Silicon Graphics Incorporated, Octane desktop BSD and IRIX Unix desktop computer

[Lawsen]

Is anyone familiar with the SGI Octane computer?  I can get Gnumeric, mathematics speadsheet and Abi Word, a word processor to run on it.  I can get a HD15 pins monitor adapter to allow it to display on standard PC displays.  It has a standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse port, which that is widely still available.  What type of printer can I connect and print with this?

Here is the list of free software available for it:

http://freeware.sgi.com/index-by-alpha.html

I have found a place that supports my Octane in my bedroom.  The store is in the U.K.  The shop keeper is totally enthuastic about SGI products and SGI related products like the Nintendo 64, which was SGI based.  

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/

If other readers wants to restore an SGI, the SGI Depot in the U.K. can help.  Mines is an Octane 300 MHz with Abi Word, Gnumerics, and Hayden planetarium on screen.  It is slow, but does not feels slow at all, but as fast or faster compared with a big box store PCs, but I like using that more than my Pentium 4 or 1.8 GHz Core Duo.  The Octane in my room is 300 MHz, solo.  Most of my computers are solo core, because I am poor.  I never figured out, why some of my computers are solo core and lower clock rate, but runs as fast or faster by feeling than those multiple cores and faster bandwidth at big box stores at high prices.  I did wrote about an AMD Phenom 2 x6, but I cannot afford one.  Used SGI Octane is $247.00 USD in second hand surplus stores around the world.  It feels as fast; I do not know why.

Here is someone in the U.K. that likes collecting SGI computers:

http://hardware.majix.org/computers/sgi.octane/buyers-guide.shtml

I have surfed the SGI Depot and I will try the SGI Fuel someday.  It is better value than an Octane.  PCI and PC tower like brick red case are standard.  SGI Fuel is around 250 British Sterling Pounds. 

Lawsen

[joelby]

Any sort of PostScript printer would be your safest bet. A networked printer is generally slightly easier to get going.

[joelby]

I never figured out, why some of my computers are solo core and lower clock rate, but runs as fast or faster by feeling than those multiple cores and faster bandwidth at big box stores at high prices.

It's partly because different CPU architectures do things differently. Clock rate and cores alone are a fairly meaningless comparison between different architectures. You should be considering FLOPS and instructions per clock, and then other aspects such as memory bandwidth and cache size.

Similarly, the software makes a big difference. A computer running contemporary software is generally not 'slow', as it was designed and presumably optimised for the hardware at hand until it was useable.

If you were to try a CPU-intensive operation, you'd probably notice that it was a bit slow if you had some other frame of reference.

[shadowless]

Nekochan.net is the SGI collector forum. Probably can find more info and UK users there.

[_Sin]

I have an SGI Indigo2 hi-Impact. Haven't fired it up in a few years though (and I got rid of the monitor, which was a rebadged Sony with a special connector).

About 15 years ago these things were state of the art for 3D modelling/rendering. All our artists had Indigo2s, but only a few switched up to the Octane when it came out, because not long after that everything switched over to PCs, where graphics cards and CPUs were beginning to outstrip SGI by a considerable margin (at least on the desktop).

[amigo]

I used to have couple of Octane 2s and I still have an Indigo2 Max Impact, though seldom using it anymore. I also used to do 3D graphics for living, and run a fairly big 3D website back in the days.

You should be able to get CUPS for IRIX which technically allows printing to anything you can connect your SGI to. Using SAMBA you could probably connect to the network printers as well.

If it was up to me, SGI and IRIX should've been the most used desktop workstations and OS in the world, right after the Amiga and Workbench. Alas people sold out to Micro$oft and abandoned good solid platforms.