SGI O2

I’ve been looking for an SGI machine for a long long time and there is it, the mighty SGI O2!

Background on the machine

This machine came from a Facebook Marketplace listing. I had to go to Montreal (2 hours and a half drive) in order to get my paws on it. The last owner told me this machine was located in a cinema school, mostly used for video montage. The machine came with a huge operation manual for the “EFFECT” software. Recently, I managed to install a fresh copy of Irix 6.5.22 on my O2! It wasn’t a simple affair, as I did not have any prior experience with Irix or SGI hardware. To add to the challenge, I was using a Raspberry Pi 4 into a USB4VC module in order to convert my USB mouse/keyboard as PS2 peripherals. I just got a newer Raspberry pi 5 in order to run “Reanimator” but! Reanimator wasn’t supporting the RPI5. I manage to fetch the firmware officially published by the Raspberry Pi foundation and paste all files in the boot partition of the SD Card. To my surprise, it worked! With that much progress, I was able to launch FX in ARCS (ARCS is the similar to openfirmware, it’s the ‘BIOS’ for SGI machines). FX is a partitionning tool. SO I knew I was able to load and execute MIPS code from the rapsberry pi, but running the installer was more challenging.

Specs

SGI O2 extensive guide