id_notes/John C/1998-03-21

[idsoftware.com]

Welcome to id Software's Finger Service V1.4!

Name: John Carmack

Email: johnc@idsoftware.com

Description: Programmer

Project: Quake 2

Last Updated: 03/21/1998 14:16:12 (Central Standard Time)

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

All gone!

Paul Magyar gets the last (slightly broken) one.

Bob Farmer gets the third.

Philip Kizer gets the second one.

Kyle Bousquet gets the first one.

3/21

----

I just shut down the last of the NEXTSTEP systems running at id.

We hadn't really used them for much of anything in the past year, so it was

just easier to turn them off than to continue to administer them.

Most of the intel systems had already been converted to NT or 95, and

Onethumb gets all of our old black NeXT hardware, but we have four nice

HP 712/80 workstations that can't be used for much of anything.

If someone can put these systems to good use (a dallas area unix hacker),

you can have them for free. As soon as they are spoken for, I will update

my .plan, so check immediately before sending me email.

You have to come by our office (in Mesquite) and do a fresh OS install here

before you can take one. There may still be junk on the HD, and I can't

spend the time to clean them myself. You can run either NEXTSTEP 3.3 or

HP/UX. These are NOT intel machines, so you can't run dos or windows.

I have NS CD's here, but I can't find the original HP/UX CDs. Bring your

own if that's what you want.

I'm a bit nostalgic about the NeXT systems -- the story in the Id Anthology

is absolutely true: I walked through a mile of snow to the bank to pay for

our first workstation. For several years, I considered it the best

development environment around. It still has advantages today, but you

can't do any accelerated 3D work on it.

I had high hopes for rhapsody, but even on a top of the line PPC, it felt

painfully sluggish compared to the NT workstations I use normally, and

apple doesn't have their 3D act together at all.

Its kind of funny, but even through all the D3D/OpenGL animosity, I think

Windows NT is the best place to do 3D graphics development.