DL243 5D Monster Masher A 1990s PC For Video Effects Rendering

No video

DL243 5D Monster Masher A 1990s PC For Video Effects Rendering

Рет қаралды 2,027

DextersTechLab

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 26

@tekvax01 Жыл бұрын

I remember that sound of those NT4 Intergraph machines booting... I will never forget the sheer amount of windows NT4 machines with propriety hardware cards we had to keep running, well into 2005 to 2008... so many service packs... so many crashes, corruptions, and bad hardware... Nightmares!

@GL1zdA Жыл бұрын

The motherboard is the one that was used in a TDZ-2000 GT1. John Carmack used one during development of Quake III. The chipset is called ServerSet II LE. The only other workstation using it I know is the Compaq SP700. RCC, later ServerWorks competed with Intel in the high-end workstation and server market and finally was acquired by Broadcom. The ServerSet's II main feature were the dual PCI-buses to maximize I/O bandwidth. The SDI I/O card is known as Raven DS and was used in a turnkey solution for Softimage DS.

@DextersTechLab Жыл бұрын

Awesome info there, thank you. I must admit something in my head said there's too many PCI slots, so that's why and also why there's two northbridges?

@GL1zdA Жыл бұрын

@@DextersTechLab Don't forget to add the on-board NIC and SCSI controller to the number of PCI slots, these are also PCI devices ;) Yes, each of those chips contains a PCI controller and, what I have forgotten to mention, a memory controller. This also means that its memory bandwidth is doubled compared to a classic Intel 440BX or 440GX chipset (1600 MB/s instead of 800 MB/s at a 100 MHz bus speed). If you search for "Second-Generation Highly Parallel System Architecture for Compaq Professional Workstations" (two documents from 1998: ecg0770998.pdf and the updated ecg0921198.pdf), you will find the whitepapers for the SP700 which is using the same chipset and everything they've written about applies to the Integraph system.

@frankowalker4662 Жыл бұрын

Cool. I can't wait to see it in action.

@DextersTechLab Жыл бұрын

Hopefully we'll be able to do something!!

@frankowalker4662 Жыл бұрын

@@DextersTechLab I imagine it will take a lot of working out. But you have to get HAL working first. I don't envy you, but I do look forward to the videos. Sorry I'm a bit drunk and rambely. LOL.

@tekvax01 Жыл бұрын

Ha! we had a couple of those beasts!

@DextersTechLab Жыл бұрын

Intergraph StudioZ systems or specifically a Masher?

@tekvax01 Жыл бұрын

Wow... A Seagate drive just stopped working, and was making horrid noises... imagine my surprise... *(okay, not surprised at all!)

@yjk_ch Жыл бұрын

23:45 Java can load code(classes) from remote locations(URLClassLoader is example of this), so I would guess that the main plug-in on the Quantel side would download Java code from those Jar files.

@624linespal Жыл бұрын

Crikey, long time since I saw one of those! GMTV retrofitted one to their HAL. I had it in my mind that it used parallel digits to interface to the Masher - but obviously not? This would have been in the early 90's and some Quantel kit still interfaced via parallel digits and some bits were moving over to serial digits. Can't remember too much about it apart from the fact it just sat their reliably running 24/7 with, I think, only once instance of it ever going wrong. I think GMTV bought it to extend their range of picture transition styles, never heard any grumbles.

@electronash Жыл бұрын

10:47 - Random 4am thought... Those chip packages look almost the same as the "Holly" GPU on the Dreamcast. Made by NEC. IIRC, the Dreamcast GPU has 500 solder balls. Never seen this system before. Interesting about the mouse port thing. I assumed they had wired some custom board up to the PS/2 mouse port, but I'm only 11 minutes into the vid so far. lol

@DextersTechLab Жыл бұрын

Just had a search and yes, it is the same package style!

@Ratchet_effect Жыл бұрын

I'd love to see you get this running with the Quantel & possibly draw some graphics and add the audio/song' Monster Mash · Bobby "Boris" Pickett · The Crypt-Kickers 👍

@DextersTechLab Жыл бұрын

If we get it going, we will do something😉

@WolfmanDude Жыл бұрын

I really like those industrial pc cases. I have a similar one for my current pc. Since its all ATX you can put modern pc hardware into the case. Looks way cooler than all those cheap tacky "gamer" pc cases!

@merseyviking Жыл бұрын

24:41 Did you say images in a weird format? :)

@DextersTechLab Жыл бұрын

:-) You know where we are...

@s8wc3 Жыл бұрын

I wonder if some remnants of the Videodisk files can be recovered, considering it's always been Quickformatted

@DextersTechLab Жыл бұрын

We have already partially recovered the video contained on the video disks, enough to see there's not much there of interest. There's some demo examples of some of the effects and a a short clip of a news presenter and some news related images.

@EgonOlsen71 Жыл бұрын

Have you tried to decompile the code in the jar files? This usually works pretty and might give you an idea how the communication worked. Maybe they used RMI (remote method invocation) or something similar.

@DextersTechLab Жыл бұрын

No i haven't, if anyone wants to give it a go i would suggest visiting my Discord as members there have already been looking at various parts of the Masher code.

@CollabVMSheep Жыл бұрын

17:04 17:47 16:18 16:29 I can see analog glitch, is your capture card trying to change resolution?

@DAVIDGREGORYKERR 7 ай бұрын

What happened to the Quantel Paintbox that you had been working on.

@BeauTardy Жыл бұрын

These PC based systems became very popular in the mid to late 90s and I hated them. They were just so clunky and ugly compared to the beautiful Quantel UI. Definitely not artist friendly. At this point, VFX became a different type of business, soon to be taken over by sweat shops in India.