Adios, SGI

I have great memories of SGI Memoriessgi.  With their purchase today by Rackable, the company may be gone, but my fondness will always remain.  I worked for Silicon Graphics while earning my computer science degree, slinging demo boxes and configuring memory & graphics boards for the Systems Engineers.  When I got there, I was as green as it gets;  I will never forget the time I put a non-functioning $50,000 graphics board in to a machine and everybody told me it was going to come out of my pay — they had me going, I was sweating bullets :) .

The environment at the time was electric – people were having a fantastic time selling and supporting a brilliant product.  Times were good, and although I was around to see things begin to slide, I’ll never forget what it was like to be part of that team of people at the height of success.

My only real physical memento from that time is a screwdriver or two from the SGI graphics board upgrade kits.   That silly little screwdriver makes me smile anytime I have the occasion to put it to use.

So Adios SGI.  You were a shining star at a time of my life when such things could make lifelong impressions.

2 thoughts on “Adios, SGI

  1. Ah, I too have SGI memories. I was doing fractal rescaling in the 94-97 timeframe, as well as running a (very small) animation studio. I remember well being invited up for an early look at the (then) new and exciting Onyx and having the chance to “fly” it in the surround screen theater. What fun. We had a couple Indigos running Wavefront in the studio. I wanted one as my PC, but the animators guarded them and were scary : )

    • I actually own an O2 — bought it long after I worked at SGI, had to bring it from Toronto back to Calgary as carry-on luggage. It turns out that the little toasters weigh quite a lot ;)

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