From: olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson)
Subject: Re: Memory upgrades for R4000 Indigos
Organization:  Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 92 06:37:59 GMT

In <1992Jul26.045223.11600@news.nd.edu> root@sanger.chem.nd.edu (Doctor Math) writes:
| steve@europa.esd.sgi.com (Loopy - the spineless boy) writes:
| > It was definitely *NOT* our intent to ream the customer with custom SIMMS.
| > Even SGI's lowest cost machine designs refuse to make big sacrifices on
| > performance in order to cut the cost a little. No one here likes to design
| > mediocre machines.
| 
| I'm certainly not going to say that the machines are inferior from a
| technological standpoint. I am going to wonder about the sales folk, though.
| I have a fax from SGI quoting prices for machines. I want to get an R4000
| Indigo or a Crimson without a disk, RAM, or a monitor (we are retiring some
| elderly 4D/20s).  The cover page pointed out that the warranty would be
| void if ANY third-party stuff of ANY kind was installed. This is a little

Please let me know who sent this to you.  That is contrary to SGI
policy, as I understand it.  In fact, we license the Indigo memory
design to 3rd party vendors, and that would be sort of stupid if we
were going to claim that using such memory violated your warranty!

The support policy is that we will support systems with 3rd party
memory or disks, but if we think the problem lies with the 3rd party
product, we may ask you to remove it (or use an SGI part in its
place).

By the way, I don't know for sure if we are going to support diskless
for the r4k indigo (it is technically feasible certainly, but it is
more testing and a bit more development in an aggresive schedule).

| hard to swallow when SGI quotes $8000 for 16 MB of Crimson RAM that is less
| than 25% of that from a third-party. The cover page also pointed out that
| they don't think the 4D/20 disk will go into a Crimson or R4000 (probably
| physically true; I had an external box in mind.).

The 4D/20 disk *should* go into a crimson, but unless it is a fairly
late model 20, it seems sort of silly to use a slow small disk in
a fast machine.  5 1/4" disks will of course not fit in Indigo, but
should work externally.  My recollection is that our memory prices
for Crimson and r4k Indigo are actually getting pretty reasonable, at
a bit more than $100/Mbyte (still more than open market, but not
bad for a systems mfgr).  I don't have a price sheet, but I remember
commenting on this shortly after the most recent product announcements.

| Anyway, the quote ended up being for an R4000 Indigo with Entry graphics
| and a Crimson in Server configuration, which means no graphics board, no
| keyboard, and no mouse, but did include some RAM. It also mentioned that
| I would have to buy the extended warranty or PAY THEM OVER $800 to install
| the damn thing! What's so special about setting up a Crimson that I would

I have heard that SGI has always wanted to install ASD products, but
*all* ESD products (Indigo and r4k Indigo included) are supposed
to be customer installable, including upgrades.  I believe there was
an exception for the 4D/35 upgrade from the 20/25, because it was such
a pain, but that was it.

| be incapable? I have had no problem putting the audio upgrade in my 4D/35 or
| performing any of the other hardware fiddling that has been required;
| hardware used to be my JOB, but as far as SGI is concerned, I could be an
| absent-minded professor who just wants to use some software package for a
| thesis or some such thing.
| I'm steamed enough about these things to consider asking legal advice on
| whether SGI can impose these kinds of restrictions. If "the customer is
| always right", why won't they sell me what I want to buy, configured the
| way I want to buy it?

Again, I'd be very interested in who you got this from, as it sure
doesn't match my understanding of SGI policy!  (As always, I am not
an official SGI spokesperson, but I'm pretty confident of my understanding
of the support issue, having worked closely with the support folks.)
--
Let no one tell me that silence gives consent,  |   Dave Olson
because whoever is silent dissents.             |   Silicon Graphics, Inc.
    Maria Isabel Barreno                        |   olson@sgi.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi