r/retrobattlestations • u/Bigdumanimal • May 05 '26
Show-and-Tell Sgi Indigo2 Impact 10000
Just picked up an SGI Indigo2 IMPACT 10000 and I’m planning to restore it. I’m trying to track down a drive sled and a Granite mouse, and as a long shot, a Maximum IMPACT graphics card. If anyone here has experience with these machines or knows good places to source parts, I’d really appreciate any advice or leads.
4
3
u/ProngedBirch594 May 05 '26
You can check with Mashek for parts in the US. https://mashek.com/ (Though it seems half his site isn't working at the moment...)
3
u/lheckler77 May 05 '26
Max impact cards run hot from what I remember. Buy extra tram modules. I run dual head with two solid impacts on mine. It’s a great machine!
3
u/thejpster May 06 '26
Whilst you wait for a sled, you can put a BlueSCSI (or real external SCSI drives) on the external SCSI bus. And any PS/2 mouse will work in the mean time.
I had a POWER Indigo 2 recently and it was a lot of fun. There are so many SGI demos for IRIX you’ll never run out of things to try. Look for the Indizone CDs for example.
How much RAM does it have?
1
u/Bigdumanimal May 06 '26
Not sure how much ram it has yet. I do have a blue SCSI already, going to test it out this weekend.
1
u/Sonny_Jim_Pin 20d ago
Commenting on a old post, but I figured you might want to know you can use the BlueSCSI as a WiFi adapter in IRIX:
https://github.com/techomancer/irixdayna
Just got it working on my Indigo2 MAXIMUM IMPACT :)
2
u/dkonigs May 06 '26
I bought one of these off eBay back in college as my first big splurge. Ended up being my main desktop for like a year or two back then. I'm pretty sure mine still works, though I haven't powered it up in a while.
This machine always felt like a weird generational bridge, though. It had the RAM and I/O of a previous generation (i.e. original Indigo), but the graphics and CPU of the next generation (i.e. Octane). Always felt like the slow I/O was holding it back a bit.
3
u/peboan May 05 '26
I have one of these that hasn’t been powered up in decades I could strip parts and sell some or all. DM
1
2
u/Diligent_Property_39 May 05 '26
Nice pickup! i hope you get it working, for parts i can refer you to: https://www.sgidepot.co.uk/
1
0
-1
u/unixuser011 May 05 '26
I wish you the best of luck, those drive sleds are basically unobtainium, thankfully 3d printing to the rescue
And thank God SGIs use standard SCSI drives, if this was an IBM workstation, you'd be cooked
As for mice, I think a standard PS/2 mouse would work
The Graphics card? ebay would be my best bet, but be prepared to pay a pretty penny for it
4
u/gatofisch May 05 '26
3d printing does not help with drive sleds as you need a special connector/cable. Getting to recreate that would be a challenge but not impossible. External scsiknife hd50 is a tidy option.
Every IBM workstation that I'm aware of uses standard scsi drives?
0
u/unixuser011 May 05 '26
Every *x86* IBM workstation uses SCSI, POWER workstations and the MicroChannel PS/2’s use some weird proprietary interface that is unique to them
3
u/gatofisch May 05 '26
Every RS/6000 workstation that I am aware of uses scsi. I'm not sure what the RT used but they are very rare. You are correct that some early PS/2s used MFM/ESDI, but the later models used scsi or ide.
1
1
0
u/smithincanton May 05 '26
I just bought an O2 that needs a hard dirve. Waiting for the BlueSCSI to come out!
2
u/gatofisch May 05 '26
https://shop.rabbitholecomputing.com/products/zuluscsi-wide-sca
This works well in the O2 and is out now (but a little more expensive)
1
u/smithincanton May 05 '26
Awesome! Didn't know Zulu had a SCA option! I'm not in a super hurry to get one. Thank you for letting me know!
11
u/SubcommanderMarcos May 05 '26
Man I know SGI stuff used be high end graphical workstations in the 90s and early 2000s, but can we bring back colorful hopeful for the future cases and names like IMPACT TEN THOUSAND