Your first SGI encounter?

[Irinikus]

I first encountered an SGI O2 back in 2000, which was used for flying-related aptitude testing!

I never forgot the machine and acquired my first SGI in the form of an O2 back in 2012.

[JacquesT]

Irinikus, you may remember the SGI demonstration articulated truck that went round South Africa? I managed to get in the queue for a peep inside at the Durban Computex show around '94/'95 ish (can't remember exact year). They had some Indigo2 machines and a couple of desk sides of some variety sitting there showing flights demos and also the environment mapped powerflip demos. I was just blown away considering I'd just come out of the main hall where they were showing poxy 2D graphics cards and SX/DX early Pentium setups. It was like a wonder cave of the most delicious tech delight a teen could ever hope to see in the mid nineties. From that day forward I wanted one!

[thunderbird32]

First time I ever saw an SGI was at a Fermi Lab open house back in 1997 (when they had their huge one). Racks and racks of Indigos and Irises, as I recall. I was only 10 at the time, but that's what started me on my path to getting into this hobby at all.

[kikems]

Octane 1 , one year ago.

[praetor]

When I was about 10 or so, my grandparents worked at the University of Wyoming, and I spent the summer playing in their computer labs. One of the systems administrators and the Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science loved me (this was before they actually had a Computer Science department), and I got my very own login to UW's systems (which I had for years). I got to play with VAXen, DECs, but my mentor-friend is like "Wanna see something REALLY cool?" and he showed me an SGI Indy. It could do video! And Graphics! And it was UNIX! I heard so much about UNIX! I spent the entire summer solely playing with this SGI Indy. The Dean even taught me basic CAD so I could make my own 3D things on it. He even "printed" some of my models on the University's CAM equipment. It blew my 11 year old mind. That summer would start my lifelong obsession with SGIs, and buying my first used SGI - an Indigo R4K some years later. It was MY first machine that was not the families, But I have a soft spot for the Indy. It started my career into UNIX specialization which I still maintain to this day.

[Irinikus]

Irinikus, you may remember the SGI demonstration articulated truck that went round South Africa?

I heard about it form a friend, but never got to see it myself. (Pity, as it would probably have blown my mind at the time!)

[vishnu]

We, by which I mean those of us at my place of employ, all got Indigo2's plunked down on our desktops in 1992 to replace our PCs, which were running Anvil 1000, and our new CAD software on the I2s was Pro/ENGINEER. We ran Pro on SGI I2's and later Octanes, then switched to using Suns starting with the Ultra 60, up to the Blade 2500 (I still have one in my cube), to the Wintel crap we're now using. Reverse evolution...

[mrthinlysliced]

The graphics lab at University, 1993, a full set of Indys with granite monitors, mice, Indycams.

They were all the 8bit GFX cards but what a revelation at the time (my personal machine was an Amiga 500 with SAS C, took forever with swapping disks to compile anything).

Later that year I was allowed into the "big boys GFX lab" where they had some SGI racks - looking at the timelines these can't have been Origins - so I'm not sure what they were.

[jpstewart]

Later that year I was allowed into the "big boys GFX lab" where they had some SGI racks - looking at the timelines these can't have been Origins - so I'm not sure what they were.

They could have been Onyx racks or the older Power Series 4D racks. But, IMHO, any of the rack-sized graphics systems are interesting to see in action!

[Trippynet]

Mentioned before on Nekochan, but for me it would have been the mid 90s. I was 12-13 years old, my dad worked for the Virtual Reality centre at a UK university. During school holidays, he took me in one day. Coming from a world of beige PCs and Windows 95, I saw the developers room with half a dozen Indigo2 IMPACTs (plus 21" granite CRTs), then the Onyx 10000 rack that drove the triple projector setup in the VR auditorium. Coming from a world of basic PC graphics, seeing 3D worlds and models rendered across a doubly-curved screen that was maybe 6m x 2m in size was breathtaking.

A couple of years later, they upgraded to an Onyx 2 powering 7 projectors across a full hemisphere screen that wrapped right around where you were sitting - again, very impressive stuff!

This is probably one of the reasons why my favourite SGI is the Indigo2 (first one I saw). Although I got my 3 Indys and 2 O2s from this same university some years later, they were ex-machines from the student labs. I always wanted the Indigo2 because in my mind, they were the machines of the pros, whereas the Indys and O2s were just the "teaching machines"