Hi all,
The original question was 'why do I need to use Open3D'.
Thanks to all that answered, some of the responses below answer the
question.
Steve VanDevender, hit it right on, since he described exactly
what we see,
Thanks again to all.
====================================
George Dimitoglou (SAC)
SOHO ESA/NASA Project Scientist Team
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Bldg. 26, G-1, Code 682.3
Greenbelt, MD 20771
george_at_esa.nascom.nasa.gov
====================================
From: Richard Bemrose <rb237_at_phy.cam.ac.uk>
Some graphics cards (Powerstorm's, ZLXP's etc) require Open3D to function
correctly ie not crash the system.
From: Ed Lewis <ELewis_at_rbmg.com>
George,
Open3d provides support for various graphics cards on
Alphas. I don't know which cards specifically.
I had a problem some time ago with windows on my workstation,
because I did not have Open3d installed.
Open3d also provides programming libraries for application
development.
Hope this helps.
From: koersner_at_tsl.uu.se (Ib Koersner, The Svedberg Lab, Uppsala, Sweden)
> to avoid crashes on e g alphastation 255 with certain graphics
> adapters.
From: "Huehls, Mark R." <huehlsm_at_INDY.NAVY.MIL>
DEC Unix, the base system, has limited support for graphics cards.
OPEN3D provides the support software drivers for the more capable
graphics cards. If you have one of the cards supported by O3D then you
need the license and to load the software to get graphics support. If
you have the standard DEC shipped with, not and upgrade, video card you
don't need it.
From: Steve VanDevender <stevev_at_hexadecimal.uoregon.edu>
The main reason I've found to install it is that it comes with X
video drivers that don't crash your system (who knows why DEC
can't ship those with the OS itself . . . ). If you have a
system that crashes when you do certain things in X then you only
really need to install the drivers for your system and the
minimum number of dependent subsets. In fact, with recent
versions of OPEN3D I've been able to install the driver I need
(ZLXp2-E) and take out the Base and Config OPEN3D subsets
afterwards.
From: "Dr. Tom Blinn, 603-884-0646" <tpb_at_zk3.dec.com>
Open3D is a software product that includes two major functional areas:
1) Hardware support for a list of 3D graphics options that are either not
fully supported or not supported at all by the base system software (which
has 2D support for just about everything, but some things need extra code
that is only in the Open3D product)
2) Software support for developing and running 3D graphics applications.
If the systems you've got don't have 3D graphics cards, or the applications
you run don't do 3D functions, then you probably don't need Open3D and if so
you probably should not install it.
Like every software product (including DIGITAL UNIX), there is a Software
Product Description for Open3D that is available both on the distribution
media and on Digital's web sites. You can read it. The Open3D software
also comes with documentation that explains its installation and use. You
can read it.
I am not sure that it still applies, but in 3.0 OSF/1, the OPEN3D
product was required to support the more powerful grapics cards,
since the base functionality did not support the graphics subsystems
on those cards. For that reason, we were forced to purchase OPEN3D
licenses for about 130 Alpha 3000/300x workstations in our network.
Things may have changed since then.
--
Don Ritchey
Received on Mon Feb 23 1998 - 16:07:23 NZDT