[rescue] Sunblade 100 question

[joshua d boyd]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 12:01:08PM -0500, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 11:22:59AM -0400, joshua d boyd wrote:
> > Has anyone tried to actually use firewire on a Sunblade?  What is the
> > status of support.  I'm assuming that the raw firewire itself has support
> > so that hardware developers can write drivers to use firewire devices, but
> > are video devices supported yet?  Is there sample code for doing video
> 
> Hold your nose and buy an OSX box.

Two things:
1) Cost (well, not really a thing if comparing the Expert3d-lite model)
2) iMovie and Final Cut Pro.

Were I to try to persue this commercially (and I should get some more
progress before trying), I would want to offer a turnkey system on a
platform with good graphics (I'm worried about the acuracy of the Radeons
and GeForce2 cards), and at a good price.  I mean, why would someone try
something unproven if it costs more than the proven competition, even if
it does claim to be better?

So, the O2 would be an ideal platform hardware wise.  And since Premiere
is basically dead for it, and the next option is close to $10k (flint and 
edit*), it could be doable.  But, a new O2 still costs too much for the
people I know to purchase one.  MacOS X could work, but again, that would
cost more than I want to pay, and I'm still not convinced of the quality
of the video cards they use.  Linux could work, but only if the HP
FX machines are affordable, (or perhaps XIG on a pro card would be acurate
enough).

The basic idea is to take a page from the SGI world and use the graphics
hardware for everything, including final rendering.  This only works if
the graphics hardware is very acurate.  John Carmack, among others, has
been commenting for years that consumer video cards make numerous math
shortcuts that can and do show up as visual artifacts.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd