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vga256@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net (2026-09-01 11:02:23)
my gods. the O2 POSTed.

backstory: 4 years ago i picked up this SGI O2 from a mechanical engineer in a neighbouring city. he had owned it since the late 90s, and used it for a couple of years as a desktop machine at his business. when they switched to Wintel desktops a few years later, it went into a storage room for two decades.

when i brought it home, it was completely dead. no LED lights, no fan turning, no response at all. sgi forums suggested replacing the Dallas real-time clock chip, which I did, to no effect. others suggested toggling a power-on jumper on the mainboard, which i did, to no effect. i toggled the jumper back to its default.

many forum posters warned about O2's that were fried by people removing the mainboard while the power cord was connected. with all of its behaviour, this certainly seemed to be the case here.

i pulled the power supply, and inspected the pins. one side was bent slightly due to someone jamming in the power supply at an angle. i bent it back into shape, and reinstalled it, to no effect.

that was 4 years ago. i gave up on the machine, and was satisfied to some day use it as a parts machine.

today, on a hunch, i pulled it out and started fiddling. i realized that after i had fixed the bent power supply pins years ago, i hadn't tried the power-supply-jumper toggle trick....

.... and the damned thing fired up. i can't believe it. now i have an OS i've never played with before, and an architecture i've never even seen before to play with.

fwiw: this is one damned loud desktop.

#sgi #retroComputing
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