Hi Wei, Tom,

I had the Nvidia 3D vision system working on Ubuntu 14/16, the following instructions were very helpful:
http://eigenvaluables.blogspot.ca/2011/10/installing-nvidia-3d-vision-on-ubuntu.html

I am actually not sure if it was on 14 or 16, I set it up years ago so it’s a bit of a blur, but it worked well for many years. Just this year I tried to upgrade to 18 (to use ChimeraX, which doesn’t seem to work with 14/16?) but on this version I could not get it to work using the method above.

I then installed Windows 10, and on this it works well with both Chimera and ChimeraX, but I had to use an older driver for the Quadro card, still downloadable from the Nvidia site, it’s version 392.58. With newer drivers it did not work. I haven’t tried going back to a similar older driver with Ubuntu 18/20, not sure if it’s possible, but maybe that could make it work.

Let us know how it works for you, and if you manage to get it working with 18/20 especially. If you try 14/16 or Windows 10 and have problems let me know, I can try to dig up more details if needed. I suspect that since drivers have dropped the support it may be harder and harder to keep it going as Tom said. 

Regards,

Greg



On Oct 30, 2020, at 12:38 AM, Wei Zhang <zhangwei@umn.edu> wrote:

Tom,

Thank you for these suggestions. I will look into these options.

Best regards,

Wei

On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 8:58 PM Tom Goddard <goddard@sonic.net> wrote:
Hi Wei,

  I'd suggest using Ubuntu 20.04, the latest Ubuntu, the current Chimera 1.14 or daily build will work fine on that.   I am not certain that Quadro FX 4800 graphics drivers will be available for Ubuntu 20, probably they will be, but you might want to look for that online before proceeding.  That graphics cards is very old, from 2008.

  The other thing to know is that Nvidia discontinued support for Nvidia 3D Vision stereo glasses in 2019

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4845

meaning those glasses and emitter will no longer work using just the current Nvidia graphics driver.  But they claim that there is a separate driver for the USB emitter that allows it to work.


I have not tried it.  If you get it to work I'd be interested in hearing about it since we have an old Nvidia 3D Vision system.

Tom


On Oct 29, 2020, at 6:41 PM, Wei Zhang <zhangwei@umn.edu> wrote:

Hi Tom,

Hope everything is well.

One university's computer lab recently retired some workstations that were used for 3D visualization before. I managed to get a couple workstations with the 3D glasses and emitters. But I need to reinstall the operating system on those machines.

The graphic card of the workstation is Nvidia Quadro FX4800.
The emitter is NVIDIA P854.
The glasses are NVIDIA-P854 and ViewSonic-PGD250.

I plan to install Ubuntu. I am wondering  which version of Ubuntu is suitable for using UCSF Chimera. Do we need to install cuda to make it work? Do we need to install an older version of Chimera?

Sorry I just sent the message to you to follow the previous chain of conversation. Shall I email the chimera-user in the future with such questions?

Thank you,

Wei


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