History of the SGI CommunityThe story of the Silicon Graphics (SGI) hobbyist community dates back to the early 2000s, with the personal website Nekochan.Net created by Neko no ko, an anime and retro-computing enthusiast. Over the next 17 years, Nekochan's forums and wiki attracted a substantial following, becoming the premier hobbyist community for the UNIX-based workstations, servers, and supercomputers produced by Silicon Graphics Incorporated. SGI was widely admired for its advanced graphics capabilities, unique design aesthetic, and engineering excellence, making its hardware highly desirable among hobbyists and collectors as machines entered the secondary market. The Nekochan community documented the many hardware and software peculiarities of SGI systems, making them accessible to hobbyists without commercial support. The site became the de facto reference guide for SGI users. Community members also created the Nekoware repository of third-party software for IRIX, SGI's UNIX operating system for MIPS-based hardware. Unfortunately, after nearly two decades, Neko no ko's participation waned, SGI's MIPS-based systems fell out of popularity, and the company ultimately entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy. By 2016, the active user base had shrunk considerably. Maintaining the self-hosted site became increasingly burdensome. On May 20th, 2018, Nekochan.Net abruptly disappeared from the Internet, citing European Union GDPR concerns, though the true reasons likely included maintenance challenges and community management issues. A lifeboat website, initially created in 2017 and now known as IRIX Network, became the new home for the SGI community and has served as the de facto replacement for the past eight years. Today, the SGI community remains small but dedicated. Despite occasional infighting, slow and patient progress continues, preserving the legacy of SGI systems and their unique culture. |