> nate@portents.com wrote:
>> A couple of things.  The Quadra 700 can't do 16-bit, only 8-bit or
>> 24-bit,
>> and AFAIK there isn't support for 24-bit color X in NetBSD (at least the
>
> Buh?  You mean the (MacOS) control panel lists 16, 256, and millions of
> colors...but not thousands?  That seems very bizarre.  If you've got
> enough VRAM for 24 bit, why disable setting to 16?

It's not that it was disabled, it was just never implimented - it wasn't a
design goal.  The Quadra 700 and 900 were the first Macs with built-in
true color (this is 1990, remember).  Why compromise the design by
supporting an inferior 16-bit bit depth?  I don't think there was even
such a thing as a NuBus video card previous to 1990 that supported 16-bit
either.  The Quadra 700 and 900 were primarily aimed at prepress, and
nobody in prepress at the time was going to work in 16-bit.  And when you
look into how they implimented the 24-bit, using a technique known as
'chunky planar', it's not surprising they didn't do 16-bit:

https://developer.apple.com/technotes/hw/hw_26.html

>> last time I tried).  You can do 8-bit greyscale, but not 8-bit color
>> because I don't think they ever got color lookup tables working right.
>
> Yeah, the mac68k color X server is borked in 8 bit color.  I never tried
> 8 bit gray.

8-bit greyscale works, and since it has the same brightness dynamic range
as 24-bit color, it can display true-color (in greyscale) with no
dithering.

- Nate