renderanything
Workstation Panorama
This has been my base of operations for nearly a year. Unfortunately, the business I work for is basically shuttered and on 8-13-10 I packed all of this up and put most of it into storage units.
I'll go into more detail here than in the notes, so on with the basics:
Custom built 3.066 GHz Core i7 machine w/ 12 GB ram running CentOS Linux on the left. This is my main workstation which is primarily used to run Maya 2010 and has both a 21.5" and 19" LCD monitors powered by an NVIDIA Quadro FX1800 card. No custom workstation would be complete without a vintage IBM Model M 'clicky' keyboard now would it? Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes, I am modeling a Lunar Module from the Apollo program.
In that same vicinity are my 1940s vintage Telechron red Bakelite wall clock that keeps perfectly accurate time and a Art Deco styled lady lamp named Isabel. Not pictured are my custom framed print by Andrew Bell and a 1970s vintage Honeywell computer advertisement featuring a dragon made of capacitors and chips. Also not seen, but just behind the two adjacent LCD monitors are a 7x100W Sony receiver and my turntable. These are hooked up to speakers which I placed in the ceiling grid above my desk.
Just to the right of that tower is a little white NAS box. That is a Synology DS209 with two 1TB Caviar Black drives in a RAID 1 array. This is networked storage available to each machine of the render farm for storing finished images.
Moving right from those we find an 8 port Gigabit ethernet switch for the render farm, and next a 4x KVM switch. The KVM switch connects four of the five towers on the ground to a single mouse, keyboard and 19" LCD monitor. These are the workhorses of my render farm and range from 64bit capable 3 GHz Pentium 4 machines to 3 GHz Athlon64 X2 ones. Each is maxed out with at least 4GB of ram to help handle large scenes.
Next to those is my now 'old' HP ZD8000 laptop. This was the portable workstation I bought in college. I ordered it with a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 and I managed to later stuff 4 GB of ram into the thing. It's running the Wacom Cintiq 20WSX tablet display to the immediate right. I use this machine for any Photoshop work, drawing and painting, as a spare Maya station and as a render farm slave when needed.
Continuing down the line we find my older laptop, a Compaq 1800 with a 1 GHz Pentium III processor and all of 320 MB of ram. This is the render master and assigns scenes to each of the render slaves.
Finally, the 17" LCD monitor on the right is hooked up to any of my three really old machines. I have a Gateway 2000 P5-75 with a 75 MHz Pentium running Windows 95, a GEM machine which has the faster 150 MHz Pentium and runs Windows NT then at last the Micron Millennia Pro2 200 Rev B which I've outfitted with dual 200 MHz Pentium Pro processors and a mind boggling 256 MB of ECC Buffered DIMM RAM so that I can truly get the most out of my Windows 98 experience. These machines are just there for fun and frustration. Ever tried finding Sound Blaster drivers for 15 year old computers? When I do I'll be playing Lemmings, Freddy Pharkas and Warcraft to no end.
In front of those vintage machines sits my record collection.
At the very end we find an IKEA Helmer cabinet to store all of the cables, bits, bobs etc.... and a vintage IBM PC Server 704 being used as a bookshelf and holding my HP scanner. Oh how I love anything put out by Ballistic Publishing.
I put a lot of work into making this setup ideal for the kind of work I do. I had a comfortable layout with ample space to glide from one machine to the other, I had a few toys and decorations to liven things up a bit, every last cable was hidden neatly using under desk trays from IKEA and I was able to work efficiently but still play a bit if need be. As I was dismantling it all I couldn't help thinking "what was the point?"
Workstation Panorama
This has been my base of operations for nearly a year. Unfortunately, the business I work for is basically shuttered and on 8-13-10 I packed all of this up and put most of it into storage units.
I'll go into more detail here than in the notes, so on with the basics:
Custom built 3.066 GHz Core i7 machine w/ 12 GB ram running CentOS Linux on the left. This is my main workstation which is primarily used to run Maya 2010 and has both a 21.5" and 19" LCD monitors powered by an NVIDIA Quadro FX1800 card. No custom workstation would be complete without a vintage IBM Model M 'clicky' keyboard now would it? Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes, I am modeling a Lunar Module from the Apollo program.
In that same vicinity are my 1940s vintage Telechron red Bakelite wall clock that keeps perfectly accurate time and a Art Deco styled lady lamp named Isabel. Not pictured are my custom framed print by Andrew Bell and a 1970s vintage Honeywell computer advertisement featuring a dragon made of capacitors and chips. Also not seen, but just behind the two adjacent LCD monitors are a 7x100W Sony receiver and my turntable. These are hooked up to speakers which I placed in the ceiling grid above my desk.
Just to the right of that tower is a little white NAS box. That is a Synology DS209 with two 1TB Caviar Black drives in a RAID 1 array. This is networked storage available to each machine of the render farm for storing finished images.
Moving right from those we find an 8 port Gigabit ethernet switch for the render farm, and next a 4x KVM switch. The KVM switch connects four of the five towers on the ground to a single mouse, keyboard and 19" LCD monitor. These are the workhorses of my render farm and range from 64bit capable 3 GHz Pentium 4 machines to 3 GHz Athlon64 X2 ones. Each is maxed out with at least 4GB of ram to help handle large scenes.
Next to those is my now 'old' HP ZD8000 laptop. This was the portable workstation I bought in college. I ordered it with a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 and I managed to later stuff 4 GB of ram into the thing. It's running the Wacom Cintiq 20WSX tablet display to the immediate right. I use this machine for any Photoshop work, drawing and painting, as a spare Maya station and as a render farm slave when needed.
Continuing down the line we find my older laptop, a Compaq 1800 with a 1 GHz Pentium III processor and all of 320 MB of ram. This is the render master and assigns scenes to each of the render slaves.
Finally, the 17" LCD monitor on the right is hooked up to any of my three really old machines. I have a Gateway 2000 P5-75 with a 75 MHz Pentium running Windows 95, a GEM machine which has the faster 150 MHz Pentium and runs Windows NT then at last the Micron Millennia Pro2 200 Rev B which I've outfitted with dual 200 MHz Pentium Pro processors and a mind boggling 256 MB of ECC Buffered DIMM RAM so that I can truly get the most out of my Windows 98 experience. These machines are just there for fun and frustration. Ever tried finding Sound Blaster drivers for 15 year old computers? When I do I'll be playing Lemmings, Freddy Pharkas and Warcraft to no end.
In front of those vintage machines sits my record collection.
At the very end we find an IKEA Helmer cabinet to store all of the cables, bits, bobs etc.... and a vintage IBM PC Server 704 being used as a bookshelf and holding my HP scanner. Oh how I love anything put out by Ballistic Publishing.
I put a lot of work into making this setup ideal for the kind of work I do. I had a comfortable layout with ample space to glide from one machine to the other, I had a few toys and decorations to liven things up a bit, every last cable was hidden neatly using under desk trays from IKEA and I was able to work efficiently but still play a bit if need be. As I was dismantling it all I couldn't help thinking "what was the point?"