MidasPlus: Supported Platforms

Navigation Bar

Supported Platforms

MidasPlus is supported on Silicon Graphics workstations, Digitial Equipment Alpha AXP workstations, and NeXT Computer workstations (see below for configuration details). We also currently provide binaries for IBM RS/6000 and Linux workstations, although these are unsupported since we lack any IBM hardware with which to test and maintain the software, and since Linux platforms are too heterogeneous in both hardware and software for us to do comprehensive testing and maintenance. It should also be possible to compile and run MidasPlus on any UNIX workstation that has Motif 1.2 and OpenGL, although if the workstation does not have 3D graphics hardware support performance is likely to be marginal.

SGI
The Silicon Graphics workstations use custom hardware to provide very high performance 3D graphics. Any model SGI with 24 or more bitplanes of graphics display memory and running IRIX release 5.3, or 6.2 or later should be capable of running the application binaries distributed with the MidasPlus software release. In addition, if you want to generate ribbon drawings for depicting secondary protein or DNA structure, you will need the Z buffer option.
DEC Alpha
Digital Equipment Alpha AXP workstations require OSF/1 version 3.2 or greater and the appropriate optional Open3D layered product. In particular, MidasPlus only works with 3D graphics cards that are supported by DEC's Open3D layered product. MidasPlus does not run on VAXstations nor DECstations.
NeXT
On the NeXT workstation, because of the lack of hardware support for doing three dimensional image rotations and translations, MidasPlus can effectively handle only small proteins, nucleic acids and drug models. A color NeXT system is essential for serious modeling work, although the software is capable of running on a black and white NeXTSTATION as well. MidasPlus currently does not take advantage of the special graphics hardware available with the NextDimension option. MidasPlus is also supported on NEXTSTEP/HP. MidasPlus should work on NEXTSTEP/Intel and NEXTSTEP/Sun, but has not been tested nor is supported on those platforms. OPENSTEP support is not anticipated at this time.

As with many applications, the more main memory you have the better the application will perform; we consider adequate memory configurations to be 20MB on color NeXTSTATION systems, and 32MB on all other systems. Depending on the amount of modeling being done, each MidasPlus user will probably require between 10MB and 100MB of free space to store data. If you want to keep the entire Protein Data Bank database (which is not part of the MidasPlus distribution, of course), you'll need another 3GB+ of disk space. The MidasPlus binaries occupies from 11MB to 19MB of disk space depending on the type of workstation. MidasPlus is distributed on CD-ROM only.