CompuServe Thread

#Beta Tester explained

7 messages in this thread
#177688From: Bradley J. ArtigueJun 28, 1995 7:14 PM
And then Autodesk's pride comes in…I saw a note here once where someone asked what it took to become beta tester and someone from the Yost group basically told them there was no way that would happen. Don't remember why, just remember the memo. Well…all that arguing and we almost agree with one another. So what's your political point of view? (Just joking) -Brad
#177693From: Yost GroupJun 28, 1995 7:37 PM
I can only handle a limited number of beta testers, and over the last five years I've cultivated relationships with a small group of very talented folks. These are the people who've helped make 3DS as robust as it is, and I'm looking forward to continuing this process with them this autumn as we beat the beejezuz out of the NT version. Unfortunately, I don't have the bandwidth to deal with hundreds of beta testers, but dozens is more than enough to ensure that the program is solid. – G
#177710From: Bradley J. ArtigueJun 28, 1995 9:49 PM
G: I appreciate the quality of Autodesk products; especially 3D Studio (after all, it makes part of my income possible)… Hey, I have an original copy of a program called CAD 3D for the old Atari ST…didn't Tom Hudson write that one? It still had the receipt attached to it…$49.00 in 1985. I tried to fire it up on my old ST, but the floppy drive was shot on it (try getting that fixed)…and we all used to rely on floppy drives…yipes. Thanks for the info…but if you need beta testing by an international environmental and civil engineering company, you'll let me know, right? 🙂 Keep the quality coming.
#177787From: Yost GroupJun 29, 1995 10:33 AM
Yup… Tom and I spec'd out CAD-3D in Autumn of '84 and we shipped it in late '85. That wasn't even his first 3D thing… his _first_ 3D program was called 'Solid States', and it was published as a type-in 6502 assembly language program in Analog magazine in 1983 (for the Atari 400/800). (Typing in eighteen gazillion lines of 6502 machine code on a chiclet keyboard must've been sooo fun for folks… 🙂 From 6502 assembler to C++ in 15 years… Some things change pretty radically if you just give it enough time. – G
#177866From: Bradley J. ArtigueJun 29, 1995 6:47 PM
I still have a fully operational Atari 800 … if you open those old suckers up, they had a huge parallel bus built into them — but it was inaccessable (hidden behind an aluminum wall)…probably FCC regs. You're right, things do change quickly. After all, did you ever think a 9 gig hard drive would cost $2000.00? I remember paying close to that much for an 80mb drive in 1985 — amazing. Nostaglia forum? (ha) -Brad
#178025From: Gus GrubbaJun 30, 1995 4:07 PM
>> From 6502 assembler to C++ in 15 years… Some things change pretty >> radically if you just give it enough time. The changes are very subjective. From a 1MHz 6502 to a 133MHz P6, I would expect something more than C++. Something more in the lines of thought replicators… <g>
#178133From: Yost GroupJul 1, 1995 1:40 PM
Gus, you're _my_ thought replicator. <G> – G