Skip to content(if available)orjump to list(if available)

This Old SGI: notes and memoirs on the Silicon Graphics 4D series (1996)

This Old SGI: notes and memoirs on the Silicon Graphics 4D series (1996)

1 comments

·August 3, 2025
Visit

fidotron

This is very timely for me, because I've just come into possession of a 4D/60 "buttons box" (which normally would go with the dials). It is quite unlike the later button boxes since it's a giant cheese wedge with the power supply integrated, which seems to be very rare as there's no reference to this on the net anywhere. It even has a display where when the unit powers on it says it's rev A. I'm hoping the DB-9 on it is RS232 and can be spoken to by a modern machine, but my one RS232 cable is the wrong gender, of course.

Many years ago I had an Indigo, and even 25 years ago that was an exercise in difficult interfacing with modern equipment. The monitor was amazing.

Edit to add: the notes here about 20A power requirements remind me of when a VR company I was consulting for hired a notable CTO from the VFX business and all he cared about was making sure there was enough electricity supplied to the office. That was in about 2015 and I remember thinking he was clearly scarred by previous events and was long out of date.