On 7 Jul 2001 06:39:59 -0400, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>  The first PC I have used was a 8086. I didn't use POV-Ray in it, though.
>I have also used a 286 with a really small HD (something like 10 Megs or so)
>quite a lot.

Although I used to play some games on a XT in my dad's office, my
first home PC was a 286/12 MHz with 512K RAM, 20 MB HDD and a
paperwhite VGA. This is when I got acquainted to raytracing, compiling
and running the sample raytracer from a book called "3D Raytracing and
Animation." It was very limited, but at the time, all I was thinking
about was chrome spheres.

Ah, those were the days!


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

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"Peter Popov" <pet### [at] vipbg> wrote ;
>
> Ah, those were the days!

    My -first- computer was a TRS-80 with "advanced color basic". All I did
with it was draw lines to the end of sin/cos pairs to make pretty pictures.

    I might have messed around with a few games but I always went back to
trying to make pretty pictures with colored lines.

    Foreboding of wasted hours to come...

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Bill DeWitt <bde### [at] cflrrcom> wrote:
:     My -first- computer was a TRS-80

  Well, if we are talking about first computers, then I have to note that
I said earlier that "the first PC I used was a 8086". However, it wasn't my
first computer.
  The first computer ever that I have used was a Spectrum 48k, and the first
computer I have owned was a Spectrum 128k.

  I even learned a bit how to code in Spectrum assembler. The intel assembler
is surprisingly similar and so it took me just a few days to learn it.

  Of course I'm very young in this matter. I personally know people who have
used computers when they still used punch cards and had no monitors of any kind
(everything was printed on paper).

-- 
#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

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Warp wrote:

>   Of course I'm very young in this matter. I personally know people who have
> used computers when they still used punch cards and had no monitors of any kind
> (everything was printed on paper).

I have used a punch card computer. Man, I feel old!

-- 
Ken Tyler

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Mick Hazelgrove wrote:

> These days with long parse times, radiosity and media it's a slow job to
> develop a picture around two to three months.

I really know the feeling. I just finished a 2400*3200 version of my April IRTC
pic and before that I finished a 3000*1200 version of the December IRTC image.
I somehow managed to render some smaller stuff (2-3 days each) between.  On
Friday, I've started a render that has been crawling for 3 days but should pick
up speed and finish around July 20. Meanwhile I'm working on something nice at
5 pps that I will render in August. I don't think my computer will get a day
(and night) off until September.

G.

--

**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
Graphic experiments
Pov-ray gallery

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On 8 Jul 2001 13:26:25 -0400, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>  Well, if we are talking about first computers, then I have to note that
>I said earlier that "the first PC I used was a 8086". However, it wasn't my
>first computer.

Mine neither.

>  The first computer ever that I have used was a Spectrum 48k, and the first
>computer I have owned was a Spectrum 128k.

Mine was a Bulgarian Apple II clone plugged into our b&w TV.

>  I even learned a bit how to code in Spectrum assembler. The intel assembler
>is surprisingly similar and so it took me just a few days to learn it.

I had lotsa fun with the Apple II assembler cracking various games for
endless lives etc. The build-in debugger helped a great deal.

>  Of course I'm very young in this matter. I personally know people who have
>used computers when they still used punch cards and had no monitors of any kind
>(everything was printed on paper).

I have, and I am not that old. In fact, one of my term projects that
I'll be finishing tomorrow requires the use of such a computer.

I have also used a MiniVax under VMS for a while, as the Uni's email
system used to be based on one. Thankfully, it's on Linux now. I have
internet and e-mail at home now, but back then, when these were still
luxuries, things were different. Gee, I've even used FTPMail!


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

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Gilles Tran wrote:
> 
> I really know the feeling. I just finished a 2400*3200 version of my April IRTC
> pic and before that I finished a 3000*1200 version of the December IRTC image.
> I somehow managed to render some smaller stuff (2-3 days each) between.  On
> Friday, I've started a render that has been crawling for 3 days but should pick
> up speed and finish around July 20. Meanwhile I'm working on something nice at
> 5 pps that I will render in August. I don't think my computer will get a day
> (and night) off until September.

Hehe, yeah.  I'm stuck with the family computer, so it's always "It says
rendering!"-"Pause it then!"-"Where's that?" when I want to do a long
render.  Then they forget to unpause it... :0 :)

-- 
David Fontaine  <dav### [at] faricynet>  ICQ 55354965
My raytracing gallery:  http://davidf.faricy.net/

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"David Fontaine" <dav### [at] faricynet> wrote in message
news:3B4A58F4.EF90AEEF@faricy.net...
>
> Hehe, yeah.  I'm stuck with the family computer, so it's always "It says
> rendering!"-"Pause it then!"-"Where's that?" when I want to do a long
> render.  Then they forget to unpause it... :0 :)
>

Run it in the taskbar and just tell them that the program they're running is a
real resource hog. Works for me...

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Would that have been an Amiga by chance?

Ron Parker wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 6 Jul 2001 00:25:34 -0500, Bob H. wrote:
> >Bob H., the proud owner of a 486 w/o coprocessor at first ray.
> 
> 68000 here.  No math coprocessor, no memory management, 512K of memory.
> I think I started with DBW-Render, though, and then defected to POV-Ray
> when Drew Wells did, then abandoned it for a time to play with TurboSilver
> (the predecessor to Imagine) then came back to POV sometime in 1993, this
> time to stay.
> 
> --
> #macro R(L P)sphere{L F}cylinder{L P F}#end#macro P(V)merge{R(z+a z)R(-z a-z)R(a
> -z-z-z a+z)torus{1F clipped_by{plane{a 0}}}translate V}#end#macro Z(a F T)merge{
> P(z+a)P(z-a)R(-z-z-x a)pigment{rgbf 1}hollow interior{media{emission 3-T}}}#end
> Z(-x-x.2x)camera{location z*-10rotate x*90normal{bumps.02scale.05}}

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The first "PC" that I had was no pc at all: used a z80 chip, had all of 
2k and a audio tape drive. Still did funny graphics on it.

Warp wrote:
> 
> Ron Parker <ron### [at] povrayorg> wrote:
> : You had a hard drive?
> 
>   The first PC I have used was a 8086. I didn't use POV-Ray in it, though.
> I have also used a 286 with a really small HD (something like 10 Megs or so)
> quite a lot.
> 
> --
> #macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
> rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
> ],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
> 7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

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