CompuServe Messages

Don, How's this for a really crazy idea? How about a MIPS-based Bridgeboard? I envision something like the Netware Application Engines some networking companies offer for their hubs – which are nothing more than '486s that slide into the hub chassis. If you think about it, there are probably a lot of smaller guys out there, one-man shops, doing Lightwave. They could really use a speed boost, but probably don't care about networking, or screen displays, or anything. They just want a fast rendering engine. Sooo…you put a MIPS+memory on an ISA card, and put it in an Amiga. License Janus from CBM, so that there is some kind of talk between the MIPS card and the host Amiga. Allow the user to simply "send" a Lightwave scene to the card, and find frames on their hard drive…probably only load the absolutely necessary core of NT and the SoftScreamer to make it run. The card could have 16 megs on it, expandable to 32. Perhaps, at the most, also put an IDE controller plus drive to handle VM needs. This kind of setup (which would function sort of like the Warp that was being discussed for a while) could be brought out fairly cheaply – no need to throw in a monitor, SCSI controller, display card, case, power supply, etc. Plus, it would give Amigaheads a good reason to upgrade to your desktops when they finally outgrow their "Screamer Card". This could be some really cool technology…and the price is potentially so inexpensive, that *every* serious Lightwave user would have to have one. The biggest problems that I could see is that the FCC considerations would be non-trivial, and that it would not be a high visibility move in the PC world. Jonathan Jonathan