#Toshiba 4900
8 messages in this thread
My brother forwarded me the Jim Seymour thing – ouch! None of us techs have
any idea who he talked to about his Autodesk comments (it doesn't seem to have
been tech support), although we have a document (HWLOCK.TXT) about problems
with Dell and other computers. So I don't agree that Dell is standard, but his
point might be that if we didn't have a lock we would be able to run on a Dell.
Yeah, it kind of scared me. I'm going to buy this Toshiba mail order, and
after I spend 9K I don't want to find out it won't run 3DS — I'm not sure
they'll let me return it on that basis.
I'm still not sure about the screen drivers, though I suspect I can always
emulate straight VESA. I do know that I was never able to get my Compaq
portable to work exactly right with the Vibrant drivers — everytime I tried
the "h" key it would lock the machine up and go crazy (worked fine otherwise,
but I'd prefer that my new laptop work perfectly — after all, it will be more
powerful than my desktop machine!). Quite honestly, I do understand why you
guys are dongleprone, but it sure makes it a pain in the ass to run it on a
laptop (the damn dongle always poked me in the stomach!). I suppose you guys
wouldn't want to consider a PCMCIA dongle card? After all, with laptops
becoming the computer of choice ('95 supposed to be almost 50% of all corporate
buyers purchases — Pentium and full color screens will become standard) it
would be nice if 3DS could run self-contained.
Hey, I'd pay $300 more to trade in my dongle for such a card!
Mike – could the dongle issue with the Tosh have anything to do with the fact
that it may or may not have an Enhanced Parallel Port? I know that EPPs don't
work with some features; e.g., on my Thinkpad I would need a different
parallel to SCSI device depending on whether it was a standard or EPP.
Mine is a standard one, so I can't test it for you to see if that might be
the problem…
Dave
>could the dongle issue with the Tosh have anything to do with the fact
>that it may or may not have an Enhanced Parallel Port?
Hey, I don't want to start any rumors here. I do not have ANY knowledge or
even a hint that 3DS will not work with Toshibas — as a matter of fact, one
individual has confirmed that it does work with model 4850. I was simply
raising the issue because I'm about to spend a great deal of money for the 4900
and if it doesn't run my favorite program there isn't any point (and because an
article by Jim Seymour in PC Week said that the 3DS dongle didn't work on some
machines).
It was, however, exactly my concerned over a EPP that I raised the issue, so in
that case you're right. Unlike a desktop, I can't easily add another port to
my laptop if the dongle don't work there (besides, it really should be a PCMCIA
card anyway).
Mike, I've sent your request for the laptop dongle to the 3DS product manager –
it's a wishlist item now. Seems like a good idea from the laptop user's point
of view. It will depend a lot on whether or not such a dongle is made (I'll
forward the request to Rainbow, who make the locks.)
Thanks.
>request for the laptop dongle
Thanks. I really do think there is more than a little merit in this idea,
given the proliferation of laptops and the power they are started to attain
(the one I'm buying is about 4X faster than my desktop machine, with just about
the same storage and with 40meg of memory — sounds to me like an ideal
rendering machine!).
Rainbow (our lock manufacturer) says that there are currently no plans for a
PCMCIA dongle. However, after forwarding your email to the 3D Studio product
manager, I discovered that Autodesk has been aware of this issue. Do not
expect anything soon, even if we plan to go ahead with it.
I started another message to you that just "flew out of my hands" before it was
finished – it may have not been properly sent; this is just a note to explain a
possible truncated message to you.
I have forwarded the Toshiba test email to our QA dept. I strongly expect them
to say "No, not tested". Since we don't have this laptop in Product Support
our next pursuit would be to contact Toshiba and Autodesk&Toshiba exchange
software/hardware to confirm it works.
Nik
Thanks so much for your reply, Nik. I'm at least encouraged by the fact that
someone at 3DS is looking at the whole laptop issue, because I truly believe
this is the wave of the future (I'm always at the bleeding edge of anything).
As for the Toshiba testing, naturally I'll appreciate ANY info you have as soon
as possible. The 4900 has only now become readily available throughout the
distribution system, so it shouldn't be too hard to find one to test.