CompuServe Thread

#3DS w/OS2

4 messages in this thread
#70344From: Tim PiscitelliDec 8, 1993 12:27 PM
After following the thread on OS2 vs DOS, I was intrigued enough to pick up a copy of OS2 to see for myself what was better. All is running well under OS2, except that it will not render in the background. What settings are required to get 3DS3 to render in a hidden window under OS2? To tell the truth though, I don't see what the OS2 vs Dos debate is about. I set OS2 up as a dual boot system. If I want to do a lot of work involving material creation and mapping, I boot under OS2 and can switch between CorelDraw, 3DS3 and other paint programs. If I am rendering a sizable animation, I boot under Dos and let 3DS have the machine for a couple of days. That ability is worth the $50 that I paid for OS2. Now if only I could get 3DS to render in the background, I could set up a slave to render test images while I continue develope the model.
#70365From: James TichenorDec 8, 1993 2:52 PM
Hey Tim, <<To tell the truth though, I don't see what the OS2 vs Dos debate is about. I set OS2 up as a dual boot system. If I want to do a lot of work involving material creation and mapping, I boot under OS2 and can switch between CorelDraw, 3DS3 and other paint programs. If I am rendering a sizable animation, I boot under Dos and let 3DS have the machine for a couple of days. That ability is worth the $50 that I paid for OS2.>> Yeah, that's about how I think the game should be played. Now for rendering in the BG. HA HA! The big trick. I'll tell ya, I have yet to get this to work reliably. It's a problem I have with my P9000 chip. It really doesn't support BG processing. The trick is to run 3DS off of the chip while rendering in the BG, assuming you are running the OS/2 desktop with the P9000. So, setup 3ds to run VGA (or VESA, but I don't know about that), and when you render, render to NO DISPLAY and either SAVE LAST or save to disk the image. Now this may or may not work. Another thing to try is to let 3ds have the P9000 to itself, only rendering to it. This defeates the purpose of having the OS, because now you're WINDOWS drawing and painting programs are hopeless (unless there was someway to run these only on the P9000 and use the DESKTOP as a buffer zone). The main problem is that OS/2 knows not let a bg program use a device that could screw up the foreground. It seems that OS/2 just suspendes the suspect program. I don't know if this will help you at all, but let me know if you have any questions! James
#70405From: Tim PiscitelliDec 8, 1993 6:54 PM
I'll play around with it and see. It sure would be nice to set up several PCs at work with OS2 and let them run as background slaves. The people in the office just are not that happy about returning to their system from lunch and finding it rendering. Go figure! Tim
#70414From: James TichenorDec 8, 1993 7:31 PM
<<I'll play around with it and see. It sure would be nice to set up several PCs at work with OS2 and let them run as background slaves. The people in the office just are not that happy about returning to their system from lunch and finding it rendering. Go figure!>> That shouldn't be too tough. Do they run WINDOWS? If so, install OS/2 to run the windows Program Manager. They'd never know the difference. Then you can tell them "power problems" when it takes five minutes to type one line in the WP, because of disk swaps. James