SGI Indy
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| Manufacturer | Silicon Graphics Incorporated |
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| Introduced | July 12, 1993 |
| Discontinued | June 30, 1997 |
| Processor | R4000, R4400, R4600 or R5000 |
| Frequency | 100 MHz |
| Memory | 16 or 32 MB (up to 256MB maximum) |
| Dimensions | 41 cm × 36 cm × 8 cm |
The Indy, code-named "Guinness", is a low-end workstation introduced on July 12, 1993. Developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI), it is the result of the company's attempt to obtain a share of the low-end computer-aided design (CAD), desktop publishing, and multimedia markets. It was discontinued on June 30, 1997 and support ended on December 31, 2011.
The Indy is one of the smaller form factors for the time (41 cm × 36 cm × 8 cm). The sturdy, electric-blue colored "pizza box" chassis is comparable to a small desktop PC from the same era, and is intended to fit underneath a large CRT monitor. It is the first computer to include a digital video camera, and is based upon a then-forward-looking architecture including an onboard ISDN adapter. Designed for multimedia use, the Indy includes analog and digital I/O, SCSI, and standard composite and S-Video inputs.
At the beginning of its production timeline, the Indy came with 16MB of RAM as standard. IRIX 5.1, the first operating system for the Indy, does not take full advantage of the hardware due to inadequate memory management. SGI realized this and soon increased the base specification to 32 MB, at considerable cost. Subsequent IRIX releases make huge improvements in memory usage. The latest release of IRIX available for the Indy workstations is 6.5.22.
One option for the Indy is a floptical drive. The floptical uses 21 MB disks, but is able to read and write standard magnetic floppies as well.
Indy's motherboard has a socket for the Processor Module (PM). Early Indys use a 100 MHz MIPS R4000PC microprocessor. The Indy, at the bottom of SGI's price list, was then upgraded with the MIPS R4400 and the low-cost, low-power-consumption Quantum Effect Devices (QED) R4600. The R4600 has higher integer performance, but lesser floating-point capability. The R4600 appears outside the Indy line just once, and only briefly, in the SGI Indigo². This series of microprocessor issues, along with the relatively low-powered graphics boards, lower maximum RAM amount, and relative lack of internal expansion ability compared to the SGI Indigo led to the Indy being pejoratively described amongst industry insiders as "An Indigo without the 'go'."
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