27 Dec
2001
27 Dec
'01
1:54 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Tothwolf [mailto:tothwolf@concentric.net]
On Wed, 26 Dec 2001, Christopher Smith wrote:
Well, on one
hand, yes, but on the other hand, I like my
Indigo 2 Elan with
> no texture memory just fine. I'm also considering trying I didn't know you had another SGI box ;)
Yep.
A couple people I've known who ended up with old
SGI gear thought they
were going to create some kind of fancy animations with this kind of
hardware, so I never know what to think now.
Depends on what you mean by "fancy animations." It will probably do better
out of the box than most new peesees depending on what you'd like to
animate. (and whether it requires texture memory, of course) Both of my
SGIs, for instance, have analog video in/out, which is a start. On the
other hand, you can't really do a good animation with anything "out of the
box." It usually takes a lot of strange stuff.
The graphical prowess of the machines is still something, though. For
instance, the ability of the machine to provide individual color-maps for
different windows on the screen, without the nasty palette-flashing that's
seen in xfree86 on an intel box (for example) when you try the same...
Sounds like you at least have an original VGX chassis
then.
It is possible
someone upgraded some of the boards, but the only way you'll
be able to
tell is to pull them and cross reference the part numbers.
I'm thinking about doing that. The label on top of the chassis actually
says "4D/440 VGX" or something to that effect.
Regards,
Chris
Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL
/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl
Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'
27 Dec
27 Dec
2:24 a.m.
-----Original
Message-----
From: Tothwolf [mailto:tothwolf@concentric.net]
On Wed, 26 Dec 2001, Christopher Smith wrote:
Well, on
one hand, yes, but on the other hand, I like my
Indigo 2 Elan with
> no texture memory just fine. I'm also considering trying I didn't know you had another SGI box ;)
Yep.
A couple people I've known who ended up with
old SGI gear thought they
were going to create some kind of fancy animations with this kind of
hardware, so I never know what to think now.
Depends on what you mean by "fancy animations." It will probably do better
out of the box than most new peesees depending on what you'd like to
animate. (and whether it requires texture memory, of course) Both of my
SGIs, for instance, have analog video in/out, which is a start. On the
other hand, you can't really do a good animation with anything "out of the
box." It usually takes a lot of strange stuff.
28 Dec
28 Dec
2:39 a.m.
At 09:24 AM 12/27/2001 -0700, Mark Green wrote:
What Mark is saying is that there's at least two different kinds of
rendering, and people sometimes chose SGIs for one reason but
not the necessarily the other. One, you might like to have
fast processors and hardware acceleration of textured polygons
for the real-time view of your 3D data. Example users would
include military simulation, virtual reality, flight simulators, etc.
The second group, 3D computer animators making special effects
and movies, they not only need the real-time stuff during
the modeling stage, but they also appreciated the raw horsepower
when it came to rendering, which is usually a purely software-based
operation.
Thus today you'll see places like Pixar with immense rendering farms
of headless machines with no video graphics hardware, as well
as very whizzy workstations for modeling and composing the 3D scenes.
Not long ago, though, distributed rendering wasn't commonplace,
and an animator might've been forced to buy additional full
workstations or ones with light graphics power for batch rendering.
If you pick up an old SGI box, if you were extremely lucky
you might get an old animation package that does the modeling
and the rendering. They were usually keyed to the SGI box's
unique CPU ID. You might get the CDs but no key, and you're
out of luck.
I must remind the younger folks out there that as recently
as less than ten years ago, you'd see animators taking out
six-figure loans to buy the SGI and software they needed to
run their shop, for just one or two animators. :-)
On the other hand, SGI distributed lots and lots of source
code and demos, and had a few unkeyed applications that may
run on the box you got if you get the CDs. These include
real-time interactive demos and apps. They'd give away
these annual "Hot Mix" CDs at trade shows by the stack.
I have a bunch I should eBay someday.
Given that SGI Indy boxes are going for less than $100 these
days, if you ever had an itch to see what they were all about,
you no longer have any excuses.
- John
>
-----Original Message-----
> From: Tothwolf [mailto:tothwolf@concentric.net]
Both of my
SGIs, for instance, have analog video in/out,
which is a start. On the
other hand, you can't really do a good animation with anything "out of the
box." It usually takes a lot of strange stuff.
What it really takes is software. Most computer animation is a batch
process, you run a renderer for hours, days, months, etc. I run two
rendering farms at work, neither of which have a single graphics card
on them. All the texture mapping and similar visual effects is done
in software, no need for graphics hardware. 
29 Dec
29 Dec
3:13 a.m.
New subject: DEC: Checked but not Mated.
Sorry about the absurd title.
I have a DecMate-III that I never checked out until Yesterday.
The parts are easy to get: standard Dec monitor and kbd.
It POST's OK to an enhanced text "Decmate" screen. period.
Sooo..
Where can I find RX50/images for O/S of same? (OS278?
or some such). Anybody have CP/M for it? Anybody know
a way to hack into the auto-test or do I need a diskette for
that too?
John A.
not too many Q's I hope.
11 Mar
11 Mar
6:10 a.m.
New subject: DEC: Checked but not Mated.
John,
I think I promised to send you some boot disks for the DecMate-III but
never had time to make them. Is that correct? Do you still need them?
On another note, I believe that you expressed an interest in the Pro-350
and Pro-380 that Allison Parent was giving away. Is that correct? I
picked them both up today and was able to get the Pro-380 to boot POS
but the Pro-350 won't boot. Allison says it has Venix installed but I
just get a picture of a diskette when I try to boot it which suggests to
me that it can't find an operating system on the RD-51. Do you have any
interest in the Pro-350 in this condition? Do you have any idea what
might be wrong with it? The two octal numbers displayed on the screen
are 010377/177776 with the 01 in the first number highlighted and the
entire second number highlighted. Does that mean anything to you?
Thanks,
David Betz
dbetz(a)xlisper.mv.com
On Saturday, December 29, 2001, at 12:13 PM, John Allain wrote:
Sorry about the absurd title.
I have a DecMate-III that I never checked out until Yesterday.
The parts are easy to get: standard Dec monitor and kbd.
It POST's OK to an enhanced text "Decmate" screen. period.
Sooo..
Where can I find RX50/images for O/S of same? (OS278?
or some such). Anybody have CP/M for it? Anybody know
a way to hack into the auto-test or do I need a diskette for
that too?
John A.
not too many Q's I hope.
6:58 a.m.
New subject: DEC: Checked but not Mated.
Sorry. This was supposed to be a private message.
8322
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5 comments
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participants (5)
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allain＠panix.com -
csmith＠amdocs.com -
dbetz＠xlisper.mv.com -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
mark＠cs.ualberta.ca