CompuServe Thread

I am having a problem calling 3DS from the command line. The situation is this. We have several 486 machines that we want to set up as a render farm over a Novell network. A copy of 3DS has been installed on a network drive all the 486's share. I have written a program for the artists to set up jobs, and another for the workstations to run, which monitors the network for jobs and renders them in batches. This setup works fine rendering .tga files. Here's the problem: When rendering .FLI sequences, 3DS wants to create 2 temp files: $RTEMP$.FLI and $FLIW1$.TMP. $RTEMP$.FLI is created in the IMAGE-PATH specified in the 3DS.SET file and $FLIW1$.TMP is created in TEMP-PATH. If two or more 486's are trying to render a FLI only the 1st will be able to create the temp files. I can change the IMAGE-PATH to a local drive "C:\" but changing TEMP-PATH to anything but a subdir under 3ds.exe causes 3DS to abort w/o a message when run from the command line (rendering inside 3DS works OK). The only alternatives I've thought up are to call up 3DS with alternate 3DS.SET files using the network's UserID for the name. Problem is some users have up 3 486's in their office and logon with the same ID, have a copy of 3DS on each workstation (NOT PRACTICAL). Thanks in advance, DanP PIMA/POV p.s. What's the forum etiquette on posting a job opening. I've seen others posted but would feel more comfortable knowing its kosher.