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The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

(www.abortretry.fail)
346 points BirAdam | 7 comments | 05 Apr 24 16:42 UTC | HN request time: 1.651s | source | bottom
1. ChrisMarshallNY ◴[05 Apr 24 17:04 UTC] No.39944707[source]▶
I remember having a Personal Iris, at the company I worked at, and, later, an Indigo. We never used them. I think they were really there, to impress the visitors (They were in our showroom).

I remember the colors as being very different, from the photos, though.

The Personal Iris was a deep purplish-brown, and the Indigo was ... indigo.

Jim Clark sounds like my kinda guy. I made a hash of my teenage years, and barely squeaked in, with a GED, myself. It has all worked out, OK, in the end, though.

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2. randomdata ◴[05 Apr 24 17:41 UTC] No.39945083[source]▶
> We never used them.

When I was in high school we had a lab full of SGI machines. They also never got used. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of computing equipment, and probably that much again in software licenses (at the commercial rate), just sitting there doing nothing. It was heartbreaking.

On a happy note, the SGI bus (a semi-trailer full of SGI machines demoing their capabilities) came to school one time. As a teenage nerd, getting to play with a refrigerator-sized Onyx2 was a good day.

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3. mrpippy ◴[05 Apr 24 18:37 UTC] No.39945582[source]▶
My goodness, at a high school? Like Indys, or O2s? Was this a private school?
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4. randomdata ◴[05 Apr 24 18:51 UTC] No.39945743{3}[source]▶
They were O2s. Rural public school.

There were all kinds of toys, though. There was a dedicated classroom setup for video-based remote learning some 30 years before COVID - that got used for one semester, from what I gather (was never used while I was there). The school was even host to a dialup ISP at one point.

The administrators were all in on technology. The teachers, not so much...

Eventually, in my last year, the government changed the funding model and the party ended.

5. fuzztester ◴[05 Apr 24 21:06 UTC] No.39947219[source]▶
>The Personal Iris was a deep purplish-brown, and the Indigo was ... indigo.

Nice.

I once worked at a startup that had a Cobalt Qube in the server room, and the Cobalt was ... cobalt blue.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cobalt_Qube_3_Front.jpg

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube

6. selimthegrim ◴[07 Apr 24 00:27 UTC] No.39956990[source]▶
Every time I get depressed about being at Tulane I think about Jim Clark.
7. fuzztester ◴[07 Apr 24 01:16 UTC] No.39957263[source]▶
>The Personal Iris was a deep purplish-brown

>Personal

>Iris

Must have been the color of their lover's eyes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_(given_name)