Ever wondered what a $30,000 computer looked like in the mid 90’s? Well, let me show you…
The above, in 1994, came with a 150Mhz R4400SC cpu, 24-bit XL graphics board, 64MB RAM, and 1GB SCSI2 HD for the low-low price of $22,995 (equivalent to $47,000 in 2023)…
Here’s Info World talking about it in January of ’94:
Mine has the late ’94 200Mhz R4400 and the 256MB ram option, making it the most powerful pizza box on the planet in early 1995, and a smidgeon over $30,000 new – or about $61,000 in 2023…
In 1996 I added the second 1GB SCSI2 HD to it.
The usual first question is “How did you afford that in 1995?”
The answer is I didn’t – the place I worked at bought it in the above spec for my use, and it was forgotten during the merger with Ingram Micro in 1996 – and it’s been banging around in my collection ever since.
Currently the power supply is on the fritz and needs to be replaced. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but SGI in their infinite wisdom decided that the power, reset, volume up/down, and speaker needed to be in the power supply, and the power supply needed to be spot welded together… So, in the above photo, see that second bundle of smaller wires coming out of the PSU and going under the power wires to the main board? That’s the aforementioned buttons and speaker connections.
Basically someone needs to re-engineer the entire power supply to build a replacement, and that’s not happened yet – so everyone with an Indy is looking for new old stock PSUs for them…
There’s a lot of old 90’s and 00’s data locked in this thing from when I used it as a desktop – someday I’ll get a working PSU and open this particular time capsule. 🙂
Listening to "Something Just Like This" by The Chainsmokers