[jupo]

When I was a kid, my mom had a programming job at one of the major oil companies working with the geophysicists who were developing tools for the exploration division to figure out where to drill. I remember getting to visit in the early '90s and seeing row after row of cubicles with teal Indigo2's and granite Trinitrons and thinking, is this what all workplaces are like? I occasionally got to sit at one, logged into the demo account, and play with the flight simulator or just goof off with the 3d demos. I probably spent an hour just watching different screensavers. There was one weekend that I got to play on a demonstration Onyx2 that was on loan from SGI for the team to evaluate - she just dropped me off in the server room with it while she worked in her office down the hall for hours.

Starting in 1995, I got a chance to use one for real, though not quite as fancy. My mom was unexpectedly expecting and asked the company to let her work part-time from home. They set her up with a 33.6k modem and an R3k Indigo that had long since been retired from service but would still let her use Netscape for email, work on programming projects, kick off compile jobs on the servers, and sorta kinda remotely run X programs when absolutely necessary. As with all the workstations at the office, the Indigo was left on 24/7, and I was allowed to create my own account and even proxy through the corporate firewall using Lynx. After she wasn't using it much anymore, I could pretty much do whatever I wanted, so I learned system administration and network configuration to dial up to our personal ISP and discovered the world of open source software. I spent so many summer days and school nights compiling gcc and Apache and ImageMagick and GIMP and MUDs and MUSHes... and then hosting ad-hoc servers off our static IP dialup.

I went off to college two years later and my life moved on in different directions, and after a while the company said the Indigo needed to be returned for salvage, so my mom dropped it off. The last time I got to use an SGI was about 20 years ago. Well, with one exception: When I started working in the OR in 2005, there was a system we used in for intraoperative brain navigation that had an SGI at its core. Funny enough, it was exactly the same kind of visualizations the geophysicists were doing, but with grey matter instead of rock layers. Of course, these were x86 systems, and those were replaced with off-the-shelf Linux boxes in vendor's next iteration a few years later.

[Irinikus]

I happened to be doing some flying in the Langebaan area this week, where our central flying school is located, so Today before I left for Pretoria, I paid the Central Flying School a visit and took some pics of the retired dual-cockpit CPT (Cockpit Procedural Trainer) for what was known at the time that I did my Ab initio flying training as a Pilatus Astra (Now known as the PC-7 MKII).

When I was a student back in 2003, this system was still operational and was powered by an SGI Onyx Infinite Reality system (This was one of my first encounters with Silicon Graphics in the work place). Before it was retired, the Onyx was unfortunately replaced by a server containing P4 processors, hence I've just taken some pics of the CPT, The operators console (which is just as it was when the Onyx was in place) and the interface system.









All of the single cockpit CPT's were powered by Indigo2 IMPACT systems.

The new CPT's are far better systems, but unfortunately they don't contain any SGI hardware! :(

[s0ke]

My first gig out of school in 1997 was providing entry level OS support for SGI (installing software, issuing licenses..etc). My workstation at work was an Indy, but I was able to procure an Indigo for myself to tinker with at home.

[oneogeo]

Long story short

Going back to the early 90s, I was a pioneer in 3D visuals and animation on Autodesk 3D Studio and also bothered with VRML.

Don't remember how in particular, but I was made aware of the capabilities and performance of SGIs - probably through TV and around the Hollywood block busters back in those days. One other encounter, not necessarily with regards to SGI but my area of interest going forward with SGI, was the appearance and the virtual musical performance in 3D space of Jaron Lanier at the Ars Electronica. This punk had and still has a major influence on me.

Visiting the local IT fair Orbit in Basle, Switzerland, 94, 95, I got to see, feel and touch the latest SGI workstations and the RealityEngine (I think, the Infinite only came out in 96). I was petrified, so impressed of speed, capabilities and ease of use compared to the what and how I was doing it with 3D studio... I immediately got myself a new Indy from SGI Switzerland directly (SGIs were also manufactured in Switzerland) while my friends got themselves nice cars for the same amount I spent, and had a jump start with their love live :-D

I used my first Indy for lots of "serious fun" and to mention one use case on the side... converting analog videos captured during the Street Parade in Zurich to upload them to the Internet (using 9.6 and eventually 14.4 modems) in addition to the live streams of 3 PTZ cameras that were controlled by the site visitors from home - the ones that had Internet :-D.

