[geeks] This Litle Green Monster...

[Joshua Boyd]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:17:54AM -0500, Kevin wrote:
> I tried to run my Perception on an Alpha PS500au under NT 4.0 with
> little success.  Although i haven't tried again since i found out how
> to force SRM to allow unknown PCI devices..... i think i've found a
> Sunday afternoon activity.

It was supposed to be doable.  I don't know of anyone personally who
did, but then, the only person I knew personally with a Perception used
a fairly low cost PC for Lightwave animation (and fed the animation back
to his Newtek Flyer system).

I keep seeing people online tell new users that they need the very best
system they can possibly afford to get into animation and 3D graphics,
but it seems to me that most users, especially when they are starting
out, don't need a super wonderful system.  They just need a modest
system with a decent graphics card, and if they want to be serious about
doing it professionally, a card like a used DPS Perception.

Wings3d and Blender both run very well on a P166Classic with a Riva128.
Bump the video card to a slightly nicer once (say a PCI TNT or
Geforce2), and I'm fairly certain Animation Master would run very
nicely.  Certainly older copies of lightwave would run well, and the
current Softimage 3D should run well (not to be confused with XSI), and
even perhaps Maya would run decently (although if one can afford that,
perhaps one should wait a hair longer to get a P2 system instead).

I'm not saying a nice system isn't nice, but why should newbies be told
the entry level for hardware is high when it isn't?