The depth of your content is amazing. It's well-written, well-produced, and covers a wide range of genuinely fascinating topics in the computing space. Please, keep up the excellent work!
You might be interested in this report www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/1649635/sgi-advances-linux-hpc (if you haven’t seen it already) on an SGI presentation to a Linux user group back in 2010, showing off a 2048-core Altix UV supercomputer system. The fun thing is, he logs on live to the system via SSH, and uses regular Linux features (like displaying the contents of the /proc/cpuinfo kernel pseudofile and the output from the lspci command) to show how it’s just like a regular PC, only much, much bigger.
Awesome content. You did a great job of walking us through the history of such an iconic tech company. What a long slow fall. Excellent work explaining the details.
Very cool. Please follow up on the software side, including Alias Systems, i.e. Alias power animator, Alias power modeler, Wavefront Technologies and later Alias/Wavefront Maya
Bit of extra info to my posts below: back in 2011 I sold a Fuel to a guy who worked with Casey Leedom at SGI (Casey btw is on LinkedIn, but I decided never to ask him about the B2K, figured it would probably just bring back bad memories). He also said the B2K used PCIe. Wouldn't really be that surprising, it's not as if SGI wasn't heavily involved with all sorts of other cutting edge tech back then. The guy also said Casey's idea had included the notion of being able to connect multiple B2Ks together (something I'd originally expected Tezro would be able to do, but alas not, the other XIO2 port being just for DM3). The guy said he was at the management meeting when Casey brought up the B2K to ask what next; it was basically just brushed aside. Ian.
I think I found him on Facebook as well. He lived in the right area, looked about the right age, was publicly a member of a tech-related Facebook group, and seemed interested in cooking (as we know SGI's Casey Leedom was). I also decided not to ask, figuring that I didn't have enough time in the video to devote to a specialized segment on it. Maybe another video, but like you said maybe he doesn't want to talk about it. I don't suspect he would have a prototype (which I hear existed) or anything anyway, and likely everything is NDAed, which he likely wouldn't want to break (though, would HPE/GPHG even try to enforce that nowadays? not a lawyer). I probably should at some point try to do as much research on the B2K as possible though. Very rare to see such a deep insight into SGI, especially one so detailed. Heck, it was hard to even find photos of important SGI people (had to resort to often low-res images from the Wayback Machine's sgi.com. I did manage to get a picture of Belluzo speaking at a conference or something, with SGI logo on podium, which was in this series.
@@Dodoid Having had numerous conversations with Casey (though this was pre B2K, which I wasn't around to hear about), I'm sure I could confirm for you whether you've got the right person, if you still have any (links with) photos... but I just did a bit of searching, and failed to find the right one. He was a neat person, though. I hope he's doing well, wherever he is.
Hey there, sorry I didn't see this comment 7 years ago when you made it. Someone just pointed me at this video on your comment. The Banana 2000 (B2K) was called that because Bill Earl had proposed a similar idea earlier and called his proposal that. I think that his naming may have been based on the comic strip Bloom County and its "The Banana Jr. 6000 Computer". The basic idea that both Bill Earl and I were promoting was that SGI couldn't survive on high-end systems alone, and needed a low-end system to follow in the footsteps of the Indy, at a price point close to that of a high-end PC. I was proposing that I could do this for a $5K price-point, but because all of engineering at SGI was focused on high-end systems, they didn't think it was possible. I flogged the B2K for well over 2 years and had it fully implemented on a Sybyte 1250 development board. But, when it was obvious that the Executive Team was bound and determined to kill the company, I finally gave up my Sisyphean task and left in January 2003.
Oh, and I should point out that everything in the B2K was to be standards based. PCIe, Ethernet, USB, etc. The goal was to use whatever standard PC parts would make sense, including off-the-shelf graphics cards from whichever supplier made the most sense. Basically, it was going to be a MIPS-based "PC" which ran IRIX 6.5.
I'm not entirely sure it wasn't corporate espionage. (I don't know that it was, but... I dunno... there's something about how it all went down... Believe me, a lot of people inside the company weren't happy about it either.)
I have already followed your other videos on SGI. Very interesting. In the 90s SGI was an unattainable dream for me, and it still is today because a used and simple car like an O2 costs too much money (just to have one, imagine working). There is a lack of working software examples where possible and then, let me tell you, you speak too fast, to the point that I have to slow the video down to -.75%. If you go slightly slower I will follow you more willingly, thanks.
Made over many days, at different times of day, with a mic that I periodically moved over to access the keyboard and mouse, and no standard place for me to be sitting. Far more noticiable in this episode because it took so long to make that I was just more and less awake, more and less thirsty, etc across the entire production time.
You got to buy this Mac, it's the cutest desktop computer by far (all eras): Color Classic. Buy as many as you can find and afford. God bless, Proverbs 31
The depth of your content is amazing. It's well-written, well-produced, and covers a wide range of genuinely fascinating topics in the computing space. Please, keep up the excellent work!
