SGI's $250,000 Graphics Supercomputer from 1993 - Silicon Graphics Onyx RealityEngine²

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amatecha · 2020-01 · Recommendation

Fun vid that might bring back some memories :) [VIDEO] "SGI's $250,000 Graphics Supercomputer from 1993 - Silicon Graphics Onyx RealityEngine²"

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latchkey · 2024-04 · Reference

Back in 1993, I was in college and working for the extended education department running their all their computer infrastructure. One day, someone wheeled this approx. 3x3 foot sized box to my door and asked me if I wanted it. It was a SGI Onyx with a giant monitor sitting on top, with a keyboard and mouse. I plugged it in and it sounded like an airplane taking off. It immediately heated up my entire tiny office. It was the 4th Unix I had ever played with (Ultrix, NeXT and A/UX were previous ones). It had some cool games on it, but beyond that, at the time, I had no use for it because A/UX on my Quadra950, was so much more fun to play with. I don't even think I ever opened it up to look at it. I don't know what I was thinking. lol. After realizing it did not have much going for it, I ended up just turning it on when the office was cold and using it as a foot rest. Oh yea, found a video... [VIDEO]

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pkphilip · 2020-07 · Reference

SGI is Silicon Graphics - they were the pioneers in 3D animation especially for the movies, research etc. Jurassic Park was entirely rendered in SGI workstations. These workstations were incredibly powerful and extremely expensive (think > $250,000 for the higher end gear in the 1990s) but pretty amazing. Also, for the time it had very advanced user interfaces. SGI Irix was the name of the OS which ran on these machines. [VIDEO]

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