I've set up a build system in which enables users to start
a build from a web front end driven by apache.

This fires off a perl script which in turn runs a bash script to build
our engine, demos and game.

The problem I'm having is that the perl, and hence all the programs it
starts, doesn't have access to the desktop.

Without a console 3DSMax has a tendency to just die with
error dialogs that can't be seen.

So my question is how can I set up Apache to start cgi programs with a
visible console?

I'm running Windows 2000 SP3 with Apache 2.0.39.

Hello ashre,

You need run apache server in console mode i.e. from the command line.
It will redirect the errors to the console. Follow the link below to
read more about this.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/platform/windows.html#cmdline