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SGI Flat Panels @ 1600x1024 w/ Linux/BSD?
PhilLong asks: "SGI has a limited time offer for the 1600x1024 flat panel for $1500 US. What options are available to support the 1600SW under Linux or BSD, especially at 1600x1024? What I know so far, from DejaNews and phone calls is the following: they will bundle it with either a multilink adapter or an Oxygen VX1 PCI card with DVI out, the multilink will take standard VESA resolutions @60Hz and drive the monitor, it will also accept 1600x1024@60Hz (there's a list of cards that will do the 1600x1024 under Windows on SGI's site). The SGI Linux (Red Hat 6.2) workstations with the nVidia chips (and more recent than 0.95) drivers work through multilink, and possibly DVI. I'm not clear on that. The matrox G400 is said to support the 1600x1024 under DVI/windows with the DVI daughtercard. Does this work under XFree4 @ 1600x1024@60Hz? Does anybody know if the daughtercard will fit on a card with the two head output built in? MetroX doesn't support the 1600SW, but Xi (Friday) posted a patch for the accelX 6 to support the Oxygen VX1 card." This offer is only good thru December, so you better act soon if you're interested.
Actually, the SGI 1600SW (and Radius Artica) do not use DVI, they use Open LDI as their native digital input -- and this is where the story starts.
The SGI Multilink Adapter (MLA) has a single DVI input that supports either DVI-I (analog) or DVI-D (digital) and comes with the necessary cables to hook up to either 15-pin analog, DFP or DVI-D video outputs, doing whatever conversion, and thus driving the 1600SW that way.
At one point in time, SGI shipped the 1600SW with a Number Nine Revolution IV video card, that both XFree86 3.3.6 and the 4.0.2 release candidates support very nicely - you can even do multi-head setups with AGP and PCI versions of the card in the same system. Alas, S3 bought #9 awhile back, closed them down, and now these cards are rather hard to find.
SGI is currently shipping one bundle of the 1600SW with the 3DLabs Oxygen VX1-1600SW PCI card which can drive the 1600SW directly (it is actually a PC version of the Formac Proformance 3 with Permedia 3 chip). Alas, I have not been able to figure out the proper XF86Config file settings to make the 1600SW and this video card work natively together under the XFree86 4.0.2 release candidates. The same mode lines, and some variations that I've tried from a working #9 I128 driver XF86Config, do not function with this combination - and I have not yet received an answer on the XFree86 Xpert list on this topic.
The other option is to use the SGI MLA with a DVI-out video card: Matrox G400 with DVI module, ATI Rage Fury Pro DVI, ATI Raedon All-In-Wonder, or some variation of an nVidia GeForce2-based card with DVI out. I've read that there is a limitation in the Matrox closed source HAL module for XFree86 that prevents you from running the second head, which is where the Matrox DVI module is driven from, at the required 1600x1024 resolution, so, for now, you can't use the SGI MLA with a Matrox card - someone please correct me if I am wrong. I haven't read anything yet about driving the SGI MLA from the ATI Rage Fury Pro DVI, ATI Raedon All-In-Wonder, or an nVidia GeForce2-based card at 1600x1024. I just got an SGI MLA myself the other day and I do have an ATI Rage Fury Pro DVI card that I will be trying out sometime this week in this particular combination.
Bottom line, IMHO, the best thing to do (most flexible combination) is to get the SGI 1600SW with the SGI MLA. This will let you work at any resolution *now* on any machine and platform, and when things get ironed out with driving DVI outputs at 1600x1024, you will enjoy the benefits then.
BTW, IMNSHO [:-)] , the SGI 1600SW is the best flat panel out there bar none. The 22" Apple Cinema display is too grainy (same resolution, larger display, larger pixels, twice as much) and all of the other flat panels just don't have the same quality, nor the ability to turn the 'pixels' on and off fast enough - they ghost like mad when moving windows around or playing videos.