Study of an Archaic Master's Thesis

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Study of an Archaic Master's Thesis

On this page: {Overview} {Luupidi's abstract} {The cost then!} {Review of the existing problem} {Alternative Platforms (Candidate Machines)} {Support Peripherals} {Nortel Experiences} {Notes} Next: Overview. {Back to the TOP of this page}

Overview

The purpose of this document is to review and analyse the thesis of Anthony Francis Lupidi: "Criteria for the development of an Artist's Computer Studio" Which was submitted 1987 (Autumn) at Ohio State University. Further the intent of this paper is to see how the *then* state-of-the-art projects can be viewed in the present, post-9/11 era, almost 20 years later.

Thesis Abstract

Lupidi's thesis statement: This thesis documents a systems level approach to the design and implementation of a computer graphics studio for the instruction of artists. Hardware, software and over-all design strategies are examined for a viable graphics environment. A short review of the development of an Amiga Studio for artists is given. A discussion of the original environment criteria for the Amiga stuid is presented. Through-out, the reasoning behind how and why certain decisions were made is exposed. Further, ancedotal data re-counts the strengths and deficienciees of this original studio degisn. Modifications made to the original proposal are discussed. Finally, possible future directions in hardware, software and design considerations for art studio environments are considered.

Then costs...

It is interesting to note the proposed equipment and their costs (summarised from LUPIDI, Pp.51)
 Each work station (14 max) (all prices in $ US, 1987)  .

 $1295 Amiga computer
   495 RGB Monitor
   195 Amiga 256K expanded memory cartridge
  2000 2 Meg expanded Ram
   995 20 Meg Hard Drive
   299 Lattice C Compiler !
   125 Amiga Text Editor 
    10 Mousepad
  ====
 $4570 (discounted price)     
     

 In addition, the proposal includes a central workstation
 ("development station) which in addition to the above,
 would include:

 $2000  2 Meg additional RAM
   595  3/4" Tape Drive
   240  Epson Printer w/cable
    34
 =====
 $6300
Next: Reviewing the Problem.

Reviewing the Problem

The existing labs were equiped with Apple II's and were seen to be limited. A decision to upgrade the under-graduate labs with equipment to the level being used by the graduate students was made; these were DEC (Digital Equipment Corp; now (since 1998) a fully-owned subsidiary of COMPAQ -- resistance is futile!) This is also refered to the VAX -- which is DEC's distributed/time-sharing computing enviorment). [Note 1] Also, and interesting statement: "THe next step [after creating a budget and i/f'g with the IRCC agency which would finance, create, and staff the lab], was to develop a new specification for this studio. I will use the term studio instead of the term laboratory for this environment. This environment was to be used for instructing students in the College of the Arts. We wanted an artist's studio, and not a research lab." [Op.cit, P.6] (After all, *we* all know that *those* artists don't ever do any research and devleopment ;) And again, with: "The importance of environment is paramount. The working environment has a strong impact on the type and quantity of work done by the artists. The excellent environment is one that is conducive to creativity which fosters new and truly experimental work, in an *aesthetic sense*." [italics mine; Op.cit, P.8] This charmingly naive view of "what-ever it is that artists do" is treuly endearing. However, it again suffers from "the technologist" view of what the limiting factors are. True, when new technology is made available, artists are sure to "try it out"; eg, Pollock's use of house-hold enamel paints, Stella's use of acrylics, Hesse's use of epoxies (which subsequently killed her), and of course Sherman's use of modern film technolgies, etc. Regardless, *experimental work is *never* limited to technology, it might be "to be envisioned", but we're not going to wait around for anti-gravity technology to create seemingly weightless sculpture, etc. True, the development of perspective *was* definitely a tech development (DaVinci, et al), but the *subject* matter of the paintings was *still* limited to what the then-view of what art "is", not by limitations of technology. This *is* and interesting line of reasoning, and bears more discussion. The primary goal seems to be to give 3-d graphics capability to the lab. The cost limitations led to restricting colors to 32, "The computer should have a fair amount of color. In computer graphics, a general rule of thumb is the more displayable color, the better. At the time, (late 1985), thirty-two colors were deemed more than adequate". [Op.Cit, P.9] Deemed by whom? Surely, Shirley, not by non-colour blind artists! All right, keep your 32 colors. Just give us Red, Yellow, Blue, White and Black, and four good greys (including Paynes, 18% neutral, and you choose any two others). And then give us line that don't have all of that zig-zaggy thing going on. (Sheesh, i'd settle for a good color wheel primary and secondary, black, white and the 4 greys!) BTW: Don't take too much of this too seriously, i'm simply toying (as would any time travelor) with the past and its surliness about THE FUTURE. (After 9/11, nothing is certain; well, other than a *certain* duck of course ;) Other desirabel criteria included: Expandability, inter-work with existing or other systems, new hard ware options; eg, pen plotter, video digitisers, extra memory, etc. Also, a primary consideration was "porting" the existing C programs (graphics, etc) over to the target systems -- with mimimum down-grading, re-development, etc. Next: Reviewing -- Platforms. {Back to the TOP of this page}

Alternative Platforms

(Candidate Machines)

