Summary: Sunpci II 600Mhz Max Res

From: Joshua Symons <vmcore_at_mysun.com>
Date: Wed Sep 25 2002 - 15:26:10 EDT
Thanks to Larry Parkins for the good info. Hopefully the rules that
apply to his 733Mhz Sunpci II Pro cards apply to the 600Mhz Sunpci II cards.

Summary below:

I don't know if IE 5 for unix supports java, but javascript support
seems pretty good, and it runs fine on solaris. See the 600Mhz model
might have a different bios than the 733, which might or might not allow
the same amount of vr allocation for graphics. We'll see though. I'll
post the summary, thanks for the info.

> 1) The SunPCi2 doesn't use any of the Sparc memory, just its own.
> I have
> 256MB of SODIMM, and haven't had any problems running most
> programs, even
> some image analysis programs. The PCi2 comes with 128MB, but you
> can get
> standard SODIMM for cheap from Crucial.com that is an exact match,
> max 2
> 512MB chips. The SunPCi2 gives you choices of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and
> 64MB for
> Shared Memory in the Integrated Peripherals setup. There is also
> AGP memory
> allocation, the effect of which I haven't tried to experiement with,
> although I did allocate a bunch to it, as well.
>
> 2) I haven't tried MPEGs or windows media stuff on the external
> monitor. My
> wife runs a quilt-design program that uses a tiled background fill
> fromscanned fabric images, which made me nostalgic for the good old
> days when a
> '286 was a fast machine, on which you could redraw a complex
> graphic in less
> than five minutes, because it wasn't happening on the emulated
> display in X.
> A trip to the monitor store was in order to keep harmony in the
> household,and the images now paint instantly, though we now have
> three monitors on our
> home office desk.
>
> 3) Haven't had any problems with the separate ethernet: it runs
> through a
> 100Mbit hub, talks to everything else just fine. Don't forget to
> write down
> the MAC address from the yellow tag on top of the chip before you
> installthe card: you'll need to tell Windows what it is in the
> TCP/IP properties:
> Sun uses soft MAC addresses in everything.
>
> 4) My cards are 733MHz Celerons, at $600 direct from Sun's web
> sales a year
> ago: was there an early version of the SunPCi2 with a slower card?
>
> 5) Well, the reason to use the internal card was conservation of
> desk real
> estate, but with a separate monitor and the grumbling I hear about
> the mouse
> freezing up when it wanders out of the parent window on the CDE
> displaythreatening to prompt a trip to the store soon for a USB
> mouse, I'm not so
> sure it was a good investment for home use, especially since Tiger
> Directwas selling bare bones systems for under $200 last week, and
> the fact we
> already popped for an extra monitor. At work, the only Windows
> apps I run
> are Outlook so I can suffer with my coworkers and Internet Exploder
> so I can
> interact with lame web sites that don't bother to make their
> Javascript and
> Java applets Netscape-friendly (like the timecard software). So,
> at work I
> use the internal X-window, which is just fine for stuff that does
> videothrough the Windows API instead of writing direct to video
> RAM. I also have
> a Mac (OS/X) on my desk, and there is definitely not room for three
> monitorsand keyboards in my humble space.
>
> --
> Larye D. Parkins
> Systems Administrator, RML - NIAID
> 903 S. 4th St., Hamilton, MT 59840
> (406) 363-9433

> > The sunpci I only allows you to allocate 4M of virtual video
> > ram, how much will the Sunpci II allow? I've 896M to work
> > with on the sun side, so i'm not worried about running out.
> > How does direct draw perform under that? Also, how does
> > windows media player perform, watching say 600/700M mpg
> > movies? Is the seperate ethernet pretty stable? (I just need
> > to know all these things so I can make a sound decision of
> > whether or not to invest in it at $325, or whether i should
> > just build a seperate 600Mhz celeron box at the same price).
> >
> > - Josh -

> > > The SunPCi2 comes defaulted to 2MB video RAM: you have to
> change it
> > > in the
> > > BIOS setup screens to get higher resolution/color depth
> > > combinations. I
> > > don't know if the original PCi card has this feature.
> > >
> > > I am running 1024x768 Hi-color (16-bit) on mine at home (external
> > > monitorneeded for certain graphics programs), with 8MB, I think
> the
> > > selection went
> > > up to 1280x1024 on that (not supported by my monitor), plus
> some of
> > > the odd
> > > Sun monitor combos in between (1152x900,etc), maybe higher with
> > > more video
> > > RAM: will do 32-bit color if you have enough RAM allocated.
> > >
> > > The video memory setting is a bit hard to find, but worth looking
> > > for. See
> > > docs.sun.com for the user manuals for both cards, the settings
> are
> > > in the
> > > "external video and games" section near the back.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Larye D. Parkins
> > > Systems Administrator, RML - NIAID
> > > 903 S. 4th St., Hamilton, MT 59840
> > > (406) 363-9433

> > > > Would anyone happen to know the max res and performance value
> > > > of the sunpci II _external_ video 600Mhz celeron model.
> > > > Curious to know before i trot off and buy one for no good
> > > > reason. My sunpci I 400Mhz leaves something to be desired for
> > > > sure (max res 1024x768@16 in ext video mode).
> > > >
> > > > - Josh -
_______________________________________________
sunmanagers mailing list
sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers
Received on Wed Sep 25 15:36:09 2002

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu Mar 03 2016 - 06:42:55 EST