[tech] Console boxes.

[Grahame Bowland]

> On Nov 29, Ian McKellar scrawled :

> On Mon, Nov 29, 1999 at 04:32:41PM +0800, Leighton Haynes wrote:
> > 
> > #include <dayta/stdglxrant.h>
> > 
> I think this is a _great_ idea. As I've said before, if someone who is 
> enthused about this can work out what we should get, and what it will cost,
> and put together some sort of proposal, then committee can discuss it. We
> can't really make decisions about vauge concepts like "we should get something
> so that we can do console graphics under Linux". A suggestion like "lets get
> a G666 for mussel - it will cost $333 from Yoyodyne Computers, I pledge $50"
> is much more likely to get a useful response.
> 

When I get work and have money, I'll start pledging money to things. :)

As a cheap and cool option, why not have a machine room reorganisation,
put Mussel near where erwin is and put the console (not the machine)
outside. Then we get it a Matrox G400 (which appears to be the best supported
3D card for Linux - the nvidia stuff is apparently buggy and slow) and
suddenly we have a very cool 3D coding box.

The only downside is mussel might not like the load of 3D graphics
and users running processes. So it would probably be smarter to have one
user box rather than the mussel/mermaid duo. Then we can do cool things
like this (on my machine which is under the specs of mussel):

> excelsior:~/dayta/Mesa/demos> ./gears
> @@Created GLX Context..
> 1295 frames in 5 seconds = 259 FPS
> 1362 frames in 5.001 seconds = 272.346 FPS
> 1362 frames in 5.001 seconds = 272.346 FPS

Sample pricings from RTV Computers (rtv.iinet.net.au):
  16Mb Matrox Millenium G200 SDRAM AGP OEM - $195
  16MB Matrox Millenium G400 SGRAM AGP OEM - $255
  32MB Matrox Millenium G400 Dual Display SGRAM AGP OEM - $375

See you all,

-- 
Grahame Bowland

Email: gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
  Web: http://users.wantree.com.au/~bowest/gmb.html