• The Indy

    Introduction

    The Indy (codename “Guinness”) is a workstation officially released in 1993 to succeed the Indigo. Designed and marketed by Silicon Graphics, it represented for the firm the culmination of its efforts to establish itself on the publishing, CAD, or more simply multimedia market, at a time when these fields were already dominated by Apple.

    Sold as a “cheap” workstation, its excellent technical capabilities in 2D graphics, as well as equipment rare on the workstations of the time, such as digital and analog inputs/outputs and an S-Video input, or even unprecedented, such as a video camera (the famous IndyCam) and an ISDN adapter allowing videoconferencing, built its reputation.

    The machine comes in a desktop format (40.6 × 35.6 × 7.6 cm for a weight of 7 kg) and its pretty pastel blue case, sturdy and well designed, can support a good-sized CRT screen without showing the slightest sign of weakness.

    Hardware

    The Indy supports 4 types of 64-bit MIPS processors, on an IP24 motherboard integrating 8 memory slots each able to support 4 to 32 MB of 72-pin ECC SIMM RAM (i.e. a maximum of 256 MB of a very common type of RAM).

    ProcessorFrequencyL2 Cache
    R4000PC100 MHzNo
    R4000SC100 MHz1 MB
    R4400SC100 MHz1 MB
    ^150 MHz^
    ^175 MHz^
    ^200 MHz^
    R4600PC100 MHzNo
    ^133 MHz^
    R4600SC133 MHz512 KB
    R5000PC150 MHzNo
    R5000SC150 MHz512 KB
    ^180 MHz^

    There are only 3 types of video cards for this machine, which is little compared to other SGI systems, with an entry-level card supporting a palette of only 8-bit colours.

    NameCharacteristicsHW transformation
    Entry8-bit coloursNo
    XL2424-bit coloursNo
    XZ24-bit coloursYes

    The machine originally has only one hard drive in 50-pin SCSI format, as well as a (somewhat particular) floppy disk drive internally.

    As for the other main peripherals, it supports PS/2 keyboards/mice, the current PC standard, and has a 10 Mbit/s network interface in RJ45 format. Only the video output, in 13W3 format (usually), can be a problem when buying such a machine today, because it requires either a screen with a 13W3 input (if possible, an SGI screen, while we’re at it), or an adapter with a SOG-compatible screen (sync on green, see this site), which is not very hard to find either.

    Software

    Like all SGI systems of the time, the machine runs IRIX, SGI’s proprietary OS.

    Sold with IRIX 5.1, this machine can today take advantage of the last major version of IRIX, 6.5, provided you are lucky enough to carry out one of the last upgrades and not go too high in the minor versions (6.5.22 seems to work; an R5000 with the maximum of RAM is recommended).

    Otherwise, IRIX 6.2 runs very well on slightly weaker Indys (mine is one of them).

    Conclusion

    To conclude, it is a workstation of sturdy design with relatively capable, even innovative hardware (in the context of the time).

    A point rare enough at SGI to be worth mentioning, it stands out in its last versions (a Sony-brand power supply change in the most recent ones) for its silence, broken only by the noise of the hard drive.

    Despite a power that would make some people smile, it therefore remains very pleasant to use and lets you enjoy IRIX for a derisory purchase price (very good Indys can be found for 50-75 euros).

    For more information, I have made my sources available (all in English unfortunately).

    My Indy

    I own an Indy with an R4600SC 133 MHz processor, 64 MB of RAM and an Entry / XL8 graphics card.

    img_right
    It is therefore not a racing beast (I still have half of the RAM slots to fill), but it remains a nice configuration and very smooth under IRIX 6.2.

    nezetic 1# hinv -v
Iris Audio Processor: version A2 revision 4.1.0
1 133 MHZ IP22 Processor
FPU: MIPS R4600 Floating Point Coprocessor Revision: 2.0
CPU: MIPS R4600 Processor Chip Revision: 2.0
On-board serial ports: 2
On-board bi-directional parallel port
Data cache size: 16 Kbytes
Instruction cache size: 16 Kbytes
Secondary unified instruction/data cache size: 512 Kbytes on Processor 0
Main memory size: 64 Mbytes
Vino video: unit 0, revision 0, IndyCam not connected
Integral ISDN: Basic Rate Interface unit 0, revision 1.0
Integral Ethernet: ec0, version 1
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version WD33C93B, revision D
  Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI controller 0
Graphics board: Indy 8-bit

    User guide for the Indy

    Sources :
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Indy
    hardware.majix.org/computers/sgi.indy
    sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/hardware/machines/indy.php
    www.obsolyte.com/sgi_indy

    by Cédric TESSIER on