[Trippynet]

The machine was probably very expensive and it's cheaper and easier to buy a new Fuel instead of replacing the machine. At work we still have a CNC machine that gets fed programs via a Mac Classic (circa 1990).

Same at my work. No SGI machines, but we have about 12 CNC machines driven from Windows 95 consoles. Cost of replacing the consoles and/or CNC machines would be huge, so we keep a pile of spare parts (especially old IDE hard drives) and the machines just keep trucking along with surprising reliability.

That's the problem with industrial systems where the main equipment has a far longer service life than the OS/computer that is powering it. CNC machines can last for decades if properly maintained. Hence most companies just keep these old control machines firewalled (or off the network completely) and keep them in service as they are. Far more cost effective to do.

[johnnym]

[...]
GEMS == GE Medical Systems

There appears to be a custom GIO card installed (or two), probably to interface equipment. Looks like only the IMPACT riser card was different. Plus the case, and probably the power supply.

---

The Rackmount Indigo2. This appears to have the GEMS midplane and the option cards with the big D-sub connector as well, so it might just be another form factor of the GE version:
[...]

Awesome, thanks for sharing.

Very beige...  

From the 5th image it looks like there's one additional GIO64 port and one additional port to provide power for GIO cards on this special backplane compared to a "standard" IMPACT capable backplane. I originally asked about the system board as I wondered how they could drive three additional GIO64 slots from the standard system board, but five GIO64 slots in total seems to be doable. A different placement of the PSU and drives and rotating the resulting case by 90 degrees could have resulted in a more cube like case. That could have been a nice link between Indigo and Octane.

And assuming that the PSU in the last image is a "standard" IMPACT capable PSU, these PSUs seem to have a lot of headroom if you think of supporting two Maximum IMPACT graphics cards in such a machine - if that was possible.

[jan-jaap]

[...]
GEMS == GE Medical Systems

There appears to be a custom GIO card installed (or two), probably to interface equipment. Looks like only the IMPACT riser card was different. Plus the case, and probably the power supply.

---

The Rackmount Indigo2. This appears to have the GEMS midplane and the option cards with the big D-sub connector as well, so it might just be another form factor of the GE version:
[...]

Awesome, thanks for sharing.

Very beige...  

From the 5th image it looks like there's one additional GIO64 port and one additional port to provide power for GIO cards on this special backplane compared to a "standard" IMPACT capable backplane. I originally asked about the system board as I wondered how they could drive three additional GIO64 slots from the standard system board, but five GIO64 slots in total seems to be doable. A different placement of the PSU and drives and rotating the resulting case by 90 degrees could have resulted in a more cube like case. That could have been a nice link between Indigo and Octane.

And assuming that the PSU in the last image is a "standard" IMPACT capable PSU, these PSUs seem to have a lot of headroom if you think of supporting two Maximum IMPACT graphics cards in such a machine - if that was possible.

These are photos I downloaded from a now-defunct site (schrotthal.de). They are from at least three different systems:

#1 - #4 are one system with the "mystery" card in bottom and top GIO slots, and what appears to be HighImpact graphics (single head).

#5 and # show the GIO side of another system with dual Solid Impact and an EISA (network?) card and several non-original slot cover brackets

Finally, the rackmount system has two of the "mystery" cards and High + Solid Impact graphics.

So, while this may have space for dual MaxImpact, with two of the seven slots taken by the 'mystery' cards there's room for at most a High + Max Impact configuration, and it seems from the photos that less than that was good enough too.