Hello, I have been following the OGP for a while. I have/had fantasies of doing cross-platform testing with my Oldworld Power Machintosh 7300/200. <Offtopic> I am still using an old pentium because I can't install the new version of Debian on the PPC without rolling my own boot floppy. The Old Version of Debian has an awkward bug involving the SCSI controller </Offtopic>
Reading the second FAQ I came across: "The specs say that the PCI connector is PCI-X 64-bit, 133MHz. Will that work in my regular PC? PCI-X is backward compatible with your 32-bit 33MHz PCI slots..." http://www.traversaltech.com/ogd1p_faq2.phtml#Q13 Related: "Hardware Specification: * PCI/PCI-X (33/64-bit, 33-133MHz) card edge" http://www.traversaltech.com/products.phtml Is that an over-simplification, or will strange things happen if I try running the card at 25Mhz? When I saw the picture on the product page, I immediately pulled a 32-bit card for comparison. I initially thought the card would have to be installed backwards to fit. Only After image manipulation did I realize the truth: The extra notch is only to keep 25-40 Mhz cards out of the faster slots. (also checked a picture of a 32-bit 66Mhz card) I also checked several computers for space: 486 - Yes (Some SMT chips in the way) Pentium - no (May clear chipset heatsink... other free PCI slot labeled; "Media BUS 2.0" (so may even be 64 bit)) Pentium II - Yes (Many slots to choose from) Pentium III - Yes (Some SMT chips) AMD Sempron - Yes (Some SMT chips) Power Macintosh 7300/200 - Yes The Computer I *want* to get seems to have a PCI-X slot ;) http://us.fixstars.com/products/powerstation/breakdown.shtml I find the price-tag steep. If it is true that the FPGA software costs as as much as the hardware, I will stick to hardware projects involving PLDs and general-purpose microprocessors. That said, I may consider donating to help someone more interested in FPGA programing than I am. I think this project has lots of potential. I think it would be interesting to use the "Hirose" or "IDC" connector to drive signals suitable for EGA, CGA or MDA monitors (making the digital graphics circle complete). You could also try to drive VT100 or better terminals using a suitable (RS-232) Signal converter, but you would probably need interrupts for that. I really liked the one Slashdot comment/thread about high-resolution text modes (I missed those as well). Who knows what other "niche" markets are ignored in the push for 3D rendering, Video playback, and Digital Rights management/Watermarking? Regards, James Phillips __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
