The Workstation Age

IRIS Indigo

An earlier SGI desktop graphics workstation.

MakerSilicon Graphics

Era1991–1993

TypeWorkstation

A COLLECTOR’S PERSPECTIVE
Amir Husain

The Indigo combines a compact tower enclosure with SGI’s Unix workstation environment. This general model record is separate from the inscribed Indigo Elan in the collection.

The collection also includes a contemporary recreation commissioned in metal. Its form follows the Indigo, but its purpose is different: to make the design legible again through material, proportion, and use. The build record moves from CAD studies and castings through machining to a finished enclosure running a modern IRIX-compatible installation.

The recreated machine contains four ARM boards arranged as a small cluster. A custom load-balancing layer presents applications on the main display while shared NFS storage keeps the nodes working from common data. Those details are part of the recreation’s interpretation; they are not original SGI hardware.

In an exchange preserved in the collection notes, Marc Andreessen described the Indigo as his favorite developer workstation and discussed using one while developing much of Netscape. That remark belongs to the machine’s cultural afterlife, while the photographs here document this collection’s own attempt to bring its character back into view. Collection note and exchange archive on X →

All photographs of this object

Purple SGI IRIS Indigo in the collection — IRIS Indigo, photographed in the collection.

SGI Indigo running IRIX — IRIS Indigo running IRIX at the command prompt.

Commissioned all-metal recreation of an SGI Indigo — A commissioned all-metal recreation of an IRIS Indigo, photographed after assembly.

All-metal Indigo recreation running IRIX on two displays — The recreation running IRIX, with a four-board ARM cluster inside and a pair of displays.

CAD model of the commissioned Indigo recreation — CAD study for the recreated enclosure.

Second CAD view of the commissioned Indigo recreation — Second CAD view, showing the enclosure geometry and venting.

Front CAD view of the commissioned Indigo recreation — Front CAD view of the recreation.

Cast-metal Indigo recreation components — Cast-metal components before final finishing.

Completed all-metal Indigo recreation — The completed metal recreation after finishing.

Open all-metal Indigo recreation showing internal computer boards — Open view of the completed recreation and its internal computer boards.

Interior of the all-metal Indigo recreation — Interior view of the recreation.

Technical record

IRIS Indigo

Maker	Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Line	IRIS Indigo, for Integrated Raster Imaging System
Architecture	MIPS RISC
Operating system	IRIX (Unix)
Historical note	Mosaic, the first widely used graphical web browser, was written on an SGI Indigo in 1993

Architecture

The machine that established the shape: a Unix workstation with hardware 3D that fitted beside a desk instead of under a raised floor. Its graphics run SGI's Geometry Engine pipeline, transforming and lighting in silicon while most workstations were still doing that arithmetic on the main processor. Every SGI desktop that followed is a refinement of the position this one took.

Record & provenance

The Indigo combines a compact tower enclosure with SGI’s Unix workstation environment. This general model record is separate from the inscribed Indigo Elan in the collection.

Reference: ATX-OBJ-SGI-IRIS-INDIGO

Source: collection inventory, photographs, and notes accompanying Serious Machines (Amir Husain, 2024).

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From Jurassic Park to Turok

The Indigo’s history reaches from Unix development to the movies. Spielberg’s inscribed Indigo Elan connects the collection to Amblin and Jurassic Park; the Turok Indy carries the story into Austin’s game studios. Hardware 3D gave artists new ways to make a world visible, then new ways for a player to enter it.