Introduction

Look's better than the original, doesn't it?

Recently, we had the opportunity to interview Paul Magee and Jonathan Trainor of x-3dfx (www.x3dfx.com). Who is x-3dfx? What is that little "x" doing in front of the "good old" 3dfx? Your questions will be answered thoroughly by the end of this article, I promise. The interview might differ a bit from the typical interviews you are used to (with PR people... so no questions on the NV20, that won't be answered anyway... sorry, Brian & Derek :)), since - as a programmer myself - I wanted to show you the inners of the lives of people, whom we tend to forget in the ongoing flaming for the best videocard: the writers of the drivers, the software development team. Enter x-3dfx:

Note: our questions are in italic, red. Also, do NOT start beating on 3dfx, x-3dfx, Paul or Johnny about this interview. We have interviewed two developers, all opinions herein are their/ours, and NOT 3dfx's or x-3dfx's!

Márton: Could you tell us a little bit about yourselves: who are you, what have you done at 3dfx, what are you doing at x-3dfx now?

Paul: Hi, I'm Paul, until recently a Software Engineer for the 3dfx Belfast Software Engineering Division.

I originally was employed as a placement student (intern) for STB Systems, before the company was bought by 3dfx, and now am amongst the group of engineers in Belfast, Northern Ireland, who suddenly found themselves redundant :). I have worked on a broad range of products including the MVP Series of cards from STB (4 x Riva128s) for the professional market, STB Velocity 4400, 3dfx Voodoo3, Voodoo5, Rampage.

Johnny: I'm Johnny. My alias is bod, who was a children's cartoon character form the early eighties ;-). I was also a Software Engineer in the 3dfx Belfast office.

I joined the STB Systems Belfast office shortly after it opened about 3 and a half years ago. Initially I spent a lot of time working on the tools team, which involved mostly application work. I later transferred to Sustaining Engineering, where I was responsible for updating and maintaining drivers for the current products. Just before the closure of the Belfast office I had started the process of transferring to developer relations work.

A cikk még nem ért véget, kérlek, lapozz!