On Fri, Aug 30, 2002 at 12:17:01PM -0400, Brian Hechinger wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 30, 2002 at 10:39:40AM +0200, der Mouse wrote:
> > 
> > Or rather, "almost certainly"; there may be some arcane incompatibility
> > lurking, though I have no idea what it could be.  I've never seen
> > anything of the sort myself, and I've slung cg6s around between at
> > least some six or eight machines.
> 
> to my knowledge the cg6 will work in any SBus machine, end of sentence.

No.

Now, wasn't that simple?

Any cg6 will work in any pre-ultrasparc sbus machine.(*)  "Standard"
cg6 cards will not work on ultrasparc based machines.  The newer
TurboGX cards will work on both ultrasparc and older machines.

This problem bit us when using the (now defunct) sparc port of
BSD/OS 4.2 on mbus based sparcs and ultrasparcs.  Here's what the
BSD/OS man page on "cgsix" has to say about the matter.  This
information is operating system independent, as it merely documents
electrical incompatibility:

-- snip, snip --

     There are two different kinds of cgsix cards, known variously
     as either the ``LEGO'' or the ``GX'' and ``TGX'' (Turbo GX)
     display cards, come in both plain and ``plus'' variants.  The
     GX and TGX cards support a maximum display size of 1152x900.
     The GX+ and TGX+ have additional on-board mem- ory and can
     support displays up to 1600x1280.

     The Turbo GX cards are somewhat faster than GX cards.  In
     addition, the GX cards are electrically incompatible with the
     Ultrasparc Sbus; only the TGX cards can be used on these
     machines.  The following part numbers can be used to distinguish
     GX and TGX cards:

         501-1481   Double width GX, revision 1
         501-1645   Double width GX, revision 2
         501-1672   GX
         501-1996   GX
         501-2325   TGX
         501-2922   TGX
         501-2253   TGX+
         501-2955   TGX+

-- snip, snip --

-Kurt

* - subject to slot availability and power issues.  The very first
cg6 cards were double wide and drew more power.  You cannot physically
insert the double-wide cards in some pre-ultrasparc sparc machines.
I don't know if the power was also an issue on any machines or not.
There are certainly sbus card combinations that are prohibited due to
excessive power loading from the cards.