This was my first encounter and certainly not my last. Ever since I provide a "safe house" for SGIs. As of today I have a significant collection of numerous Indy, O2, Indigo2, VWS320, Octane, Tezro, Origin 2000, 1600sw in all shapes and colors, and I have them shipped to Switzerland from all over Europe. In addition, I also have a large collection of historic Apple units, Commodore, Sun, HP, NeXT and many more.

Every now and then I do exhibitions and participate in the Vintage Computer Festival in Zurich. My SGI collection is a sort of nerd magnet… sometimes I feel like I should have been collecting stilettos and boots :-D to attract the other audience.

It may leave the impression, but I don't consider myself a nerd... well, just like every psycho doesn't see a psycho in himself. Instead I am very sociable and down to earth with quite some other interests apart from tech. Yet SGI is serious fun for me.

[Gamefan]

I was first introduced to SGI machines when I was attending Cogswell Polytechnical College back in 2001. There were some Indy's and one Octane for a 3D Animation course I was attending.

I then saw an Octane 2 at my next college, Silicon Valley College back in 2003.

Those were the days!

[jkdsteve]

In the mid-90s when I was working at IBM, we had SGI Indy and one other machine I don't recall for integration testing and customer issue investigation.

I never got to play with them so my first real experience you might say was when I bought an Octane on eBAY a few weeks ago..I've since bought two more to mix and match parts and looking for a Fuel or 350/Tezro rack already. This is as addictive as Amiga.

[Shiunbird]

Not really SGIs, but my first contact with UNIX workstations was at the Military School. I was 12 and we had the chance to visit many military facilities.

We got the chance to visit the Air Control Centre (CINDACTA). In Brazil, the military runs both civil and military traffic from the same building, but separated rooms. We had access only to the civilian part.
They had more desks than people operating them. All desks had workstations and this was to ensure the chance of maintenance downtime. I bet it didn't happen often, though. Certifying air traffic control systems must be a pain.

The room was dark and full of Sun's with amazing HUGE CRTs, so crisp, running the radar screens. I'd never seen such thing before (at home, I had an IBM 2238 monitor).

One year later, they brought some of the equipment over to school for some exhibition and we got the chance to play with it - they had the radar application running with some dummy data and wow - really. I wish I could recall the name of the application.

[vishnu]

My first job out of school was at AT&T, which way back then we used their 3B series workstations. Later I jumped ship to what is now BAE Systems, where they were in the process of switching CAD systems from Anvil on PCs to Pro/ENGINEER on Indigo 2s. I still run Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2 on my SGI workstations at home, but at work we got rid of the last of our SGIs 9 or 10 years ago. We unloaded them to a recycler that was not a reseller, so unfortunately all those thousand or so Indy2s, Octanes and Octane2s were melted down.

[CGFX.us]

University. I walked into a room at one point and was amazed to find a bunch of Indigo2 Extremes and an Onyx RE2 deskside inside what I would later learn was being called the AVS Lab. I got to play with the town on the Onyx before deciding I really wanted one of these systems.

I was later told by a friend I'd never be able to afford one, but a couple of years after that I was able to purchase an R4000 Indigo and upgrade it to Elan gfx. My first 3D software was LightWave 3D 4.0 for it.

[waynefj40]

First job out of high school. 3d modeler at Viewpoint Datalabs in Utah. Used Indy's and Indigo 2's for creating models for huge dataset catalog. Eventually moved on to PCs, but I always had an affinity for SGI. Playing multiplayer doom with IndyCams was living in the future. Also got to staff the company booth at Siggraph. Unforgettable first job experience.

(90's sense of humor just hit different)