On Friday 22 February 2002 23:57, Craig Ian Dewick wrote: > On Fri, 22 Feb 2002, Frank Van Damme wrote: > > 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.
Hm. So I won't spend any time trying to get the card to work. > 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. Yes, the GX I'm currently using astonished me quiet a bit with the fact it can run a high resolution and no 16/24 bits display. <SNIP a lot of interesting info> > > 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. Ok. I'll do research on my video card. Don't pc's useally run 1152 x 864? I guess that particular resolution won't be a problem to any recent/modern video card? > 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 Ok... this is tech talk I do not understand :) I have no clue what a H/V sync is, or what sync-on-green is. > 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 guess these cheapos wont: http://www.miragemultimedia.biz/product.asp?3=97 They are talking about the SUN 20d10 monitor, is that one comparable to mine you think? (No I don't know too much about sun hardware as you can tell). http://store.yahoo.com/cablesonline/vgato13sunvi.html They aren't talking about anything :) But with that adaptor from ultraspec (36$) I should have everything I need to get pretty (big) pictures on my PC? > > 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. Is there a solution to that? Like selecting a different resolution at boot time, so I can at least see the debian boot messages? Anyway, If the radeon can support these refresh rates, and I get the monitor to work, I can go for a dual-head setup. Radeon cards are well suited for this. > Regards, > > Craig. Thanks!
