Nothing else could do the job at the time (in this price segment, at least).Īs for the CPU speed - Like the R4000, the R4400 internal pipeline ran at a higher rate (internal multiplier): And I was right on that, as it turned out. It was very impressive, a huge step up from anything else, and the sheer performance and memory bandwidth of the thing was one big reason I argued for getting an SGI Challenge for a later technical project. But I watched what the guys were doing with it. Played with the various graphics demos, mostly. All dumped.īack to the Onyx - when it came out in 1993 I had some access to one, I worked in the same computer room for weeks at the time on an off. And a Fuel.Īt work we had a bunch of Origin servers as well. Smaller is more manageable of course - I have a number of O2, O2+, Indy computers and an Octane.
I could have put the rack in my basement, but I'm not young anymore and it wouldn't be that many years before it would be a headache to get it out. As in: I could have it if I wanted it, I used it for years but it had to go when it was obsoleted.
I personally decided to dump a Challenge (basically an Onyx without the Reality Engine graphics: ). Would love to get one and play with them.Ī lot of them (probably the vast majority) simply got dumped, alas. > I wonder where all those machines ended up. That auction hall looked like a 'revenge of the nerds' casting call. IIRC it eventually went for a few thousand. Then some other people started bidding, I got over excited and bid along up to a thousand euros or so and then I came to my senses and gave up. As mentioned I didn't know anything about IRIX or any non-free Unix basically, nor did I have money or a place to put such a machine, but I just shouted out '250 euros!' and the auctioneer looked relieved that at least someone was going to take this thing off his hands. Everybody was sort of looking at each other with shifty eyes, waiting for someone else to make a move. Most of the stuff sold quite quickly, then when the Onyx went up, nobody wanted to bid. Complete with smell from the remaining functioning animal stables on the rest of the farm (which was still an actual functioning farm). It was a massive auction, ranging from pallets full of backup tapes to stuff like this fridge size Onyx (looking at the Onyx wikipedia page, maybe it was actually two Onyx's in a rack, like the image for Onyx 2? Or maybe it actually was an Onyx 2? I didn't know anything about theses things, just that they looked cool, and they were legendary among us first wave Linux adopters, which most 'real Unix' folk at the time still looked down on).Īnyway there was so much stuff to be sold, that the normal auction house didn't have enough storage, so they had to move to an actual (disused) pig sty in the same village.
Apparently, this guy had dressed up as an Army general, gone to all sorts of companies in the first dot com boom, and gotten them to deliver all sorts of 'samples' to a fake dropoff point which he then sold on. I once (2001) almost bought an Onyx at an auction where the ill-gotten stock (rather, what was left of it) of a con man who had managed to swindle a lot of computer companies out of all sorts of gear was sold.