[geeks] ive been converted

[joshua d boyd]

On Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 06:06:43PM -0400, dave at cca.org wrote:
> pwargo at basenji.com writes:
> 
> >Hee, hee... Now picture a 500MHz G4 w/1G RAM, and you'll know why I am
> >grinning when I sit down to do any photoshop work. :-)
> 
> Someone was telling me once that there's a system that's designed for
> photoshop-style image manilpulation, the way SGIs are designed for 3d
> rendering, called a "paintbox" I think? Anyone know anything about
> that?

Holy crap, pick something more expensive/exotic next time why don't you.
.  http://www.quantel.com/products/graphics/paintboxfx/paintboxfx.htm

If the paint box is anything like a Henry (from the same manufactor), then
it is pretty much entirely proprietary, and even used will set you back
10s of thousands of dollars.  And when I say entirely proprietary, I mean
that even the software is proprietary and can't be seperated from the
hardware, or vise versa.  

The advantage this hardware has is that it is completely real time.  The
downside is that it will disallow you from doing things rather than slow
down.  So, you want that 9th layer?  Tough.  It would slow the machine
down, so you obviously didn't seriously want it.

Now, another really great machine for 2D graphics, and in fact, the box
that gave birth to things like Photoshop, is the Pixar Image
Computer.  This thing is pretty much ideal.  One CPU per channel, one
channel per board (called a CHAP), and up to 4 CPU boards.  Good luck
finding one of these things though.  The PIC2 was only $32k new (late
80s), but I have never seen one for sale anywhere.

PS, the PIC2 had an overlayboard for graphics display (previously it
couldn't do menu's and such and real work at the same time), and used
NeWS.  Between NeWS and the SIMD design, many people are now making
comparisons of that machine to the new G4/OS X combo.

See http://www.byte.com/documents/s=202/BYT19991110S0005/index.htm

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd