Yes. I regret it a little, but I worked in the industry having access to a lot of big software.
Piled up a bunker of Sgi machines, O2, Octane, Indigo, Indy, most very well equipped with the advanced memory and graphics options.
Alias, I-deas, Maya, Adobe, 3DS Max... Let's just say I could license most of that at will due to an error...
Learned a ton of high end skills that I benefit from today too. Great fun. And amazing demos. Putting those together was a total blast. People would get blown away using Showcase, the Sgi tools for video capture, audio, and Composer to mix, RIP, burn. This was mid 90's when most people were using Win 98, or maybe NT 3.5.1
Let's also say I got rid of said error (so don't ask) and gave the whole lot away to a 20 something me just itching for those same experiences. Those machines were well loved and used. Cool.
I needed a change away from that kind of computing as it went on the wane. Didn't want to look back.
But at the peak? I was very seriously productive on Irix. The Indigo Magic Desktop took everything I ever threw at it.
And one could flat out bury those machines with a heavy workload and still the UX was golden, responsive almost as if idle!
At one point, at some conference, the head scientist at Sgi said, "We turn compute problems into I/O problems."
How the machines performed showed that ethos off well, IMHO.
Honestly, today on say, Win 10, I can do all I did then on a laptop, but not enjoy it as much as I did that environment. It is responsive and fun!
Big software on Irix remains one of the peak computing experiences I have had. Damn good times.
I may have to put this on a Linux install and have some fun.
In my view, the Irix scheduler is insane good at balancing UX with workloads. It may not always be the peak possible throughput, but a skilled user can continue to blast through their tasks pretty much no matter what the OS load is.
On a lark, I got to try an extreme example of that:
Irix 5.3 on an Indigo Elan, 30Mhz CPU. I forget which one. I want to say R3k. (Check Ian's SGI Depot for more info)
I compiled "amp", which is an optimized mp3 player that formed the basis of many players after it was written.
At 30 Mhz, that Indigo Elan could play up to 192Mbps mp3 files, over NFS, while the desktop remained responsive.
At 256Mbps, CPU load was about 95 percent. Would glitch on occasion.
I found that quite impressive personally. I used that little Elan as a X terminal for a while and it was a pleasure to use.
...ah, Sgi.
Damn. Say what you want, their stuff was fun, had amazing docs, and got work done.
[Looks at Android / Win 10]
Meh.
That's part of why I scaled down. Unloaded that gear and went small, embedded retro for my fun computing. The work is easier today, and fine by me, because it is just work.
Piled up a bunker of Sgi machines, O2, Octane, Indigo, Indy, most very well equipped with the advanced memory and graphics options.
Alias, I-deas, Maya, Adobe, 3DS Max... Let's just say I could license most of that at will due to an error...
Learned a ton of high end skills that I benefit from today too. Great fun. And amazing demos. Putting those together was a total blast. People would get blown away using Showcase, the Sgi tools for video capture, audio, and Composer to mix, RIP, burn. This was mid 90's when most people were using Win 98, or maybe NT 3.5.1
Let's also say I got rid of said error (so don't ask) and gave the whole lot away to a 20 something me just itching for those same experiences. Those machines were well loved and used. Cool.
I needed a change away from that kind of computing as it went on the wane. Didn't want to look back.
But at the peak? I was very seriously productive on Irix. The Indigo Magic Desktop took everything I ever threw at it.
And one could flat out bury those machines with a heavy workload and still the UX was golden, responsive almost as if idle!
At one point, at some conference, the head scientist at Sgi said, "We turn compute problems into I/O problems."
How the machines performed showed that ethos off well, IMHO.
Honestly, today on say, Win 10, I can do all I did then on a laptop, but not enjoy it as much as I did that environment. It is responsive and fun!
Big software on Irix remains one of the peak computing experiences I have had. Damn good times.
I may have to put this on a Linux install and have some fun.
In my view, the Irix scheduler is insane good at balancing UX with workloads. It may not always be the peak possible throughput, but a skilled user can continue to blast through their tasks pretty much no matter what the OS load is.
On a lark, I got to try an extreme example of that:
Irix 5.3 on an Indigo Elan, 30Mhz CPU. I forget which one. I want to say R3k. (Check Ian's SGI Depot for more info)
I compiled "amp", which is an optimized mp3 player that formed the basis of many players after it was written.
At 30 Mhz, that Indigo Elan could play up to 192Mbps mp3 files, over NFS, while the desktop remained responsive.
At 256Mbps, CPU load was about 95 percent. Would glitch on occasion.
I found that quite impressive personally. I used that little Elan as a X terminal for a while and it was a pleasure to use.
...ah, Sgi.
Damn. Say what you want, their stuff was fun, had amazing docs, and got work done.
[Looks at Android / Win 10]
Meh.
That's part of why I scaled down. Unloaded that gear and went small, embedded retro for my fun computing. The work is easier today, and fine by me, because it is just work.