You might be interested in this report www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/1649635/sgi-advances-linux-hpc (if you haven’t seen it already) on an SGI presentation to a Linux user group back in 2010, showing off a 2048-core Altix UV supercomputer system.
The fun thing is, he logs on live to the system via SSH, and uses regular Linux features (like displaying the contents of the /proc/cpuinfo kernel pseudofile and the output from the lspci command) to show how it’s just like a regular PC, only much, much bigger.
Awesome content. You did a great job of walking us through the history of such an iconic tech company. What a long slow fall. Excellent work explaining the details.
9:24 that Linux Networx box looks pretty wicked.
Very cool. Please follow up on the software side, including Alias Systems, i.e. Alias power animator, Alias power modeler, Wavefront Technologies and later Alias/Wavefront Maya
Bit of extra info to my posts below: back in 2011 I sold a Fuel to a guy who worked with Casey Leedom at SGI (Casey btw is on LinkedIn, but I decided never to ask him about the B2K, figured it would probably just bring back bad memories). He also said the B2K used PCIe. Wouldn't really be that surprising, it's not as if SGI wasn't heavily involved with all sorts of other cutting edge tech back then. The guy also said Casey's idea had included the notion of being able to connect multiple B2Ks together (something I'd originally expected Tezro would be able to do, but alas not, the other XIO2 port being just for DM3). The guy said he was at the management meeting when Casey brought up the B2K to ask what next; it was basically just brushed aside.
Ian.
I think I found him on Facebook as well. He lived in the right area, looked about the right age, was publicly a member of a tech-related Facebook group, and seemed interested in cooking (as we know SGI's Casey Leedom was). I also decided not to ask, figuring that I didn't have enough time in the video to devote to a specialized segment on it. Maybe another video, but like you said maybe he doesn't want to talk about it. I don't suspect he would have a prototype (which I hear existed) or anything anyway, and likely everything is NDAed, which he likely wouldn't want to break (though, would HPE/GPHG even try to enforce that nowadays? not a lawyer).
I probably should at some point try to do as much research on the B2K as possible though. Very rare to see such a deep insight into SGI, especially one so detailed. Heck, it was hard to even find photos of important SGI people (had to resort to often low-res images from the Wayback Machine's sgi.com. I did manage to get a picture of Belluzo speaking at a conference or something, with SGI logo on podium, which was in this series.
@@Dodoid Having had numerous conversations with Casey (though this was pre B2K, which I wasn't around to hear about), I'm sure I could confirm for you whether you've got the right person, if you still have any (links with) photos... but I just did a bit of searching, and failed to find the right one.
He was a neat person, though. I hope he's doing well, wherever he is.
Hey there, sorry I didn't see this comment 7 years ago when you made it. Someone just pointed me at this video on your comment.
The Banana 2000 (B2K) was called that because Bill Earl had proposed a similar idea earlier and called his proposal that. I think that his naming may have been based on the comic strip Bloom County and its "The Banana Jr. 6000 Computer".
The basic idea that both Bill Earl and I were promoting was that SGI couldn't survive on high-end systems alone, and needed a low-end system to follow in the footsteps of the Indy, at a price point close to that of a high-end PC. I was proposing that I could do this for a $5K price-point, but because all of engineering at SGI was focused on high-end systems, they didn't think it was possible.
I flogged the B2K for well over 2 years and had it fully implemented on a Sybyte 1250 development board. But, when it was obvious that the Executive Team was bound and determined to kill the company, I finally gave up my Sisyphean task and left in January 2003.
Oh, and I should point out that everything in the B2K was to be standards based. PCIe, Ethernet, USB, etc. The goal was to use whatever standard PC parts would make sense, including off-the-shelf graphics cards from whichever supplier made the most sense. Basically, it was going to be a MIPS-based "PC" which ran IRIX 6.5.
@@caseyleedom6771 YT just won't let me reply to your message, in my own thread! This is nuts. Three replies deleted so far.
Gah... SGI died when they decided to go with Intel and Linux. They committed suicide.
I'm not entirely sure it wasn't corporate espionage. (I don't know that it was, but... I dunno... there's something about how it all went down... Believe me, a lot of people inside the company weren't happy about it either.)
I have already followed your other videos on SGI. Very interesting.
In the 90s SGI was an unattainable dream for me, and it still is today because a used and simple car like an O2 costs too much money (just to have one, imagine working).
There is a lack of working software examples where possible and then, let me tell you, you speak too fast, to the point that I have to slow the video down to -.75%. If you go slightly slower I will follow you more willingly, thanks.
Neat stuff. But there are noticeable changes in level and timbre between different segments of your voiceover. Different microphone placements?
Made over many days, at different times of day, with a mic that I periodically moved over to access the keyboard and mouse, and no standard place for me to be sitting. Far more noticiable in this episode because it took so long to make that I was just more and less awake, more and less thirsty, etc across the entire production time.
Irix was a fail.
They should have concentrated on graphics and small markets.
You got to buy this Mac, it's the cutest desktop computer by far (all eras): Color Classic. Buy as many as you can find and afford.
God bless, Proverbs 31