OBRIEN@LL.ARPA (05/24/86)
I'd appreciate any help anyone could give me on configuring
hardware & software for the following system:
Several friends of mine are working on a grant which involves,
among other things, putting 3D animation onto videotape on a low
budget (i.e., well below VAX scale). The graphics board picked for
this is one of the new AT&T TARGA boards, with 512x512x32 resolution.
It's made to run on a PC/AT. This particular board was picked for
its price/performance ratio, and the rest of the system has to be
configured around it (so no 68000 machines, unfortunately).
The rest of the video part of the hardware is pretty well worked
out: they're getting Sony BVU-800 or 5800/50 decks (the 800 is
supposed to be higher quality & more durable, but is more expensive
-- anyone have any experience with either?), an EECO editor, and
either a Lyon-Lamb animation controller or another one (whose name I
forget) that fits on a board inside the PC.
Now they need to pick the machine that runs the TARGA board. It
must:
1) Be PC/AT compatible (enough to run the board correctly)
2) Run at at _least_ 8MHz
3) Have a floating point coprocessor (80287)
4) Have many megabytes of RAM (at least 2, 4 preferred, 8 great)
5) Have a hard disk of at least 80 MB
6) Communicate with a Mac+ (used as a front end)
As you can see, the more souped-up the PC, the better, as long as
it still runs the graphics board OK.
The software requirements are as follows:
Since MS-DOS has problems with addressing large amounts of memory
in any kind of sane fashion, they plan to use UNIX(tm) or some other
*IX. What experience have people had with various UNIX-like systems
running on an AT (clone)? Will they (the systems, not the people ;-)
recognize the hard disk/RAM/coprocessor additions above?
Along with the OS, they need various tools like editors,
compilers, etc. What compilers (Pascal/C/Modula2 family) are
available for the *IX world? How compatible are _they_ with the
hardware requirements above (esp. coprocessor & huge address space)?
If they choose C, they'll need lint or somesuch (large project).
Any other software recommendations?
Please send responses (or questions) directly to me & I'll
summarize them for everyone else if appropriate.
Thanks for your time, whoever you are.
-- Tom O'Brien
arpa: obrien@LL