A Stumble Down Memory Lane


Page 1 of 1
 
 

Post A Stumble Down Memory Lane

#1  GrouchoCaesar 05 Mar 2008 22:22

I upgraded my PC slightly over the last couple of weeks - more memory (finally got 1 Gb of RAM under the hood) and a new DVD burner.

The RAM is pleasant, and makes using photoshop and Poser at the same time a useful thing as opposed to a painful wait-fest.

But it's the new burner that has given me an unexpected boost.

My old, faithful Pioneer burner burnt discs reliably, if a little slow.  But it had a flaw - it couldn't read most of the DVD-R discs that it wrote! The discs were fine, and could be read by any other DVD-ROM drive in the house, just not by the burner that created them.  A small inconvenience when I can just read discs over the network using my sister's laptop.  (Just think of it as a really juiced-up external drive!)

Once I got my new DVD Burner, I checked them all out, and they were all readable. Then I decided to catalog them by the date they were created.  All my current back-ups were catalogued from mid-2006. But I hadn't bothered going through a lot of my older discs, the ones I burnt while preparing to move back to NZ from Oz.

(A not-so-little background history:

At the time, I had just under a thousand discs - Magazine cover-discs, clip-art CD-ROMs and my CD-R backups mostly - and didn't relish the idea of hauling the whole lot back over via air - too expensive.  So I made ISO images of them all, copied the images to DVD-Rs.  By editing the ISO images to prune out any stuff I didn't need (cover-discs are notorious for excess fluff and demos of software you'll never use) I managed to squeeze my entire collection of discs down to 80 DVD-R discs.  I could take the whole lot onto the flight home as carry-on luggage - which I did!

Of course nowadays I could just lob everything onto an pocket-sized external HDD drive... but I digress.)

So.. the reason for this thread.  While cataloging this data, I stumbled across a whole bunch of my old.. really old... (down-right decrepit, actually) object files for my first real software love: Imagine, by Impulse Software.

Imagine was one of the first fully-functional, usable consumer 3D programs out there.  It was written for the Amiga, and was a re-write of an early program called Turbo Silver.
It was ported over to PC DOS for a couple of versions, and even ported to Windows NT and Windows 2000.

Now... Imagine 4.0 for DOS was released as a freebie a while back by Impulse when their Windows version came out.  Quite powerful considering it's age, if a somewhat quirky interface.  (They ported over the software EXACTLY as it was on the Amiga, including a couple of interface bugs... sheesh.)

Then Impulse moved to Nevada, started writing slot-machine software and abandoned the PC versions - DOS and Windows - completely.  It is still (theoretically) under development for the Amiga OS, and is now up to version 6, I understand.

I, after wandering through some of my old data on CD-R, decided to see what had become of Imagine... so fired up Google, found a few sites and went poking around.  Turns out, one of the main programmers of the software has given permission for the Imagine for Windows binaries to be distributed as-is, with a view to eventually putting the source code out as an open source project for others to continue with.

The practical upshot of which is this: I've just downloaded it! Wheee!

Why would I do that, when I've got newer, more modern software?

Imagine is a ray-tracer, and quite powerful at that... and I'm just curious how fast it'll do renders on my PC now... considering I originally used an Amiga 500 that chugged along at 7.14Mhz and my PC zips along now at a quite respectable 2.48Ghz...

(I just loaded the biggest .IOB (Imagine OBject) file I could find - a highly detailed version of  Voyager (go, Janeway!) and my PC didn't even stop to swallow the thing... Quick Render done before my finger even left the Render key... Bloody Hell!)

The other reason I'm taking a look at the Windows version is that Imagine has a very powerful object editor... there are still times I'll load the DOS version in DOSBox to build something that would be fiddly to do in MAX.  I've been able to import Posette and Vicky and use them, and that was with the older DOS version.  If I can find a WaveFront OBJ plug-in, I would be very happy using this for creation/altering meshs for Poser.  (It does deal with 3DS, DXF and LWO directly).

Any comments about my sanity...?
 




____________
Am I the only one who thinks they named it Windows because it is a major pane? BA-DUM BOOM!!
 
avatar
new_zealand.png GrouchoCaesar Gender: Male
Forums Veteran
Forums Veteran
Life + 1
Life + 1
 
Joined: November 2006
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 351
Tomatoes 3170
Lemons 1807
hearts 45

  • Back to top Page bottom
 

Post Re: A Stumble Down Memory Lane

#2  ahjah 06 Mar 2008 00:05

Sounds interesting
Quote:
The practical upshot of which is this: I've just downloaded it! Wheee!

Is there a link???
(about your sanity, what would you say abut grown up men playing with dolls in general?    )
 




____________
Image
 
Last edited by ahjah on 06 Mar 2008 00:06; edited 1 time in total 
avatar
blank.gif ahjah Gender: Male
Posette enthusiast
Posette enthusiast
Life + 1
Life + 1
Chief
Chief
Old Timer
Old Timer
 
Joined: April 2003
Location: detmold/germany
Posts: 2801
Tomatoes 4160
Lemons 519
hearts 2130

  • Back to top Page bottom
 

Post 

#3  Posy 06 Mar 2008 00:05

Yes it sounds like it to me too,
 




____________
I won the Loebner prize !
 
avatar
it.png Posy Gender: Female
Posette enthusiast
Posette enthusiast
Life + 1
Life + 1
Renderosity Ban
Renderosity Ban
 
Joined: July 2003
Location: Pantigliate
Posts: 5073
Tomatoes 50470
Lemons 26123
hearts 99

  • Back to top Page bottom
 

Post Re: A Stumble Down Memory Lane

#4  GrouchoCaesar 06 Mar 2008 05:45

Ahhh... poo.  I knew I forgot something.

