The collected works of webweave

I worked with Barco software and hardware at a few different companies. It was always client/server with the server being huge DEC VMS refrigerator sized multiprocessor giants and the clients being SGI workstations with special video cards and accelerator cards and huge beautiful Barco monitors. I'll dig up some photos if anyone wants to see. Sometimes the files were stored on yet another server often a huge AIX machine. We also used a NeXT cube with a huge gray scale monitor only to preview PostScript images, it had no other function in the shop.

When you started work you would log into the server and push X for the application you want to run. These were rock solid systems and did amazing work. The vector art system we used was developed for GIS data and had no problems dealing with the huge documents we were working on. Macs would crash trying to open them.

I really enjoyed working in these high end environments and got out just as windows was starting to appear there.

These photos show my office with the then brand new Mac TiBook running an early version of OSX before the shop converted.
On the desk you can see a copy of Barco STRIKE!, looks like version 2.1 Strike! is the vector art companion to Barco Creator, we just called it Brix or lwbrix.



In the second shot you can see the front of the Octane, they didn't come with video cards and this one had been upgraded to a huge Barco video card to run that huge Barco monitor, it also had one accelerator card. The Octane ran stand alone applications as this was my development/pilot system. The O2's ran client/server from the VMS server. That Octane was every bit as heavy as the monitor beside it and that isn't even the biggest monitor, just look at how sturdy my desk is, it was made for hardware like this! The down side was I had to get someone to help if I needed to move it, did SGI make these things from cast iron? I think I've got a Duke Nukem window open on the Octane.

Thanks, the photos are from 2002 and were some of the earliest I had in iPhoto so they were taken with a digital camera, it says a Kodak digital camera but I don't remember, I was documenting the shop before some renovations and just happened to snap them.

You can't open anything? I don't remember the little details but they weren't too friendly to differing formats, you had to stick pretty close to the book with these. Try to save the same file with many different settings and see if you can get one open. If not you're likely missing some libraries or links.

I got a friend who I gave all my Barco stuff to when we shut down, he's built quite the Barco Graphic museum so he might have an idea. He ran a couple of Barco Rotogravure shops.

He recommends the same thing I did, "do other tiffs work? do other formats work (EPS, non-layered PSDs)?"

Will it open any image?
Will it open a .CVW?
Can you create a new image?

Good question modology. I believe its worthy of a book examining how such specialized industry tools became the pablum for the masses. I don't possess any of the hardware or software anymore so I can't get you any screenshots but I'm planning a trip to my parents house and will look through what I have in storage as I'm sure I kept something interesting.

I took the training courses at Barco in Ohio and operated two different Barco shops in the 90's. Both jobs were so specialized that I believe you'd have trouble to duplicate our work today. Line Works (Brix?) I think was the name of the vector art package, you'd just type LW in a terminal to get it going. Barco told me the line work package was originally developed for GIS data which is basically geographical mapping software and not for painting pretty pictures. They sold it to huge architectural firms and large cities to create complex maps and keep track of utility lines, they weren't really trying to sell it to graphics shops as few applications existed that required it so I don't know how widely it was used. In one shop we used it to create images for security documents which were output to either a diamond cylinder engraver, a Barco Graphics SECUSETTER (legendary for imaging over 10,000dpi.) or a Xeikon DCP 50D.

There was another Barco package that could automate the graphic packages with a data base. It was kind of like Automator and Photoshop Actions on steroids. It had some name like PrintStreamer, I haven't thought about it in years but from what I recall it could read any database available to the host machine, the host being an SGI or a VAX server (maybe even the AIX server). You'd open a document in Barco's version of the page layout tool and you'd draw out boxes and give each one a name. The list of names would appear and you'd link them to the data you want to display there, like some mail merge software. We produced hundreds of thousands of documents and each one unique except for the return address, all keyed to information pulled from the db. I make it sound easy but it could change any and all parts of the document and it could run a double sided 7 color digital web press (the DCP 50D) full speed for hours,days even at a time.

To have access to all this gear and more was awe inspiring to say the least.

I billed myself as a startup specialist with a background in physics so projects either went into full production and I left or they failed and I left, either way I was gone. The security printing company ended when the founder had a bout of anxiety brought on by hiring good people who did their jobs, classic "insecurity". He panic attacked in front of the main investment bank's rep, not good. I knew we were done as I watched him throw a fit in a full board room meeting. Too bad as we were on target for all our projects and had won numerous awards and I spent tons of time getting us ready for a move to a full production plant. I stopped going in when the checks stopped which was longer than expected, the move never happened.