(So, like would a maytag washer qualify? ;) The main criteria of "replicability" [Op.Cit, P.9] is one of the work's strongest points. At this point (Pp.10&ff) the various existing systems are examined for their viability as the h/w platform: AT&T 7300 Unix PC -- No colour, slow (1/3 speed of the VAX), required a 40 Meg Hard Drive (requiring an upgrade from the std 20 Meg H/D). Work-arounds using the AT&T 6300 (colour, but no unix) were examined and abandoned, mainly due to no colour). Macintosh micros -- no colour at that time, also could not be expanded. Various IBM micros's -- Limited to 640K and 16 colours, etc. Amiga -- 32 colours but in mode, all 4,096 colours were avail. Fast graphics chips, native C system, The native O/S was not Unix, but did support multi-tasking. "It seemed at that time, that it would be fairly straight-forward to port the ACCAD [existing S/W base] software to this system. This did not turn out to be the case, but we didn't know it then". [Op.Cit, P.12] Alas, we never do; we never do. Next: Reviewing - Peripherals. {
Back tot he TOP of this page}

Support Peripherals

Since the primary purpose of the system was graphics, and a driving criteria for animation was also part of the system requirements,
"The computer needed some type of mass storage, floppy disks would not be enough. Since were interested in three-dimensional animation, farily larger amounts of fast mass storage were needed. Animation takes lots of disk space. The machines need hard disks to save pre-calculated animation programs on-line to get the maximum speed and performance from each workstation". -- [Op.Cit, P.13] This brings up an important point: The limited availability of h/w for a given platform. Once, they had made the decison to go with the Amiga [Note 2] they were pretty much limited to what-ever peripherals were available that were compatable. For animation, a 16mm film camera was hooked up to the computer and the animation filmed and then sent to standard processing. This method lost color quality. [Op.Cit, P.13] Using the VAX to render the images, required expensive equipment. Finally the Sony BVU-800 Singel Fram 3/4" recording deck was selected at a cost of $12_000 US (1985). The recording station would be controlled from an IBM PC. This points up the fact that they were trying to develop an essentially state-of-the-art system at minimum cost and maximum capabilites. What limited them was the limited number of manufacturers and the platforms that were available. As such, the lower cost of the video rendering system ($12K vs a more usual price of $100K), forced them to purchase an additional computer, since the S/W and H/W interfaces had been developed on that platform rather than the Amiga. It is interesting to note, that there are *still* Amiga systems in existence and being used! The problem is that the mega-lithic PC market began to dominate, with of course Bill Gates and MicroSoft at the helm of that drive. DOS and Windows could certainly have been ported to other platforms, but then MicroSoft has never been innovative, mostly waiting for other companies to "show the way" and then jump on the band wagon and pretend that that was the direction that they were going all along. A similar story with TI. [Note 03] Next: Software. {Back to the TOP of this page}
Next: Notes.

Notes

[1] Just prior to that time, DEC's main-stay was the PDP-8 mini-computer. With the advent of LSI technology, they had developed the LSI-11 chip that considerably upgraded the technology. Refer to Osborne, Volume-2, "Some Real Microprocessors" (possibly out of print). {Back to the TEXT} [2] At the time that the Amiga came out, the Motorola M68000 chip had just come into existence. Based on the awesome capabilities of the M6800 chip's architecture, it featured memory mapped I/O, video, as well as support for high-level language features; eg, special machine instructions to support context saving, multiple fifo and lifo stacks, etc. Thus, its savy internal design made it a much more appealing micro than the main competitors of the time. For example the Zilog Z-8000 was a kludged expansion of the Z-80, the 8085 was the best attempt of the 8086 to create better H/W instructions (a severe limitation of not only the 8088, but the 8086). It's not until the 80186 and then the 80286 that the H/W issues and expanded memory were finally addressed. When the Amiga first appeared, Nortel was just beginning to integrate the M68000 into a *few* of our peripheral cards, replacing the stretched-to-the-limit 8085 chip, as well as a powerful, special-purpose custom processor that was Nortel proprietary. Programming was done ina language called "Protel" that was roughly a spin-off of Ada, as well as assembly language. The chip's primary architecture was stack based, and there were attempts to implement Forth on the system as well. The systems high-level operating system was based on the IBM mainframe (System 370/VM) using CMS and a spin-off of a basic-like language called EXEC-2. Needless to say, S/W development was lagging behind, since the 8085 supported polling as its main interrupt model; spontaneous, un-announced interrupts in a real time operating system can cause disastrous results. As such, even though the M68000 supported 8 of the 11 interrupt models, it was *still* being programmed as if it only supported polling. This caused the systems to be only slightly more effective than the 8085 systems. On a personal note, we all thought the Amiga was fantastic -- having heard so much good stuff about it and the music world, let alone the graphics! {Back to the TEXT} [3] In the case of TI, its early histroy of innovation is what led to its subsequent back-seat to new products. TI created the chip (or least one of its more creative drones ;) ??name??, and then proceeded to create calculators, micro-computers, and even digital watches. But, the cost of "being first" allowed other companies to take the concepts and if not directly reverse engineering (much of which *was* going on), cut through quickly to single-target designs that were sure to turn a profit. TI offered many different models in each line -- which were competeing with each other, as well as other similarly high-quality products. Later their products would compete with poor-er quality, but much lower-priced products. The fall out of this, is that after a while the bean-counters (and the bottom line) took control and when new products were offered, they were often behind the times and not very forward thinking when they did appear. {Back to the TEXT}