Back to the day of steam-driven pixels...

You have to register with the site in order download anything (Hmmmm... sounds familar!).  There is the software itself, a bunch of documentation (The IFiles PDF is very comprehensive and easy to follow), a heap of extra procedural textures to grab, some demonstration videos, and a small library of objects in .IOB format.  There are a lot more objects out there on the net, and plenty of converters available.  I've got a reasonably large library of PD .IOB objects as well...

I recommend you get the software and the IFiles PDF first and have a play.  I started setting up some of my old scenes up this morning - what I loaded rendered quickly, and the interface is nice and fast. I still have a bunch of filepaths to alter, and my old Amiga-formatted texturemaps to convert... but by tomorrow I'll have something really start experimenting with.
 




____________
Am I the only one who thinks they named it Windows because it is a major pane? BA-DUM BOOM!!
 
avatar
new_zealand.png GrouchoCaesar Gender: Male
Forums Veteran
Forums Veteran
Life + 1
Life + 1
 
Joined: November 2006
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 351
Tomatoes 3170
Lemons 1807
hearts 45

  • Back to top Page bottom
 

Post Re: A Stumble Down Memory Lane

#5  ahjah 06 Mar 2008 17:35

   Thanks a lot, I think i'll have a look at it. I like ancient software, it's more easy to get an overview in most cases, cos they're limited to the functions you realy need, without all bells and whistles (I'm still missing my old Poser3. Only took the step to P6, cos P3 didn't like 1G memory...)
 




____________
Image
 
avatar
blank.gif ahjah Gender: Male
Posette enthusiast
Posette enthusiast
Life + 1
Life + 1
Chief
Chief
Old Timer
Old Timer
 
Joined: April 2003
Location: detmold/germany
Posts: 2801
Tomatoes 4160
Lemons 519
hearts 2130

  • Back to top Page bottom
 

Post Re: A Stumble Down Memory Lane

#6  Tormie 06 Mar 2008 20:12

Thank you Groucho, I'll try it too... I only hope that the site is not in NZ because I'll have to turn the monitor upside down in the case ...
 




____________
 
avatar
it.png Tormie Gender: Male
Posette enthusiast
Posette enthusiast
Life + 1
Life + 1
Renderosity Ban
Renderosity Ban
 
Joined: March 2003
Posts: 8280
Tomatoes 72512
Lemons 50450
hearts 5031

  • Back to top Page bottom
 

Post Re: A Stumble Down Memory Lane

#7  GrouchoCaesar 06 Mar 2008 20:40

You couldn't just stand on your head...?!?
 




____________
Am I the only one who thinks they named it Windows because it is a major pane? BA-DUM BOOM!!
 
avatar
new_zealand.png GrouchoCaesar Gender: Male
Forums Veteran
Forums Veteran
Life + 1
Life + 1
 
Joined: November 2006
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 351
Tomatoes 3170
Lemons 1807
hearts 45

  • Back to top Page bottom
 

Post Re: A Stumble Down Memory Lane

#8  Tormie 06 Mar 2008 21:39

... too fat ...
 




____________
 
avatar
it.png Tormie Gender: Male
Posette enthusiast
Posette enthusiast
Life + 1
Life + 1
Renderosity Ban
Renderosity Ban
 
Joined: March 2003
Posts: 8280
Tomatoes 72512
Lemons 50450
hearts 5031

  • Back to top Page bottom
 

Post Re: A Stumble Down Memory Lane

#9  ahjah 06 Mar 2008 21:42

the head?
 




____________
Image
 
avatar
blank.gif ahjah Gender: Male
Posette enthusiast
Posette enthusiast
Life + 1
Life + 1
Chief
Chief
Old Timer
Old Timer
 
Joined: April 2003
Location: detmold/germany
Posts: 2801
Tomatoes 4160
Lemons 519
hearts 2130

  • Back to top Page bottom
 

Post Re: A Stumble Down Memory Lane

#10  GrouchoCaesar 06 Mar 2008 21:48

(tactful silence - with suppressed sniggering...)  
 




____________
Am I the only one who thinks they named it Windows because it is a major pane? BA-DUM BOOM!!
 
avatar
new_zealand.png GrouchoCaesar Gender: Male
Forums Veteran
Forums Veteran
Life + 1
Life + 1
 
Joined: November 2006
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 351
Tomatoes 3170
Lemons 1807
hearts 45

  • Back to top Page bottom
 

Post Re: A Stumble Down Memory Lane

#11  Tormie 06 Mar 2008 21:53

I tried but I farted ... And my farts are heavier than air ...
 




____________
 
avatar
it.png Tormie Gender: Male
Posette enthusiast
Posette enthusiast
Life + 1
Life + 1
Renderosity Ban
Renderosity Ban
 
Joined: March 2003
Posts: 8280
Tomatoes 72512
Lemons 50450
hearts 5031

  • Back to top Page bottom
 


HideWas this topic useful?
Link this topic
URL
BBCode
HTML
HideSimilar Topics
Topic Author Forum Replies Last Post
No new posts Not Enough Memory jwarndt 3D Nightmares... Or... The little sculptor 5 18 Apr 2014 02:09 View latest post
tda42
No new posts Addeing memory in Poser 5 tda42 3D Nightmares... Or... The little sculptor 56 10 Nov 2007 02:18 View latest post
Tormie

Page 1 of 1
 



Users browsing this topic: 0 Registered, 0 Hidden and 2 Visitors
Registered Users: None