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Date:      Fri, 2 Jun 1995 18:35:48 -0700
From:      jkh@violet.berkeley.edu (Jordan K. Hubbard)
To:        hardware@FreeBSD.org
Message-ID:  <199506030135.SAA13134@violet.berkeley.edu>

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Path: agate!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!usc!news.cerf.net!nntp-server.caltech.edu!nntp-server.caltech.edu!ernst
From: ernst@kuk.klab.caltech.edu (Ernst Niebur)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Is this a good configuration for a serious image processing system?
Date: 01 Jun 1995 19:27:57 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 55
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <ERNST.95Jun1122757@kuk.klab.caltech.edu>
Reply-To: ernst@klab.caltech.edu
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Xref: agate comp.os.linux.hardware:11527 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:2449 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:690


Hi everyone,

we are in the process of putting together a somewhat serious image
processing system. We need to grab moving images (we have already a
video camera) and then do processing on them. At present, we use Sun
workstations which do the processing fine, but the video capture sucks
big time (we need real-time capturing, at least for quarter-size
images, which probably requires on-board compression). Since I have
Linux running on my notebook for some time already and since I am
extremely happy with it, we will go with either Linux or with
Free/netBSD.

The following is a configuration we put together and we would purchase
very soon if no problems show up. Does anybody see any problems with
it? One of the important constraints is that we need to transfer data
from the video capture board to disk real fast, ie at frame rate.

Thanks for your input!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

- Super-Micro Pentium PCI Triton 256k cache motherboard - ref. P55CWA
- CPU Intel P120 w/cooler
- 64 Mb RAM, as 70ns 72pin 16Mb or 32Mb (not always available) SIMMs
- OEM AMD LANCE PCI 10baseT ethernet board
- OEM S3 968 video board with max VRAM
- 3-button serial mouse
- 17 " Microscan 5EP-MPR2+EPA/.28
- disk: either a 1275Mb Conner 10ms EIDE (CFS1275A) with the EIDE controller
on the triton motherboard, or a fast wide SCSI-II. What would be the
fastest possible ? Is the NCR SCSI PCI 53c8xx (which xx?) a good choice
for a really fast controller ? What popular SCSI-II drives are really fast ?

Would this be ok for a combination of Linux/XFree86/NetBSD/FreeBSD ?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh, btw, the careful reader will have noticed that we don't include a
frame grabber (with which our switch to Linux/xBSD started in the
first place). The reason is that we haven't yet found one which is
powerful enough and which has a driver for Linux/xBSD. There is a
Linux driver for the old Videoblaster but that card is -- well, just
old. Haven't yet found a better one for which a driver exists. In the
worst case, we will write one ourselves.

Thanks again!

--Ernst

--
Ernst Niebur                              Phone (818)395 2880
Computation and Neural Systems            Fax   (818)796 8876
Caltech 139-74                            ernst@caltech.edu
Pasadena, CA 91125, USA                   



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