7 ms·

These things were so awesome back in the 90s. I got to use quite a few of them and even owned a couple in the early 2000s as they were being thrown away. It al

by hmsp 2y ago

These things were so awesome back in the 90s. I got to use quite a few of them and even owned a couple in the early 2000s as they were being thrown away. It always blew my mind that systems like SGI and SUN existed and yet somehow windows was allegedly cutting edge.

throwaway48540 2y ago
Windows NT - the OS to run on comparable computers - was cutting edge, and still is in many ways. Don't be fooled by the similarly named products made for 100x less powerful computers.
- IntelMiner 2y ago
  What computers that ran NT in the 90's were "100x more powerful" than UNIX workstations, exactly?
  - Clamchop 2y ago
    What I think they were saying was that NT and Unix workstations were peers (running on "comparable computers"), and that NT shouldn't be conflated with 9x ("similarly named products"), which had to run well on much more modest ("100x less powerful") hardware than the aforementioned.
    - throwaway48540 2y ago
      Indeed
- anthk 2y ago
  NT and intel didn't catch up SGI/Mips and Dec/Alpha until the Pentium III, and in the case of the Alpha, even the 800MHZ one was subpar against the Alpha.
  - throwaway48540 2y ago
    NT ran on DEC Alpha.
    - anthk 2y ago
      True; but software wise Linux and BSD curb-stomped anything NT could offer.
  - throwaway48540 2y ago
    And MIPS too.
fred_is_fred 2y ago
I’m not sure it was a much considered cutting edge rather it was considered cost effective. 99.99% of office workers did not need this kind of workstation, windows systems were cheaper and became ubiquitous.
- hmsp 2y ago
  Oh I agree. I mainly meant “to the general public” this (windows 98) was cutting edge. Almost no one even at the time knew what SGI was. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s even apples share was tiny. It just blew my mind then how horrible the experience of using windows was compared to Unix and that windows won. I had a job in 2001 running a bunch of computers: 1/3 windows, 1/3 Unix and 1/3 Mac - os9 mostly. The Unix and Mac just worked. The windows computers broke so often I set them all up to use SMB shares for user file storage. Since they were all the exact same dell systems and all had the same software on them anytime one broke I’d just boot a Linux CD and use “nc” and “dd” to rewrite a functioning disk image to the system in question and bring it right back up to usable. Then it was just a matter of logging in the right SMB shares and the user just thought I’d fixed their computer. It was a fun time.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    > Almost no one even at the time knew what SGI was. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s even apples share was tiny. It wasn’t even very convenient to read e-mails. GUI e—mail programs were not up to the Eudora level on those machines. And heaven forbid you needing a spreadsheet.
    - anthk 2y ago
      By 1999/2001 I think you already had Star office. And KDE1 for sure. But these were the very last years of the SGI machines.
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        Maybe, but I don’t remember IRIX binaries.
pipeline_peak 2y ago
Linux or Windows NT combined with gpu companies like Nvdia ate into everything that made SGI successful. As a geek, I miss exotic Unix hardware with their shapes, colors, and RISC chips. As a nerd, who needs that when AMD64 and Nvdia get the job done.
- hmsp 2y ago
  I once had a magical collection of chips from old Unix workstations - dec alphas and vax, dig and sun. I was responsible for cleaning out a large storage room of computers from the 70s-90s and I pulled all the processors I could because they were amazing objects to look at. I remember throwing out handfuls of ram chips measured in the KB and thinking how much each handful originally cost. I was like 19 when I did this and everything got lost to time in the end. It sure was a fun time as a Unix geek playing with all this old hardware. We had a dec box running netbsd that had an absurd uptime - like 12 years or something. Labs of Sunrays running off of 8 processor mainframes. SGI’s around the edges. But even then I was slowly replacing this stuff with Linux. There was just no competition and as much as I loved the legacy Unix stuff it wasn’t as nice or as easy to run as open source alternatives. I’m glad I got to play in that world though.
  - pipeline_peak 2y ago
    > I’m glad I got to play in that world though. What made it so exciting? Was it just the novelty aspect of having different flavors, architecture, and environments?
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      For me it was the diversity. Even though the machines themselves were similar, some did some things a lot better than the others. Some had ridiculously fast disk IO (the Suns, usually), some had silky smooth mouse movements (the SGIs), and so on. Also, there were the different GUIs - I loved Sun’s OpenWindows - and SGIs could use better font smoothing (but only NeXT was doing that back then).
- helpfulContrib 2y ago
pjmlp 2y ago
They were super expensive, and even if IrisGL was a great achievement, there are many ways to put pixels on the screen.

by hmsp 2y ago

throwaway48540 2y ago

Windows NT - the OS to run on comparable computers - was cutting edge, and still is in many ways. Don't be fooled by the similarly named products made for 100x less powerful computers.

