was hoping for back in 1996.

It is pure pleasure making tutorials on them and using the IRIX OS. Getting to try Houdini on Irix was a big surprise as well as Alias in this last year.
Maya and Softimage were far more capable than I thought they would be after having run them through the paces trying to make them behave like modern software.

They still do very well considering it was on hardware/software that is 20ish years ago now.

I remember reading this on Nekochan and reading it now still makes me laugh.  I know exactly how it feels, except I only had $5000 to buy an Indy because all the Indy ads in the catalyst magazine advertised the Indy for $4995.  I called the Sgi hotline from the magazine ad, and they told me the same thing.  I would need at least sped $12k and up.  The $4995 didn’t come with a monitor, no hard drive, no CD-rom and 16 or 32mb ram.  Basically a useless machine.  I was depressed and ended up painting my windows 3.1 desktop computer running 3d studio r2 blue as my personal version on an sgi... yes it was sad.

My first encounter where I was in the same room as an sgi was at a information fair in 1998 when one of the exhibitors had a 21” sgi granite monitor displaying some 3d images.  I could care less about what his company was about, but I had to compliment him on his choice of computer systems.  So he lifted the skirt that was covering the green octane under the desk the monitor was sitting on.  I was star struck.  I was talking to the guy who purchased it to do 3d scans of dinasour bones.  He said it requires 2 people to lift the machine and he said he spent $66k to purchase the machine.  Then I went home and painted my Intel mini tower green because I knew I would never see one of these again up close.

[matyas]

Are there any good audio tools for IRIX around that people are aware of, other of course than Audacity and the built-in IRIX audio editing apps? I do quite a bit of audio work with Adobe Audition 1.5 on my PC (basically Cool Edit Pro in other words), but always struggled to find decent audio apps under IRIX.

It depends upon what it is you're trying to do. If you mean of the modern graphical interface multichannel DAW type, basically no (as far as I'm aware.) Snd (https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/snd/snd/snd.html) ran under IRIX back in the day and may still do so. You could probably find an old version in any case.

In the 90s, IRIX was mostly used for low-level synthesis programming. This is an field of computer music unfamiliar to most people It basically involves using a programming language (or graphical programming environment) to process and synthesize sound. Popular modern examples include Max/MSP and SuperCollider. IRIX had CSound, pd, Cmix, Common Music, and a few others. CSound and pd still exist and are popular on other platforms, including Linux. I doubt current versions would compile under IRIX and I don't currently have an IRIX box to test it on, although I hope to acquire one so I can give it a try and hopefully get some useful stuff running.

[Cromaglious]

My first time I saw an SGI in person, is my current Indy machine. I was working at SBC Long distance in 99. I was a contractor working on the interm billing system. When I left they gifted me the Indy. I haven't run it in 15 years, it sits on top of the case with it's SGI 19 CRT monitor. I have 2 cameras and one extra power supply. I also have some R5K boards. Message me if you want anything.

Robi Akerley-McKee

Facebook messenger is best place to get ahold of me.