SUMMARY: 1600x1200 24bit displays

From: Richard Porter (r.porter@ieee.org)
Date: Mon Aug 07 1995 - 11:07:05 CDT


A couple of months ago, in article <r.porter.64.002E086A@ieee.org> I wrote
about the apparent ability of a Sparc 20 with SX graphics capability to allow
me to drive a 1600x1200 pixel display at 24 bit colour.

Thanks to those who replied with useful info, including

defee@cs.tut.fi
stevek@apertus.com
kluge@seuss.cc.utexas.edu
mcnalley@agora.rdrop.com
gohel@rad.usf.edu
tadawson@jcpenney.com
ted@ssl.berkeley.edu

In summary, it appears that although some of the Sun documentation (and,
indeed, some of the Sun sales-people) claims that 1600x1200@24bit is possible,
the standard SX machine is not built with fast enough VRAM to give full
resolution at 24 bits. There are some possible solutions, for example
equipping an SX with hand-picked fast VRAM, and use of third party graphics
cards was suggested.

I've taken the easy way out and opted for 8 bit colour, and I now have a Sun
Sparc 20 with TGX+ graphics driving a Hitachi CM2199MET 21" monitor at
1600x1280 pixels, 76Hz. This was all pretty painless to put together, and I'm
pleased with the result. I now have a serious amount of screen real-estate to
play with (but I'm a bit short of colours) !

Richard

-----
Richard Porter
Logica UK Ltd, Cobham Park, Downside Road, Cobham, Surrey KT11 3LG
tel: +44 171 637 9111 fax: +44 1932 869102 email: r.porter@ieee.org
* Opinions expressed are mine and not necessarily those of Logica *



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