The other shop was in Saudi Arabia. The owner built a good sized conventional printing operation and made the jump to a full digital facility but none of his new stuff worked and he was going bankrupt. An associate who was the sales specialist for one piece of equipment happened to sit next to him on a plane to Vancouver. The guy was certain that the gear didn't work and he had been screwed. Well the guy who was sitting next to him was responsible for hundreds of installs and someone he knew (me) had experience getting everything else he had working. We went there, got everything working (that's my desk in the photo above) and expanded the shop many times until he lost interest. People with lots of money and not much else are susceptible to chasing shiny objects when you need them to focus.

I just looked at the Barco pages on wikipedia, (thanks luchford) and a lot of that information is wrong or is written to not include what I knew about the company. I don't have any documents to prove my accusations so don't want to edit it but Barco made lots of unix hardware right up until the end and I don't see any reference to it and they had lots of tech relationships with manufacturers of other specialised equipment. We had a bunch of it so I know it existed. And there's no mention of their work in gravure printing which was major.

When computing was controlled by people of science it was a good world to work in. When accountants took over I just wanted out. Here's one example, when I had a problem with unix gear and I'm not just talking Barco here I had a list of phone numbers of engineers who I could call and get immediate answers, did anyone improve on that today? If I had a problem with a "system" I could get reps in from all the vendors for a meeting and actually solve the problem, has anyone had a rep from Microsoft at a problem solving meeting? I had a VMS server that hadn't been rebooted in almost ten years! I had contact with the guy who last rebooted it and he would review my proposed changes before I implemented them, for FREE because he liked the machine and was proud I was still on his "session". You don't get much pride when all your gear is designed to last 18 months.

You go where the opportunities are and once you start to travel the world its not so scary. That part of the world is changing fast and to get a chance to live there and see some of it is something a traveller doesn't turn down.Anyway by 2003 the North American economy had slowed down and startups we're fewer and smaller. Our offer was to build a kick ass facility using our experience and talent and somebody else's money, that's hard to say no to especially when most of the gear I needed was already there. Our offices were in the same building as the local Sun, SGI and MS offices were in but we had a better location and our own entrance with a marble parking lot. I had to fly in and out often so I never had to spend any more than six weeks at a time there and over two years it goes fast. The drink thing is not as strict as they make it seem, imagine a country where everyone is under 21. I went there with money and connections, had a nice stable of cars to choose from, a deluxe 2000 sq. ft. villa in a private walled compound and tons of bored expat nurses. I don't agree with their system but its their system and if I don't want them coming here telling me what to do then I shouldn't do the same thing. How many people do you know who have dived the wrecks of the red sea? Travel is fun, even if its scary.

I worked in a graphics shop in the late '90s that had the biggest ANS that was fully loaded with memory and RAID. It was used for serving up images between Macs, NeXT workstations and server, SGI workstations and our Barco VMS server and print streamer. It was located in a dedicated server room and hummed along for many years.

ClassicHasClass wrote: What did you use for file serving services? Was it the Mylex RAID card?

It wasn't my shop I was just an operator but as I remember we bought a larger system and they gave us the AWS in the package. I'm also pretty sure it had two raid cards with four drives on each card. We had millions of dollars of gear floating around in those days and support contracts used to cost a whole lot of money, you didn't really buy the software on these high end systems, you paid for them to keep it going.

It used to be hard to get one server to speak to a number of different workstations and other servers simultaneously and the AWS did this really well especially if you had a bunch of macs.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Barco-Creat ... 1185097599

Someone has made a book on Creator, the description sounds kind of odd. Wish I still had my Barco training binders.

I've been out of town for a while and had to clear out some storage lockers and low and behold I found some vintage Barco documents. I'm NOT talking about pirated software. I was licensed by Barco and the documents are "ORIGINAL BARCO" and came with a licensed system, just so you know I'm not trying to break any rules here.

The system was for a full Barco Strike! package running stand alone on an SGI Octane. This was for a prototyping/demo system that I kept in my office and was occasionally wheeled out if needed somewhere in the shop, I remember the Xeikon DCP needing a jump start a few times. I had other Barco equipment and licenses plus I consulted to other shops that used various Barco systems so I certainly wasn't a pirate.

Anyway I found it and still have it and was wondering if anyone had any ideas if I should keep it? All this Barco graphic arts software was abandoned over fifteen years ago and the narrow range of hardware capable of running it was also abandoned about the same time. I wish there was a statute of limitations on software, even US patents only last 20 years and Strike! was released in 1993 making it over 22 years old. Barco Graphics died and Adobe won, we're not able to preserve history?