 | Convert an SGI Indigo/2 into a Celeron |
| January, 2003
I was the fortunate recipient of a bid on a pallette of used computer parts that my company was selling. I picked up two frame routers, 59 laptops (mostly 486's), a 24 port switch, and an SGI Indigo2 workstation.
Some specs on the Indigo2 from umn.edu:
The Indigo series was an high performance graphic station for industrial work. ILM (http://www.ilm.com/) used this station for many movies. It has a 100MHz R4400SC Processor, 128MB of SIMM RAM, integrated ethernet, etc. It was introduced in 1995 and retailed for about $32,000. It also weighed 40 pounds. As it turns out, it would have cost more to ship the thing than what I could have sold it for on ebay. So, I stripped out all the metal, sold the SIMM's, and let it sit for a few months. After New Years I finally got motivated. My idea was to move my PVR (Celeron 433, 20 gig drive, iuVCR recording the shows) from it's modified AT case (it's an ATX motherboard) into this case. Obviously, SGI hadn't planned for this, so everything was going to be custom. The first thing I did was to pull all the hardware out of the PVR. That way I could see how everything would fit and what the best layout would be. One big constraint was that I wanted the CDROM to line up where it was on the SGI. As it works out, I hit upon some amazing luck. It turns out that the height of the Slot1 processor, plus the height of the cdrom, is exactly the height of the SBLive PCI card, which is 1cm higher than the height of the SGI case! Additionally, the power supply butts up against the Slot1 when the motherboard is against the other side of the SGI case! So, everything fits EXACTLY. All the components are mounted to the case via screws. I added two cooling fans on the back (which is open). One points directly at the processor, and one points over the cards and eventually over the hard drive. The hard drive is mounted at the top of the case, and has vent slots right above it, so it should stay fairly cool. I found that working with plastic is really really nice! The last case I modded was metal, and it was arduous to produce. The plastic, on the other hand, could be easily trimmed and shaped. (pictures are chronological)
Also check out Rob Hensel's Octane mod page. |
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