IntelMiner 2y ago
What computers that ran NT in the 90's were "100x more powerful" than UNIX workstations, exactly?
- Clamchop 2y ago
  What I think they were saying was that NT and Unix workstations were peers (running on "comparable computers"), and that NT shouldn't be conflated with 9x ("similarly named products"), which had to run well on much more modest ("100x less powerful") hardware than the aforementioned.
  - throwaway48540 2y ago
    Indeed
anthk 2y ago
NT and intel didn't catch up SGI/Mips and Dec/Alpha until the Pentium III, and in the case of the Alpha, even the 800MHZ one was subpar against the Alpha.
- throwaway48540 2y ago
  NT ran on DEC Alpha.
  - anthk 2y ago
    True; but software wise Linux and BSD curb-stomped anything NT could offer.
- throwaway48540 2y ago
  And MIPS too.

fred_is_fred 2y ago

I’m not sure it was a much considered cutting edge rather it was considered cost effective. 99.99% of office workers did not need this kind of workstation, windows systems were cheaper and became ubiquitous.

hmsp 2y ago
Oh I agree. I mainly meant “to the general public” this (windows 98) was cutting edge. Almost no one even at the time knew what SGI was. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s even apples share was tiny. It just blew my mind then how horrible the experience of using windows was compared to Unix and that windows won. I had a job in 2001 running a bunch of computers: 1/3 windows, 1/3 Unix and 1/3 Mac - os9 mostly. The Unix and Mac just worked. The windows computers broke so often I set them all up to use SMB shares for user file storage. Since they were all the exact same dell systems and all had the same software on them anytime one broke I’d just boot a Linux CD and use “nc” and “dd” to rewrite a functioning disk image to the system in question and bring it right back up to usable. Then it was just a matter of logging in the right SMB shares and the user just thought I’d fixed their computer. It was a fun time.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > Almost no one even at the time knew what SGI was. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s even apples share was tiny. It wasn’t even very convenient to read e-mails. GUI e—mail programs were not up to the Eudora level on those machines. And heaven forbid you needing a spreadsheet.
  - anthk 2y ago
    By 1999/2001 I think you already had Star office. And KDE1 for sure. But these were the very last years of the SGI machines.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      Maybe, but I don’t remember IRIX binaries.

pipeline_peak 2y ago

Linux or Windows NT combined with gpu companies like Nvdia ate into everything that made SGI successful. As a geek, I miss exotic Unix hardware with their shapes, colors, and RISC chips. As a nerd, who needs that when AMD64 and Nvdia get the job done.

hmsp 2y ago
I once had a magical collection of chips from old Unix workstations - dec alphas and vax, dig and sun. I was responsible for cleaning out a large storage room of computers from the 70s-90s and I pulled all the processors I could because they were amazing objects to look at. I remember throwing out handfuls of ram chips measured in the KB and thinking how much each handful originally cost. I was like 19 when I did this and everything got lost to time in the end. It sure was a fun time as a Unix geek playing with all this old hardware. We had a dec box running netbsd that had an absurd uptime - like 12 years or something. Labs of Sunrays running off of 8 processor mainframes. SGI’s around the edges. But even then I was slowly replacing this stuff with Linux. There was just no competition and as much as I loved the legacy Unix stuff it wasn’t as nice or as easy to run as open source alternatives. I’m glad I got to play in that world though.
- pipeline_peak 2y ago
  > I’m glad I got to play in that world though. What made it so exciting? Was it just the novelty aspect of having different flavors, architecture, and environments?
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    For me it was the diversity. Even though the machines themselves were similar, some did some things a lot better than the others. Some had ridiculously fast disk IO (the Suns, usually), some had silky smooth mouse movements (the SGIs), and so on. Also, there were the different GUIs - I loved Sun’s OpenWindows - and SGIs could use better font smoothing (but only NeXT was doing that back then).
helpfulContrib 2y ago

pjmlp 2y ago

They were super expensive, and even if IrisGL was a great achievement, there are many ways to put pixels on the screen.