SGI Indy
This Silicon Graphics Indy is one of the jewels in my collection. It is in fantastic condition, and works well! I regularly fire up the Indy to mess with demos and such.
It’s a mid-range version of SGI’s cheapest workstation, but when a computer is almost 30 years old that kind of thing doesn’t matter so much.
Apparently the boot jingle (above) on my Indy plays a a bit slowly, and therefore lower pitched, compared to other Indys. I have no idea why, it’s very strange. I am unaware of it having any other eccentricities.
Specs
| CPU | MIPS R4400SC 150MHz |
| Mainboard | IP22 for Indy |
| GPU | ‘Newport’ XL24 |
| RAM | 128 MB |
| Storage | SCSI2SD V6 1.2GB SCSI Seagate ST31200N (usually disconnected) Floptical (usually disconnected, no disks) |
| OS | IRIX 6.5.22 IRIX 5.3 |
| PSU | Nidec |
| Other stuff | Indycam Official crappy microphone |
History of this unit
I obtained this Indy through Kijiji on March 6th, 2019 for $200 CAD. I bought it from somebody in the Plateau area of Montreal, and he told me that he used them for work when they were current. He kept this machine with the intent to get it working, but never did.
Unfortunately I don’t know anything else about what he did with them, and I have no evidence of who this Indy was originally sold to, though one day I might. While that is unfortunate, the lack of stickers or other identifiers means that it is a very clean unit.
This Indy was sold to me with no RAM, no floptical drive (or spare drive sled) and no accessories.
The seller was very excited about how this Indy came with a hard drive (he felt it increase the value). Unfortunately that drive is faulty, which is probably why he wasn’t able to make the machine work.
I have been unable to access or format the included 1.2GB HDD. I’ve kept it in case I can eventually do something about that (I’m curious if there is anything interesting on there). Luckily, I happened to have access to the exact same HDD: as far as I can tell the Seagate SGI31200N is simply a rebranded ST31200N.
Over the next few months I bought 64MB set of 4 SIMMs so I could test the system, then bought 4 more to get it up to 128MB. I also ordered a floptical drive, second drive sled and Indycam from Herb’s SGI and Sun equipment. I had access to various other SCSI equipment through a local hackerspace, so I was able to jigger up a CD drive to do an IRIX install.