SGI Octane 2 Workstation

I bought this Octane 2 workstation long after they had been end-of-lined by Silicon Graphics, in fact it was well into the stage that they were only producing Intel/x86 systems; the heyday of their high-end MIPS workstations such as the Octane and Indigo being long forgotten.

The system was bought with the following specification:

• Single R12000 400MHz CPU
• 2GB RAM
• 18GB SCSI HDD
• Odyssey VPro V6 graphics option (32MB RAM, full 3D acceleration)

The system was advertised as being in first class condition - and indeed it was… before it was shipped. As is the case with many of these machines, they are very heavy, much heavier than a regular PC tower. Sadly when it arrived it had not been protected properly and the front, hinged door panel was absolutely smashed to dozens of splinters. It should have looked like this:

Instead, being in so many pieces, my poor Octane has spent all of its life with me looking like this:

Around 2008 I picked up a couple of upgrade parts for the Octane:

• Dual R12000 400MHz CPU module
• 73GB SCSI HDD
• Odyssey VPro V8 graphics option (128MB RAM, full 3D acceleration)

Around 2010 the Octane went in to storage, as did many other items. It finally got set up again more than 10 years later.

After connecting it up I turned it on and….

…it worked absolutely perfectly the first time. Booted straight to the login screen, my old account still worked and it fired right up.

What an awesome piece of kit.