Re: can it do pictures?
On Fri, 22 Feb 2002, Frank Van Damme wrote:
> I just purchased an old ss2, expeccialy for the monitor, which is a 21" sony
> trinitron. I got XFree86 working on it (copied some modelines from a mailing
> list somewhere). Currently there is a SunGX video card, er, framebuffer in
> it. It's a cg6. Supports a pretty good resolution, unfortunately only 8 bit
> colors are available. But I still got a second video card. I't a dual sBus
> card, used for CAD, there are 32 memory banks on it, chips say 'lsi logic'
> and 'Bt', and there is a white sticker with the number '501164530980' on it.
> Does anyone know whether this card will give 16 or even 24 bit colors?
No, it can't. The 501-1645 is an early version of what later became the
standard GX/TGX 8-bit vector-accelerated colour frame buffer. It is
exactly the same as what the single-slot GX (cg6) card, just older (so the
electronics is less-integrated).
What you have is basically a copy of the 501-1532 which was the very first
ever 'GX' family framebuffer made with a P4-bus interface to work in Sun's
old 68020/30 based sun3/sun3x and very first sun4 Sparc-based machines.
The 501-1645 uses identical graphics processors, etc. except the bus
interface circuitry, connector, etc. are changed to support Sbus instead.
None of the GX/TGX family can support more than 8-bits of colour depth,
despite what people will try to tell you. Even the GX+/TGX+ which have
extra video RAM cannot do more than 8-bit colour. All the extra VRAM on
those framebuffers provides is more storage space for the extra pixel data
for higher than 1152x900 display sizes.
There is no way to get usable 24-bit colour on an Sbus-based machine
*except* in a Sparcstation 20 (or Sparcstation 10-SX) which have a very
special framebuffer which needs a removable VSIMM fitted to enable the
support hardware on the motherboard. This does not use any Sbus slots
though.
Sun totally dropped all support for Sbus 24-bit colour framebuffers (there
were a couple) when Solaris 7 was released. Unless you move up to an Ultra
1E system (1/140E, 1/170E, 1/200E) or better, there is no way to get any
24-bit colour support other than by using the VSIMM option with a
Sparcstation 20. All that aside, I do not know how much support Debian has
for the SX/cg14 24-bit framebuffer in SS20's and SS10SX's. Solaris 8 still
fully-supports it, and Solaris 9 probably will too, but I'd say Sun will
drop all support for sun4m machines after Solaris 9.
There is a special AFX-bus 24-bit framebuffer for Sparcstation 5's (Sun #
501-2337) but as far as I know Solaris 8 doesn't support it. Debian might
(?) but like most non-SUN OS's 24-bit colour support is very primitive if
it exists at all. Can anyone confirm/deny support for these 24-bit colour
options in Debian/Sparc?
> A better alternative seems to me to use the sparc as an X terminal (it's
> slow!) or to use the monitor on a PC. Now I know that it isn't easy to get a
> fixed frequency monitor working on a pc (or vice versa). The video card has
> to support it somehow. Before I purchase an adaptor, does anyone know whether
> my hardware will somehow collaborate:
>
> - monitor: as said, a sony trinitron, model No gdm-1962b
> - video card: nvidia tnt2 M64 (eventually I'll buy one of the newer ati
> (radeon) cards if they can do this job).
Ok, because the GDM-1962 is a fixed-frequency monitor, your PC video card
*must* be able to output video signals that exactly match Sun's specs. For
a standard Sun 1152 x 900 display, the specs are 61.8 KHz horizontal and
66 Hz vertical.
You also need a cable adaptor. The older Sun colour monitors require
combined H/V sync, and most of them cannot work with seperate H and V sync
signals, or with sync-on-green (except Hitach HM-4119's which had a switch
to select between all three sync options!), so any video cable adaptor
*must* contain a sync combiner. The Ultraspec # 1396 adaptor is one that
does and it's made to work with older Sun colour monitors when connected
to PC's.
> I heard somehow you can make a setup that the monitor works, but you
> can only see X, no console or boot messages. In how far is this true?
Yes, because your PC will most likely default to a video mode which the
1962B monitor is unable to display.
Regards,
Craig.
--
Craig Ian Dewick (craig@lios.apana.org.au). http://lios.apana.org.au/~craig
APANA Sydney Regional Co-ordinator. Operator of Jedi (an APANA Sydney POP).
Always striving for a secure long-term future in an insecure short-term world
Have you exported a crypto system today? Do your bit to undermine the NSA.
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