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SGI Indy

R

ratfink

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2011
Messages
52
Location
UK
Just gathering dust at the moment [well actually I've wrapped it in clingfilm...], spec as far as I recall:

8 bit graphics
80mb ram [upgradeable to 256mb I believe]
R4600 100mhz cpu
small hard drive [2gb?] with irix 5.2 or 5.3, may need re-installing
empty floppy drive bay
case is faded and has some blemishes, a few minor parts have cracked off [plastic is getting old]
indycam in working order

Think that's about it. Nice small flat system for having a go with sgi/Irix stuff, fits under a monitor, believe it's strong enough to hold a 21" crt on top. Has a smaller volume than any later sgi as I recall.

Uses PS/2 mouse and keyboard. I found it worked on my kvm with PCs for keyboard and monitor [but you need a 13w3/vga adapter, you may need a compatible monitor and the 13w3 adapter for sgi's apparently differs from that for sun's]. I had issues with the mouse on a kvm so connected one direct to the sgi.

Super cool bootup chime, makes apples look shy and retiring.

I also have a beige sgi keyboard [apparently these are pretty decent - it's grubby and I haven't got round to cleaning it off] and I bought NEW a 13w3/vga adapter at great expense [was £25 or some such].

There's a small pile of sgi CD's to go with it, looks like it includes the original Irix install cd [even a couple of copies], some indizone cd's and a few others. Also some manuals though these seem to relate to an earlier sgi model (!).

Price: £90 for the whole lot, £65 without the 13w3/vga adapter, £50 without the 13w3/vga adapter or keyboard. Postage and packing on top of course.

Located in York, UK. Postage abroad is probably prohibitive. Using something like parcel2go in the UK is probably not too bad but happy to deliver if you are reasonably close.
 
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IRIX 6.2 should also run on the Indy, if you have access to a copy. My Indy (which hasn't been used for quite a while - can you believe I lost the key to the anti-noise box I keep it in!) runs 6.2, I had SGI support at the time and could upgrade to 6.2.

-Tor
 
ratfink said:
Just gathering dust at the moment [well actually I've wrapped it in clingfilm...], spec as far as I recall:

8 bit graphics
80mb ram [upgradeable to 256mb I believe]
R4600 100mhz cpu
small hard drive [2gb?] with irix 5.2 or 5.3, may need re-installing
empty floppy drive bay
case is faded and has some blemishes, a few minor parts have cracked off [plastic is getting old]
indycam in working order

Think that's about it. Nice small flat system for having a go with sgi/Irix stuff, fits under a monitor, believe it's strong enough to hold a 21" crt on top. Has a smaller volume than any later sgi as I recall.

Uses PS/2 mouse and keyboard. I found it worked on my kvm with PCs for keyboard and monitor [but you need a 13w3/vga adapter, you may need a compatible monitor and the 13w3 adapter for sgi's apparently differs from that for sun's]. I had issues with the mouse on a kvm so connected one direct to the sgi.

Super cool bootup chime, makes apples look shy and retiring.

I also have a beige sgi keyboard [apparently these are pretty decent - it's grubby and I haven't got round to cleaning it off] and I bought NEW a 13w3/vga adapter at great expense [was £25 or some such].

There's a small pile of sgi CD's to go with it, looks like it includes the original Irix install cd [even a couple of copies], some indizone cd's and a few others. Also some manuals though these seem to relate to an earlier sgi model (!).

Price: £95 for the whole lot, £70 without the 13w3/vga adapter, £60 without the keyboard. Postage and packing on top of course.

Located in York, UK. Postage abroad is probably prohibitive. Using something like parcel2go in the UK is probably not too bad but happy to deliver if you are reasonably close or somewhere I might travel to for other reasons.
Click to expand...

I do love this machine! What is the color of yours? Blue? I have some very good software for Indy Systems, even games! And yes, it can hold a 21" monitor, have seen one like that for years... sadly I don't have a Indy. Good luck!
 
You can of course upgrade it, but I think's it better to see this as a cheap way of having a go with sgi mips-based hardware and irix. I'm not sure any mips-based sgi is up to much these days for home users compared to modern mac's and pc's, and the Indy is an old one, circa mid-90s, so it's around early pentium performance [maybe pentium 2 with one of the faster cpu's installed].
 
The reason I upgraded mine from IRIX 5.x to IRIX 6.x (now that it was mentioned, I think it was really 6.5.x and not 6.2 I upgraded to - I think that .x was 12m) was that, in addition to an OS that feels quite a bit nicer, it's much easier to find or build *nix software for 6.5 than 5.x. Even 6.2 is much better that way than 5.x. The performance of the Indy after the upgrade didn't suffer either, so that won't be a problem (if anything it's even better).
These days I like to keep all my software under version control, and I like to use computers for building software so I look at what I can do w.r.t. tools. So I would want to run Git version control, and that's much easier on 6.x (particularly 6.5) than 5.x, where it would be severely crippled.

And it's still MIPS with IRIX, whether it's 5.x, 6.2 or 6.5 :)

(And I need to find the key to the anti-noise box so that I can get access to my Indy again!)

EDIT: The OP's post said that the HD was just 2gb (GB)? That would be unusually small. I don't remember the size of the disk in my Indy, but I'm sure it's somewhat larger. Must be, otherwise I couldn't have installed all the stuff (including the OS upgrade) that I did. I really must get that Indy out and have a look though..

-Tor
 
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