Re: Using Sun monitors on an Indy
Hello,
On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 10:03:58PM +1000, Stuart Longland wrote:
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> Hi All,
>
> I've recently acquired 3 Sun 13W3 monitors from my university (they
> were throwing them out), and I was wondering if anyone has managed to
> get these sort of monitors to work on either IBM PC or SGI hardware...
>
> The monitors in question:
>
> - - 1x Sun GDM-20D10 19" (which I'm told is very similar to the SGI 20D11)
> - - 2x Sun GDM-1662B 16" (One didn't work at all, the other appears to
> work, but won't sync properly.)
>
> As I say, apparently some of the Sun monitors just magically "work"
> on
> Silicon Graphics hardware, but it seems that these ones will need some
> modifications. Anyone know of a document that explains this?
The Sun monitors have to support composite sync. There is also a
problem that the SGI and Sun pins for composite sync are different in
the 13W3 pinout.
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=pan.2002.04.05.09.17.51.750217.5379%40icequake.no_spam.net&oe=utf-8&output=gplain
describes how I kludged Sun 13W3-VGA adapters to work on an Indy and
Indigo2. You should be able to do something similar for the Sun
monitors. Basically, smash pins 3 and 4 down next to pin 5 in the 13W3
connector, so that 3 and 4 are no longer connected to the SGI video
output, and then blob some solder in there to connect pin 3 and 5 (I
think pin 4 is irrelevant, just make sure it is disconnected from the
SGI). What this will do is to take the composite sync which is coming
out on pin 3 on the SGI, and put it onto pin 5 on the Sun connector
which is where that signal would be expected. It also disables H/V sync
which might confuse the setup.
I don't know if this will work for other machines/monitors/adapters
but it worked with a Sun 13W3->VGA adapter on my Indy XL and Indigo2 ZX.
--
Ryan Underwood, <nemesis@icequake.net>
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