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smart
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 18, 2004 10:17 am    Post subject: PC graphics on Blade 100 Reply with quote

Hiya,
i have tried a lot of different PCI graphics cards now and was not really successful so far. With most cards, the machine just and simply freezes as soon as X tries to use it, with one it bails out with a floating point error. Is there something that makes PC graphics generally unlikely in the sparc environment ? i don't see it....
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Weeve
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 18, 2004 7:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Probably not. From what I understand, most PC video cards will expect the BIOS of a PC to initialize them. SPARCs do not have a BIOS or a function to do this. However Macintosh video cards may (and this is a theoretical may) work in a SPARC as Mac's OpenFirmware is similar to SPARC's OpenBoot PROM.
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smart
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 18, 2004 7:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Are there people out there who made off the shelf graphics cards (and this does not include Creator3D or the likes....) work in sparcs ?
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Weeve
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 18, 2004 8:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not that I am aware of, no.
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smart
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 2004 7:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm trying to identify if it would be possible to do so. As a first step i think i need to be able to understand pci configuration and that addresses don't clash. Now i'm wondering...
This is the built in ATI Rage:

Quote:

0000:00:13.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping+ SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64 (2000ns min), cache line size 10
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 00702fe0
Region 0: Memory at 000001ff03000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=000001ff00440000]
Region 1: I/O ports at 0000000002000b00 [size=256]
Region 2: Memory at 000001ff00426000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Expansion ROM at 0000000000020000 [disabled]
Capabilities: [5c] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-


Memory Region 1 is specified with size=000001ff00440000 . i assume up to 01ff can be filtered off so that size=00440000 would actuall be 4 and a bit Megabytes. Strange but believable.

Now i verify with Riva128 card:

Quote:

0000:01:02.0 VGA compatible controller: NVidia / SGS Thomson (Joint Venture) Riva128 (rev 10) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: Elsa AG VICTORY Erazor
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap- 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64 (750ns min, 250ns max)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 007030a0
Region 0: Memory at 000001ff09000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=000001ff08400000]
Region 1: Memory at 000001ff0a000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=16M]
Expansion ROM at 0000000000400000 [disabled]


With the previousmethod size would be size=8400000, making 96+ MB... unlikely for a 16MB card.

How are the figures to be interpreted ? Or is this the first mistake ?
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smart
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 20, 2004 7:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm relatively sure now that this is part of the problem, but i can find very little information about the output of lspci.... somebody knows a valuable source ?
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snowsquirrel
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 31, 2004 8:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Raptor GFX cards were 3rd graphics cards. You should be able to pick them up real cheap used now. They are the equive of a Sun PGX32. But if you want a graphics card get a used Creator 3d for like $50USD. That was an $1100USD card in its day. At work, we just bought 15 of them; 6 months later no probs.

edit:
ps - google for sun framebuffer FAQ for reason PC cards won't work.
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snowsquirrel
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2004 5:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oops, I forgot that the blade 100/150's don't have UPA slots, so no creators. But have a look for rapter GFX cards, you can probably pick one up for $20USD. It will do 1280x1024 24bit. Just don't expect much for 3d performace, and it only has 1 8bit pallette, where as C3D's have 4. But this only matters if you are running 8bit.

~S
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2004 12:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:

ps - google for sun framebuffer FAQ for reason PC cards won't work.


I found this one:

http://www.sunhelp.org/faq/FrameBuffer.html

But it doesn't explain why it can't, other than saying it's not supported. It rather suggests it should, once drivers would be written for the purpose, except for that it wouldn't serve as console. But who'd be interested in installing a 3d accelerator for console ? Even the Nethack ASCII accelerator can nowadays be called a bit outdated :D
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smart
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 8:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Up till now i had two samples of Matrox cards which both worked. Others EDIT: to clarify, this means non Matrox) didn't, but i didn't try to find out why they didn't anymore... got distracted :)
But still, i see no technical reason why it should not be possible to use off the shelf pci graphics. Seems it should "only" be a driver issue.
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