SGI name lives on after $42.5 million sale to Rackable Systems
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted May 12th 2009 10:33AM
posted May 12th 2009 10:33AM
As you know, Rackable Systems was originally hoping to acquire the one-time king of the 3D set for $25 million (with some speculating that even that was a bit much), but it looks like the bankruptcy judges had other plans. Now that the dust has settled (and a check has been cut for almost twice the original asking price) it looks like the two companies will finally merge, forming an outfit called... SGI. The newly minted Silicon Graphics International hopes to combine the strong server business of Rackable with the original Silicon Graphics Inc. name (and overseas service contracts), inspiring the same sort of technological alchemy that once brought the iconic brand to the silver screen by way of such fine cinematic fare as First Kid. In addition, SGI plans continued development and support for the existing Silicon Graphics and Rackable product lines. Quite frankly, we really don't care what they do, as long as they bring back the Indigo -- back in the day we would have killed for one of those bad boys.
So get thee to eBay, plenty of cheap Indigos, Indys, Origins and all sorts of SGI kit. Relive your cool-UNIX-hardware-envy youth on a budget!
SGI was the first stock I ever traded, early 90s. Using Prodigy for online trading ! Made $400 in a month. Thought I was set for life with easy money. I was wrong !
Rackable friendly SGI logo: http://www.rackable.com/
For me it was the Octane
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SgiOctane.jpg
Friggin sweet aquamarine cube. If I could find one on ebay for cheap enough, i'd gut it and use the case for a serious workstation.
hm...
SGI always did crazy stuff. First the O2, first Unix box with an internal CDROM drive, amazingly innovative. The the Indigo2, the amount of hell I went through try to get a 100Mb NIC to function in one of those, ouch. Then there was the Octane, you couldn't even put the CDROM on top of it, let alone in it, because it was curved. Don't even think about adding another NIC, like we did with Sun's, HP's, etc, get yourself a $1,500 card cage first, then pay a bloody fortune for an SGI NIC.
I grabbed an sgi 320 and converted it to standard atx.
ohhh how I wanted a 320 so badly in highschool when I began playing with 3ds max r2.5.... but that $5k+ pricetag was beyond me.
not anymore!! ;) good ol 320 running my CNC machine
The single thing I remember about visiting that Disney place, in Orlando that I can't remember the name of, was playing with an O2 workstation. I was so impressed I almost bought one on eBay, until I realized it was so underpowered compared to my Mac that I wouldn't be able to use it.
Still, I almost bought one simply because they are so freaking cool. Like NeXT Cube cool.
How did the $25M sale turn into a $42.5M sale?
Also, sgi has used lowercase letters for their name for years now.
End of an era....
I used to work on an SGI Indy, followed by the Octane and a PII Visual Workstation 320.
All us UNIX guys used to taunt the beige box crowd with our stylish SGI boxes...
Maybe they can pick up Intergraph and they'll have the "used to be the coolest" hardware market segment cornered.
And wow on the price explosion, I sure hope they know what they're doing spending that much extra dinero to get this dinosaur.
I remember seeing the Onyx in a computing mag for the first time. That looked the sh*t, and it had a screen in the middle of the case too. Yeah. Bad boy.
Tried to nick a couple of Octanes last year from a television studio closing down. They were meant to call me when they were clearing the room they were in out (like they did with every other room), but forgot and they went in the skip. Bahs.
It looks like Rackable will be re-issuing the original SGI cube logo... sweet. Now we can watch Lost In Space and the whole "SGI - saving the planet..." thing is still relevant!
I'm glad they stuck with sgi, I always thought "Rackable Systems" was a stupid name.
I got to play around on an Indigo 2 when I was in my college animation class. I remember it had 32MB (yes, MB), which was RIDICULOUS at the time. My own computer had 4MB and I was saving up for months to be able to afford an upgrade to 8MB, which was about $300. A computer having 32MB of RAM at that time would be like a computer having 16GB or 32GB of RAM now (and being able to use all of it!). I don't think there was a DOS-based PC in the world back then that could even accept 32MB of RAM. (My PC topped out at 12MB.)
I also remember the first time I used Irix, and thinking "Jesus, this is what Windows wishes it could be when it grows up". Windows 3.1 was still the current version and it looked and worked like an absolute toy compared to Irix.
What amazes me is what these machines were capable of - movie special effects, engineering design work, etc - but now you couldn't even write a text email in Windows with the same computational power. That's screwed up.
yall want one, i have one in my gradge im not using.
wow, my phone sucks for commenting on engadget. It made me sound all Texan, uneducated, and illiterate.
I meant to say, do you all want one, I have one in my garage I'm not using
I wanted one before, when I thought you were just a dumb Texas hick that I could take advantage of. Like the proverbial little old lady trying to sell her dead husband's mint condition '57 Corvette for a reasonable price, like around $500 or so. Now that I know you're just some fast-talkin' city folk, the deal's off.
I had several of these. We called them the Barney boxes.
I have 13 O2's and a newly found indigo 2. Now all i need is to find a use for all of them :p
Ahh... the SGI Indigo2. Back in my college days, they were at the top of the industry and had to be kept under tight security with no more than six people in the room at any time.
I now keep an R10K 195MHz / 4MB Max Impact setup under my bed at night as a continual source of inspiration.
heres my tribute to SGI http://design-crit.com/blog/2006/06/02/sgi-down-for-the-count/
I was sysadmin for 2 Challenge XLs, 3-4 Ls and a bunch of Ms (they were named for T-shirt sizes). It took 3 DLTs in parallel 20+ hours to back up the db.Those were the days
Hey! I remember helping do the photo shoot for that pic! I still have a box of sgi t-shirts somewhere in the garage.
In highschool, me and a few friends in a media class got our awesome teach to write a grant for an SGI machine. Can't remember the model name, but it used dual Xeons at the time and had awesome graphics.
Back in the early 90's I was working on a 3D project for school and had a choice between using a Chrimson (I think) and a....Pixar box!!!! I chose the SGI machine because I liked the look of it....yeesh. This was before Jobs bought them I think. If I had done my work on a Pixar box, I would be living a different life right now.
I need a beer.