> hello
> I was picking up some old nubus equipment from a consultor who no longer
> need the equipment, so I thought I'd find out what the parts were.
> The consultor gave me what he thought was a thicknet ethernet card, which
> is apparently junk (old) - nothing more than I expected.  It's free
> equipment, anyway.
> Well, that card turned out to be a video card, and this is how netbsd
> looked at it during startup:
> --cut here--
> macvid0 at nubus0: Sigma Designs L-View
> macvid0: 832 x 600, monochrome
> --cut here--
> Well, apparently the NetBSD system seems to recognize it, and that can't
> really be a bad thing. One of the two problems I currently see is that the
> nubus card has a 9-pin video connector - two rows in trapezoidal shape, one
> with 5 pins and one with 4. I never have seen such a video connector (not
> surprising - I don't have any experience with this). I called up some local
> computer stores and they never heard of them either. What kind of connector
> is this?

I bet it's a proprietary connector.

> I have a monitor in my basement, which has the same 9-pin video connector,
> but it looks like a tty terminal (24x80 maybe) monitor. Seeing the
> resolution mentioned in the video card's entry during boot, I figured I'd
> break either the monitor or the card if I attempted to hook them up. Then
> again, the monitor might not be a 24x80 monitor at all. I don't know. Think
> I should attempt to hook them up?

Hmm. I'd worry that the video card's not a standard EGA/CGA output (which
used 9-pin connectors AFAIK and didn't support such fancy ideas as high
resolutions), and both card and monitor might try to drive the same
pin, or some such nonsense.

> Also, I saw the 832 x 600 video resolution. Isn't that a bit wierd? I
> thought it should have been either 832 x 624, or 800 x 600. A combination?

I bet it's old and proprietary. People did weird things in the late
80's, and since the mac was/is flexable about these things, they got
it to work.

> What kind of monitor would accept that resolution?
> I don't know if this is because I do not have a monitor attached to the
> card or not, but another screen isn't showing up in the MacOS Monitor
> control panel. Is it supposed to?

It's supposed to have a monitor to show up.

Take care,

Bill