You can use it as an SSH terminal. :)

In grad school, I ended up borrowing an old teal Indigo2, with graphics upgrade, that my research group had sitting around, to use from my dorm room, mainly as a terminal.

(I owned almost nothing in the world at the time, not even a computer, having shed my possessions in a "Gattaca" kind of way, of not saving anything for the swim back from grad school. But an SGI Indigo2 is more than powerful enough to be an SSH terminal, and my electricity use wasn't metered. And, unlike the laptops I'd borrowed, no one would want the Indigo2 back.)

Getting IRIX installed involved multiple installation tapes (or was it CD-ROMs?) that some kind person in the lab happened to still have.

An admin later offered to give me this Indigo2 that I was borrowing, but they first needed me to bring it back in for inventory. Around then, I'd finally built (or was about to build) a Linux box, and hauling the Indigo2 and its huge CRT anywhere was a chore without a car, and I'd soon be graduating, and moving away lightly. So I carted the Indigo2 back across campus, and left it for good. Hopefully it ended up with someone who preserved it, as the author here does.

I worked vfx on teal Indigo2 at the time and then max impact purple one.. later on Octane, Octane2, etc.

BUT, this second generation of SGIs felt special. Ok a third gen, but the first one in beige boxes does not count. Crimson in gen before was also special.

Years later I was given a machine I worked on, since I'm in retro machines and game and all and to my disappointment it was the purple one, not teal (teal got lost somewhere). Now, imagine that since purple one is vastly superior to teal one, hah. Got indy along with it, webcam and all to be web ready!

I only skimmed through article for now, but is there a specific reason you haven't went with period-correct IRIX 5.x and went with 6? On a side note, SD2SCSI or similar to get rid of the spinning rust? And ultimate question, what do we all do with power supplies? They will die.

Really liked your post, the way you brought that old Indigo back to life was super fun to read. I totally agree that the magic is in seeing the machine actually run again, not just sitting on a shelf. For me, I’ve messed with a couple of old PCs before, but nothing as cool as an SGI box. Reading this makes me think I should try grabbing one if I ever spot it cheap. Thanks for sharing the journey—would love to see more pics of the messy steps too, not just the polished result. Feels like hanging out with a fellow retro nerd.

Interesting to see an old Unix box with EISA slots .. I would have thought that was "too PC".

Quite interesting read, like many on those days, I really looked up for SGI, and visited regularly their site due to them being the host for original C++ STL documentation.

Nothing beats the SGI desktop.

Will always have a soft spot for Indigo2 10k.