[neilv]

Neat. One thing I've wondered about SGI workstations especially: have you noticed any eBay deals on SGI add-ons that were once prohibitively expensive, but now very affordable because they're obsolete to the kind of people who used them?

(I occasionally window-shop vintage Sun gear like this, but SGI seemed to have more exotic unobtanium artifacts.)

[jdboyd]

I noticed that someone with a bunch of O2 parts seems to have finally given up and started lower the prices. I've bought a new CD driver cover (they break notoriously easily) and a long coveted 300mhz CPU upgrade. I haven't gotten around to installing them yet though. I haven't used the machine in about 12-15 years.

I probably should be keeping an eye out for maxing out my Octane and Fuel as well now before it is really too late.

[sbaiddn]

You know, there's an after-market upgrade to 700 Mhz (and 4 Mb cache?) for lower speced O2 without using expensive SGI parts. Kinda hacky, but it seems to work.

If you google it you'll see what it is. I dont have an O2 so I dont remember the details.

EDIT:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/o2cpumod.html

[sbaiddn]

Depends why you want the machine. I doubt you want to re-live 90s TV editing, so all that stuff is out.

Full machines with graphics are expensive. Luckily I got my fuel for $200 back in '09. I scored a V12 from a broken machine at the time cheap.

Parts are generally cheap. At least for the Fuel, the community now knows which DELL or some other server parts are equivalent to the SGI branded ones (SATA or Gigabit cards) and a lot of stuff is useless (why care for a SCSI card?). RAM is cheap if you see this as largely a vanity thing.

Finally, if you're good at debugging X (Im not), an origin 300 is a great machine. I bought one but I have the fuel for X client (works great). If I understand the problem, around 2007-2008 something changed in X11 (Xorg??) that broke compatibility with the SGI for 3D graphics.

[hulitu]

As far as i remember SGI 3D stuff was based on PEX and xorg decided to drop this extension around that time.

[sbaiddn]

That's awesome! Thanks.