[rescue] Sun drivers/info for Pixar graphics system?

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

Corda Albert J DLVA wrote:
> 
> I was rooting around at a couple of used computer
> stores yesterday and ran across something interesting...
> A large (rack mountable) granite-colored box with
> the logo PIXAR on the front. (it looks _very_ neat!
> an impressive case design for what appears to be
> a box of 1980's vintage). The box has a 9U VME
> formfactor cardcage in back with BNC video connectors
> on one card, and 4 interface cables of various connector
> types on another card. The label on the back
> indicates it's a PIXAR model 820204. A little more
> digging located a rack-mount sun3 box with a 9U vme
> card that seems to be the host interface for this critter.
> Unfortunately, the vendor trashed the SMD drives that
> came with this critter, so recovering the original
> software load is hopeless...
> 
> Has anyone played with one of these? I haven't been
> able to find any drivers/softare/docs on the web...(any
> pointers?)

I think that the only way you will get one of these working is by
contacting some friendly old-timer at Pixar.

IIRC this hardware was made in about 1985-1987 timeframe.  It had a lot
of the RenderMan primitives built-in to it.  

Go to google.com and type in "pixar hardware" as the search terms.

This link seems especially interesting and will give you some more
details:

http://www.byte.com/documents/s=202/byt19991110s0005/index.htm

Cordially

Patrick Giagnocavo
patrick at zill.net