Apple Clones (was: [rescue] BMRT SGI)

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 07:17:29PM -0800, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> I took 4 Computer Art/Animation classes about 10+ years ago, and we
> used *powerful* 286 boxes with an expensive 68000 add-in board, and a
> Targa card. We made animations a frame at a time... You could sit and
> watch the image "assemble", one pixel at a time... Slower than watching
> paint dry ;^)
> 
> I did simple, geometric sshapes, and got pretty quick renders, but one
> kid in the class was *very good* at it - it was making star wars-like
> scenes, and it took 20-30 minutes per frame, and ran over night (24
> frames make a second of tape!).

What sort of tape were you using?  Usually it is either 25 or 30 FPS per
tape.  

> It was fun to watch the tape deck come to life, wind back a few meters
> (assumed), then run forward, then *BLAM* write one frame, slow down,
> and wait...

As I said, never touched such a thing.  First experience was with a
toaster and PAR.  I don't think I'm too excessively sad about that, but
I'd rather do high quality non-real time capture than low quality real
time.  Problem is, I can't afford either right now.  But, a good real
time board is cheaper than a frame acurate VCR these days.  But, perhaps
not by much.  I can't seem to find very many 4:2:2 low ratio MJPEG
boards and SDI costs too much.  Maybe someday.  Once I have a new job,
and we have the stuff needed for appartment life, I'm planning on
convincing my fiance that a Mac, a good video card, a good SVHS VCR,
Maya, and a video monitor are essential.  Along with a bigger/better 
fileserver, and perhaps some compute nodes.  It might take awhile though
to convince her of everything

> I miss that, but not too much. I keep thinking of going back to
> community college and seeing how they teach it now...

Couldn't say how they teach animation.  But you can bet that they
probably aren't using frame acurate VCRs like that anymore.

BTW, Buf Compagnie used to use a 286 running Intel Unix.  They rendered
the frame to the display, then clicked the camera set up aimed at the
monitor.   Very cool.  Would have been cooled if they had attached a
solenoid to the camera button to make the computer automatically click
it. 

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd