Ron Parker wrote:
> 
> Something about none of us having a Sun machine to test them on.  Anybody
> has an old SparcStation they were just gonna throw out, let me know.

I guess that someone is going to have to bite the bullet on that one sooner or
later.  Geez I wish it was six months ago, before all the tech stocks took a
dive.  I'd be in better position to donate.  You probably need a multi-cpu
system if we have any hopes of ever seeing a multi-threaded version of
Pov-Ray.  Probably an old Sun Ultra 2 with dual 250MHz or 300MHz cpus with
256Mb of RAM and dual 9Gb disks would suffice.  There is no sense in looking
at Sparc Version 1 processors like SM71's and old 32-bit technology.  We now
work with Sun Ultra II and Sun Ultra III Sparc version 9 + processors with
64-bit functions.  You will also need a respectable graphics card with OpenGL
hardware so thats a Creator 3D Series 3 card for that.  A copy of Solaris 8
would finish it off .. oh and a 20 inch Sun monitor right?  Geez.  Thats
thousands of dollars worth of hardware.  :(

> 
> It seems a multi-cpu machine would be wasted on stock POV anyway, unless
> you're rendering animations or splitting up the frame for stills.

Unless there were some promise of a multi-threaded version of Pov-Ray in the
future.  I gave up on that a long time ago when I was talking with Mark Gordon
back in my wealth days.  The promise of multi-threaded Pov-Ray is gone as well
as most of the wealth.  Let's see what happens in the near future and I'll be
the first one to donate hardware.  

Since I just put it in writing it is now a matter of record.

Dennis Clarke
Solaris Admin & VP Technology
Livewire Business Automation Inc.
http://www.livewire.ca/

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