"David P. Roberts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > That's the expected behaviour. The Sun Ray picks the best of the > > > timings it got from DDC, but if it didn't get anything from DDC > > > then the only resolution it will use is 640x480. > > > This seems suboptimal to me.
It seems optimal to me. What better strategy could the Sun Ray apply? > > Would it not make sense for the > > sysadmin to have some way of providing timing information to override > > this? Once the Sun Ray has made contact with a server, the server can override the Sun Ray's choice of timing. The 'utxconfig' command has an indirect influence on monitor timing. 'utresadm', 'utsettings' and 'utset' override the monitor timing directly. > > There are plenty of situations in which this would be > > useful...using something other than "latest and greatest" monitors, > > SunRays connected to KVM switches powering up disconnected from their > > monitors, etc. (that last case may seem like an odd one, but I have > > exactly that sitting to my left right now) I have several hundred of those sitting a few feet to my right. It's not the typical case but it's not unusual, so we have to be able to offer something that can be used in that kind of situation. > "This seems suboptimal to me." > Not really, As I understand it, the design philosophy was to remove all > state from the 'system'. The philosophy is to require as little state as possible anywhere in the system, and as close to zero state as we can get on the desktop. We're talking persistent, unrecoverable state here. There's quite a lot of state in a Sun Ray while it's in action, but it's almost all transient and/or recoverable. > Using DDC acomplishes this by dynamically sensing > the monitor settings. As a result, swapping monitors becomes a simple matter > of hooking up the new one. Yes, that's great, as long as DDC does what you want. But if it doesn't then you have to be able to intervene somehow in order to get to a usable deployment. However, there's certainly a price to be paid for getting into this kind of manual configuration. The 'utresadm' manpage talks about the dangers of using that command, and you can find an example on this list of someone forcing a specific timing (probably for perfectly good reasons) and then having to replace the monitor with one that couldn't sync to that forced timing. Oops. (That situation isn't helped by the fact that there's a bug in the way SRSS manages these forced timings, they tend to be a little more persistent than they really should be.) Nobody is proposing that people use forced timings as a matter of course. If you don't have a definite need them then it's best not to use them. Unfortunately sometimes they're the only solution. > I suggest the promblem is really with the KVM switch not supporting DDC - > and yes I have monitors that don't support it too, but they are over 10 > years old. IMHO, the original SunRay1 set out on a brave path with DDC for > external monitor sizing and only usb for local peripherals (no serial or > parallel ports). Philosophy and vision are fine but Sun Rays do have to work in the real world. The first releases of Sun Ray firmware used to drive 1152x900 (@66 Hz, I think) if they didn't get a DDC response. Anybody want to guess why? > It's dissapointing to see this vision being retreated from > slowly. For example the SunRay 170... I wasn't thrilled about the serial ports on the 170 because it makes that model different from all other Sun Rays, but from the "vision" standpoint how is it any better or worse than supporting USB-to-serial adapters? (Other than being a lot cheaper and more reliable?) Apparently people out there need serial connectivity. USB-to-serial adapters are not standardised and the manufacturers have a bad track record of jumping from one chipset to another without telling anyone, with the result that the adapter you buy today might not work even though it has the same model number as the one you bought yesterday. The native serial ports in the 170 aren't subject to that kind of uncertainty. OttoM. __ ottomeister Disclaimer: These are my opinions. I do not speak for my employer. -- ___________________________________________________ Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/ _______________________________________________ SunRay-Users mailing list [email protected] http://www.filibeto.org/mailman/listinfo/sunray-users
