Does anyone happen to know the oldest version of GCC that'll still build
povray?

I'd like to build on a few ancient machines for demo purposes at a museum,
but current GCC source has been stripped of support for various old CPUs.
About the most recent version of GCC that I can compile is probably around
2.7, which I suspect is way too old :-(

Failing that, was there a time when povray was straight C code rather than
C++? It's not like I can render scenes that take advantage of lots of new
features on slow old equipment anyway, so an older version of povray would
be fine - but if they all need C++ then I suspect I'm out of luck :-(

cheers

Jules

Post a reply to this message

Jules wrote:
> Failing that, was there a time when povray was straight C code rather than
> C++? It's not like I can render scenes that take advantage of lots of new
> features on slow old equipment anyway, so an older version of povray would
> be fine - but if they all need C++ then I suspect I'm out of luck :-(

POV-Ray 3.1 is plain C.  You find it in the old-versions dir on ftp.povray.org .

	Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

On Tue,  8 Feb 2005 07:54:59 EST, "Jules" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Does anyone happen to know the oldest version of GCC that'll still build
> povray?

Try ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Old-Versions/

ABX

Post a reply to this message

> I'd like to build on a few ancient machines for demo purposes at a museum

	I'm curious: what kind of machines?

> About the most recent version of GCC that I can compile is probably around
> 2.7, which I suspect is way too old :-(

	Most likely...  The oldest gcc version that I tried and that is known
to compile the latest POV-Ray 3.6 is gcc-2.95.

	- NC

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Calimet <pov### [at] freefr> wrote:
> > I'd like to build on a few ancient machines for demo purposes at a museum
>
>  I'm curious: what kind of machines?

Main one I'm fiddling with at the moment is a Tektronix XD88 workstation
(Motorola 88k CPU). There's an NCR Tower 32 too (68030 CPU), and quite a
few Apollo workstations (think they're all 68k rather than 88k ones). Oh,
and an HP T500 6-CPU machine (that one might stand a chance of running a
decent C++ compiler).

Then we've got a whole pile of various SGI and Sun machines, and a Be-box
too.

I figured I'd see if I could get them doing some co-operative raytracing
with POV - still going to be slow as hell of course but it might make for
an interesting demo.

I've got an SGI Indy with a 24bit frambuffer that could act as the actual
display as a scene was rendered, with the actual processing machines just
running in console mode. Or something. :-) I'm still working out details,
but it all depends whether I can even get POV built and running on a single
machine anyway!

Memory's perhaps the main problem as it depends how efficient POV is when
asked to only render a tiny portion of a scene; I'm not sure what overheads
exist. Most of these ancient servers and workstations aren't capable of
supporting much memory (by modern standards) and of course use custom
memory which is totally unobtainable these days.

> > About the most recent version of GCC that I can compile is probably around
> > 2.7, which I suspect is way too old :-(
>
>  Most likely...  The oldest gcc version that I tried and that is known
> to compile the latest POV-Ray 3.6 is gcc-2.95.

Well, I'll try 3.1 in a bit with a straight C compiler and see how that
goes. Putting m88k back into a new version of GCC might be an option too...

Yep, I be nuts. :)

cheers

Jules

Post a reply to this message

Jules wrote:
> Well, I'll try 3.1 in a bit with a straight C compiler and see how that
> goes. Putting m88k back into a new version of GCC might be an option too...

As far as I can tell from thee gcc website, 2.95 is still fully supported on 
the 88K...

	Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> Jules wrote:
> > Well, I'll try 3.1 in a bit with a straight C compiler and see how that
> > goes. Putting m88k back into a new version of GCC might be an option too...
>
> As far as I can tell from thee gcc website, 2.95 is still fully supported on
> the 88K...
>
>  Thorsten

Really? Hmm, maybe I'll give that a go. I've just got POV 3.1 to build with
gcc
2.4.5 (just a few minor changes to include files, but it built otherwise).

I'm just chasing a startup problem at the moment as POV dies when run with:

  INI file error.
  Bad option syntax or error opening .INI/.DEF file 'lost+found'.

.... not sure quite what the cause of that is yet. The only lost+found dir on
the machine is direct off the root (obviously), so I have no idea where POV
is picking it up as a name from!

I've just done a find in all files under /usr/local/lib/povray31 for
'lost+found' and there's no references there, so it seems to be an odd side
effect of it not being able to find *something* when trying to start.
Hmm...

cheers

Jules

Post a reply to this message

"Jules" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
>   INI file error.
>   Bad option syntax or error opening .INI/.DEF file 'lost+found'.

Hmm, that's the way it reports that the idiot user (i.e. me) has screwed up
the command line params :-)

I've now got it rendering - whoooohoooo!

Brings back memories of playing around with DKBtrace in the early 90's on an
old 486 :-)

Ahhh, 8 mins 25 seconds for a test render on the Tek compared to 2 seconds
on my desktop PC...

Post a reply to this message

"Jules" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message
news:web.420a7a476d09cedcec12ceb00@news.povray.org...
> "Jules" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> >   INI file error.
> >   Bad option syntax or error opening .INI/.DEF file 'lost+found'.
>
> Hmm, that's the way it reports that the idiot user (i.e. me) has screwed
up
> the command line params :-)
>
> I've now got it rendering - whoooohoooo!
>
> Brings back memories of playing around with DKBtrace in the early 90's on
an
> old 486 :-)
>
> Ahhh, 8 mins 25 seconds for a test render on the Tek compared to 2 seconds
> on my desktop PC...
>

Some people might start to think you enjoy pain... Could be a whole new
subclass of benchmarks. Slowest render times.

But think of the geek points of using the regular official benchmark
scene... It means you actually compiled Pov on some obscure hardware, and
you also managed to keep that hardware running continuously for a really
really long time.

Post a reply to this message

Ross wrote in message <420bbcba$1@news.povray.org>...
>"Jules" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message
>> Brings back memories of playing around with DKBtrace in the early 90's on
>>an old 486 :-)
>>
>> Ahhh, 8 mins 25 seconds for a test render on the Tek compared to 2
seconds
>> on my desktop PC...
>
>Some people might start to think you enjoy pain... Could be a whole new
>subclass of benchmarks. ** Slowest render times. **

Dang, I gotta get my old '79 Apple II+[1] out of it's suitcase!! Is there an
PovRay source in 6502 assembly code available?
<G>

[1] I have a full 48k of RAM in that puppy!! And a 10Meg 'Sider' HD, WOW!!
It's hard to realize that set-up was capable of running a small business
back then. :-}
--
Bob R
POVrookie
--
MinGW (GNU compiler): http://www.mingw.org/
Dev-C++ IDE: http://www.bloodshed.net/
POVray: http://www.povray.org/
alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ faq:
   http://www.comeaucomputing.com/learn/faq/

Post a reply to this message