I have an Ultra 5 - the original Sun monitor failed.
The original Sun monitor had a 13W3 male connector which was connected to a 13W3 female to HD15 male cable (11 pin).
I purchased a flat panel Acer, VGA (15 pin) monitor to replace the Sun monitor.
The Ultra 5 does not play well with the new monitor. Do I need a special cable?
Thanks
You need to change the screen resolution, that's all.
It's done with a command-line utility.
You will need to run that utility as root user.
Is this Ultra-5 a part of any sort of network?
In other words, can you telnet into it from another system?
I ask that because I am presuming that you have no usable output
on any monitor at the moment, and that the only connector is the onboard HD15 port.
You also need to tell us what resolutions can be used by that Acer monitor.
Is there any special native resolution? Is it a CRT or a LCD ?
I hope it can comfortably run at 1024x768 at some vertical refresh rate,
because that's about the highest you're going to get
from the onboard chipset if you hope for anything more than 256 colors.
Telnet into it, su to root, and run:
# m64config -prconf <enter>
then paste the entire output back to this thread.
Hello Honor_Int-53,
did you read the User's Guide/documentation as suggested in reply to your first post ?
http://forum.sun.com/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=98134&messageID=336051#33605 1
rukbat: Fix a yellow Post-It Review recent posts of user before wasting time to your monitor ;-)
Michael
Yes, the Ultra 5 is part of a network.
I am only able to boot the Ultra 5 with the Sun monitor.
Here is the output of the m64config command:
root@psa15>m64config -prconf
Hardware Configuration for /dev/fbs/m640
ASIC: version 0x7c004750
DAC: version 0x0
PROM: version 104
Card possible resolutions: 720x400x85, 640x480x60, 640x480x72, 640x480x75,800x600x56, 800x600x60, 800x600x72,
800x600x75, 1024x768x60,1024x768x70, 1024x768x75, 1280x1024x75,
1024x768x85, 800x600x85, 640x480x85, 1280x1024x60, 1152x900x66,
1152x900x76, 1280x1024x67,1600x1280x76, 1920x1080x72, 1280x800x76,1440x900x76,1600x1000x66, 1600x1000x76, 1920x1200x70,1280x1024x85,1280x1024x76, 1152x864x75, 1600x1200x75,1600x1200x60,1024x768x85, 800x600x75, 640x480x85,
1920x1200x60, 1920x1080x60,vga, svga, 1152, 1280, 800x600, 1024x768,1280x1024, 1152x900,1600x1280, 1920x1080, 1600x1000, 1920x1200,1600x1200
Monitor possible resolutions: 720x400x70, 720x400x85,640x480x60
640x480x67, 640x480x72, 640x480x75,800x600x56, 800x600x60
800x600x72, 800x600x75, 832x624x75,1024x768x87, 1024x768x60
1024x768x70, 1024x768x75, 1280x1024x75,1152x900x66,
1152x900x76,1280x1024x67, 1280x1024x76, 800x600x75, vga,
svga, 1152, 1280, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1152x900
Possible depths: 8, 24
Current resolution setting: 1280x1024x76
Current depth: 8
The new monitor is an Acer A1717Abm, LCD multimedia monitor; resolution: 1280x1024; VGA-15 pin HD-Sub(HD-15).
When connecting the Acer monitor to the ULtra 5, it attempts to boot & displays the following:
SUN Ultra 5/10 UPA/CPI (ULTRA Sparc IIi 400MHZ), keyboard present
OpenBoot 3.31, 512 MB(50ns) memory installed, Serial ...
Ethernet address 8:0:20:fd:c5:60, Host ID ...
Rebooting with command: boot
Boot device: disk a File & args:
SunOS Release 5.9 Version generic...64 bit
Copyright 1983-2002 Sun MicroSystems, Inc
All rights reserved
Use is subject to license terms.
Checking: net
At this point, it repeats a message indicating to check the network cable
Differences:
The Sun monitor connects to the Ultra 5 via a 13W3 male cable which connects to a 13W3 female to HD15 (11 PIN )cable which in turn connects straight into the Ultra 5 HD15 port.
The Acer LCD monitor has a 15 pin HD15 male, which connects
to the Ultra 5's HD15.
Question: since the Sun cable going into the Ultra 5's HD15 port is a 11 pin HD15, does that mean that the Ultra 5 is expecting 11 pin HD15?
Should I buy an HD15 female to 13W3 male and connect it to the original (13W3 female to HD15 - 11 PIN male) cable that came with the Ultra 5?
Since I am unable to boot with the Acer monitor, I am unable to run the
m64config -prconf command; but the documentation indicates that the
resolution is 1280x1024.
Thanks for your help,
Frank
It is irrelevant whether you have a monitor attached.
You should expect to directly attach your new monitor to the Ultra-5.
No dongles, no cable adapters, no 'mickey-mouse' modifications.
Telnet into the U-5 from another system and run the command in text mode, as root user.
Then you reboot the U-5 for the changes to take effect.
( that's easier to do, than stopping and restarting X )
Review the man pages for the M64CONFIG command.
If it were me, the first thing to do is change the vertical refresh to whatever works, such as 60Hz.
Go through the LCD's documentation, as I hinted in my first response.
I have no clue as to what that monitor lists as a preferred resolution,
and I'm not going to research it, because you already have its manuals at hand.
Many LCD panels have historically run at 60Hz vertically, so as a guess
it might just be compatible enough to be usable on the LCD,
and that may be the end of this entire discussion.
Example syntax ...
# m64config-res 1280x1024x60
The man pages have a number of syntax examples in them.
-
The Ultra-5/Ultra-10/SB100/SB150 onboard framebuffers have only 4MB of video RAM.
1280x1024 at 256 colors (8-bit) uses only about 1.25MB.
However 24-bit color on 1280 mode will exceed the video RAM available in your hardware
http://pcguide.com/ref/video/modesBuffer-c.html
You can stay with 1280 at 8-bit color, or you can
lower your resolution to something like 1024x768
and get 24-bit color out of that 4MB of RAM.
Nope.
The VGA port on the computer has whatever number of signal lines that its design requires.
The cable from your LCD screen has whatever its manufacturer wanted.
At bootup, the VGA framebuffer will attempt to probe or ping whatever
is connected ( monitor or projector or who-knows-what ),
and expect some sort of answer from that peripheral, with EDID information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDID
Even if the EDID info never comes back to the computer,
you use the M64CONFIG utility to force it to whatever configuration you choose.
That's why monitors do not need or use drivers.
There isn't anything to "drive".
Various OS's use simple EDID info in the form af an INF file.
