#Vibrant Drivers
19 messages in this thread
Check this out… Jamie Clay couldn't get his Viper PCI to work, and he was
using the most-current vib3ds.vlm (from up here in the forum). My Viper PCI was
working fine with the last version of the .vlm (1.0.1) and when I sent it to
him, it worked fine on his system. I'm sure Chuck will be able to figure this
out soon.
– G
Man, this is so typical of Viper – dismal inconsistency. I got so sick of
their stuff I won't buy another peice of hardware from them as long as I live.
Reminds me of somebody I know… <g>
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
I heard that! 🙂
Gus… you ARE here! Thought you'd dropped off the end of the earth (that's
Portland, right?) or drowned in the Oregon rain <g>.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
Actually we've had a couple of nice days (for a change). I've been totally
submersed in several projects: selling a house, buying another, packing up,
installing a new network, replacing OS'es in 3 machines, read about 20 books in
the past couple of weeks (all unix, of course), puf, puf…
Ever heard from Paul? I got the quote on the biff'ed up Indi and I will get
one. Haven't a clue what I'm going to do with it, but… who said I ever knew
what to do with computers? It reminds me the first Apple I bought in 79. I had
no clue what I could use that thing for.
I'll be talking to Paul sometime this week, let me know if you want me to
forward a message. He's easiest to reach via e-mail – he answers most of the
time.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
I gave up.
Hmm….. Either a job for Chuck or M. Poirot! <g>
I'm afraid I'm just not that curious. Mine's working- wake me when it's fixed,
Chuck.
Re: Diamond Viper, I was disappointed when I dialed Viewpoint to find that
their CD-ROM program just doesn't work with a Viper. Had to retrieve my Texel
1X CD-ROM just to offload some files. We were also disappointed with the old
Stealths. I'm nervous that our two new Pentiums are coming with the Stealth
64's. I really liked the Speedstars, but I haven't been impressed with their
cards since then.
–Noah
I just received an ATI Graphics WINTURBO mach64 PCI video card (the 2MB
version.) It is supposed to be about 60% faster than our VIPER PCI card. I
can't wait to try it, but is is not supported by 3DS right now. I talked to
Vibrant Graphics' project manager for 3DS drivers and he said that they have it
working in-house but don't expect to release it for about 2 weeks. It did
comfort me to learn that they are not only writing the 3DS r3 drivers, but all
of the video drivers for this card.
The newness of the card scares me a little. It came with a manual that was run
on a copy machine and spiral bound, and the driver disk label's were just
printed up on someone's laser printer. I think I'm on the "bleeding edge" of
technology, ahead of the "leading edge."
I ordered this card for my DX4/100 system at the house and just as soon as it
arrives, I'm going to install the card and 3DS r3. I was real pleased to learn
from Autodesk than it is not illegal to have multiple copies of 3DS installed
since the program will not run without the hardware key. The Autodesk rep said
that I could install it on the Pentium system at work, a 486DX2\50 at work, our
Creative Director's DX4\100 at home, and my DX4\100 at home without violating
any copyright laws. The only problem that I will have is the battle between me
and our Creative Director to see who get to take the key home on the weekends.
I can see it already, someone loses the key in transport and my boss has lunch
on certain parts of our bodies. Oh well.
Ken-
How do the DX4/100's compare in speed with the Pentiums for 3DS rendering?
–Noah
The DX4\100's have not arrived yet. They are scheduled to be here next week.
I cannot wait to try them, especially when the Vibrant driver is our for my new
ATI PCI video card with the Mach64 chip. I'll keep you updated as to how it's
going.
BTW, I bought QEMM today and fell in love. I cannot believe how much better it
is than MEMMAKER. I went from 505K free to 579K free and I have not even read
the manual and tried to tweek it yet. It has literally, in one pass, solved
all of my memory problems. Do you use it? Another question; what have you
heard about 3D Studio for Windows (or NT?) Since I am new to the product and
CompuServe, I have not seen if it is in the works or not. It would be nice for
our artist because she is not comfortable with DOS, plus she would like to be
able to edit in several things at once. Just though I'd ask.
Talk to you soon.
Kenny
Autodesk does not release info on unreleased software. Therefore, your guess
is as good as anybody's as to the next release of 3DS. There are no plans to
make R3 a windows product, but you can run it from windows. Alan Inglesias, a
forum regular, says R3 runs beautifully on his P5/60, but I know there are
noticeable performance hits on a 486/66. I've heard windows runs better on the
p5 than the /100, but who knows? Consult your manual for setting 3DS R3 up to
run under windows.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
John,
>> Autodesk does not release info on unreleased software. <<
this is all rather amusing. The employees have to keep mum but Carol Bartz has
publicly stated quite a bit about plans for rel 4 and further into the future.
I won't say what she is quoted as saying (fear of castigation [ouch!] prevents
me) but instead I will refer y'all to the Australian Multicad magazine (March
'94) which shows that she was quote forthcoming about the direction of Acad 13,
3ds 4, and other Adesk products.
>> The employees have to keep mum but Carol Bartz has publicly stated quite a
bit about plans for rel 4… <<
CEO perogative! 🙂 (Bless her!)
-JE
John,
well if Carol has said things publicly, I should be able paraphrase here. Any
Adesk/Yost people have any objection to that?
I guess if you're the CEO, you can spill the beans if you want <g>. I'll have
to get a copy of the magazine, and frame it <g>.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
Kenny-
We used to use QEMM to resolve conflicts between… I can't remember. BUt for
awhile the thing to do was to use QEMM for some applications and not use it for
others. We were re-booting all the time. Since 3DS supports XMS so well now
we don't use it, except for manifest which is nifty for resolving memory
conflicts. Since you haven't had a chance to tweak QEMM yet, I would go
through Manifest (MFT.EXE) because it can give you some great tips on
configuring QEMM.
Re: 3DS on NT- I've heard nothing, which is surprising because Autodesk rarely
makes future plans without consulting me first.<g> I thought it was a natural
for them to port 3DS to NT as a native application, so as to take advantage of
PowerPC, DEC Alpha, MIPS, platforms that run NT and to get away from this
monstrous Phar Lap kludge. 3DS is selling so well, however, and NT must be
such a challenge to port code to, that I would think Autodesk sees no need to
be the one of the first applications to MAKE people go buy NT, which is what
they would be doing. For every high-ender who would upgrade to an NT version,
there must be several entry-level types who would buy the DOS version for the
first time, and their money is the same.
–Noah
>…who get to take the key home on the weekends.<
Better insure it. Don't know if anyone *actually* does this, but I've heard
this suggestion before.
Good advice! I guess that I would have to have a $2500 rider on it since that
is what we paid for the software. I don't think my boss is going to be too
keen on this; but, he also knows that we would never take work home either.
Interesting problem…