14 Feb. 2004: Build your own Silicon Graphics Refrigerator

Over the years I have had many questions from visitors asking if they could buy the SGI refrigerator or if I had any more of these huge cabinets lying around (yeah, sure, I keep two of them behind the couch and one under my bed for emergencies) because they wished to build there own. Well, look no further then the e-mail I received this morning from Jordan Zebor:

"First of all I wanna say that your transformation of the SGI into something useful is great. We actually have one of these sitting around that we are trying to get rid of. The machine is in San Diego so if anybody wanted to pick it up they could take it.

So, visit http://www.courchesneautismlab.org/sgi/ (To late! Read the next bit) and get in touch with Jordan and maybe one day you will own the most stylish piece of equipment since... well, since the Silicon Graphics Refrigerator I guess.

17 May 2004: We have a Winner!

My heart filled with joy when Jordan send an e-mail this morning telling me that some Geek-with-power-tools had actually driven to San Diego and picked up the DM. According to Jordan :

"It was so heavy trying to get it into the front seat of his car. When he drove off it looked like he couldn't shift at all.

Thanks again for helping me get rid of that old piece of ...uhh history."

I bet it was a Volkswagen.

29 June 2005: More SGI Fridge potential.

Opportunity knocked again when I received this email from Ronald Knol:

We have an old Silicon Graphics Onyx1 rackmount chassis here that we gutted, so it's completely empty and ready for a fridge. It has the blue (sgi Vault) doors on it, and black side skins and black back door.

It's just like the one in the picture on your website (behind the Challenge S).

We are going to throw it in the garbage, we need the storage space (and I don't have space for it at home).

Can you post this availability on your website? We will not ship it, whoever wants it needs to come pick it up from our office. Here is a URL for our location.

1 Dec. 2005: Tossed it.

Justin Ryan responded to Ronald Knol's offer:

"howdy matthijs!

I am interested in contacting the party in vancouver with an old sgi challenge server to pick up. there is a mapquest link, but no email.."

Unfortunately he was to late to save the poor machine because Justine send me another email saying:

"The guys in vancouver tossed the challenge a long time ago."

17 Sept. 2007: Ready to be friged...

Ronald Knol hasn't forgotten us. I received this email from him:

Hallo Matthijs,

Ready to be friged is an sgi Onyx1 rackmount server (not deskside) which actually is fully functional (InfiniteReality graphics, 8 CPUs, IRIX 6.5).

For fans of the Stargate SG-1 tv show, this is the machine that rendered all the Stargate 'puddles' for the last ten years and it provided our bread and butter for a good couple of years.

We purchased the system in 1995 with the Kodak Cineon software, the package (software and hardware) was close to $1,000,000 US...

It is available for pickup in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Appendix: Other People's Weird Hardware Projects

If you somehow enjoyed this site you might get a laugh out of

one of these useful, useless, weird, bizarre, sick or otherwise related websites.

Neatorama: Case Mod – The Ultimate List

My Other VAX is a VAXbar

VAXTap 2000 Pro

Espressigo - The SGI Espresso Machine

Unusual and rare SGI stuff at Jodeman's

rOctane - The SGI HiFi-Miniset

Iris Indigo Case Mod

Silicon Graphics mods at Nekochan.net

Numerous SGI Case Mods at obsolete.majix.org

SGI mods at SiliconBunny

SGI O2 conversion

Koelkasten.nl

Old SGI Fridge Guestbook