At 12:13 PM -0600 1/19/03, Pavel Cahyna wrote:
>[ Please Cc: me, I'm not subscribed to this list ]
>
>Hello,
>
>I've noticed that the Sun GX framebuffer has the same connector as SGI
>machines (3 large holes + lot of smaller ones). If I plug a Sun monitor
>to an Indy or a SGI monitor to a Sparcstation, will it "just work" or
>are problems to be expected?

There are documents on the net describing how to modify certain SGI
monitors to work with Suns and vice versa, usually for models which were
mostly identical between Sun and SGI versions (ie: 20d10 Sun vs 20d11 SGI).
You'll need a soldering iron, though.

If you can get your gfx card to output a Sync-on-Green signal, an SGI
monitor has a good chance of magically Just Working[tm]. All SGI monitors
are able to run with SOG, and the wiring of the big 3 pins is the same
between all 13w3 variants.

Running a Sun monitor on an SGI is more difficult though, since while most
SGIs do output H, V, and H+V sync, they're not on the right pins for a Sun
monitor, so you'd have to get a rewired cable (assuming you don't have a
monitor which can be hacked).


My advice: if you need a monitor to run on both a Sun and an SGI, get a
Sony monitor and a Sun-wired 13w3->HD15 adapter. This will allow you to
display the output from a Sun perfectly, and even though it'll be miswired
slightly, you'll also be able to display output from an SGI (thanks to the
magic of Sync-on-Green). There's only a few monitors that can tolerate the
miswiring, though, and the only sure-bet brand I've found is Sony.


Cheers - Tony 'Nicoya' Mantler :)


--
Tony "Nicoya" Mantler - Renaissance Nerd Extraordinaire - nicoya@apia.dhs.org
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada           --           http://nicoya.feline.pp.se/