[rescue] Wanted: more that just a 24-bit framebuffer in .uk

[James Lockwood]

On Sun, 16 Sep 2001, Paul Sladen wrote:

> I forgot to mention that I was running a nice operating called  Debian
> on it, complete with a modern Xserver called  XFree 4.0  ;-)

Great, your options are even more limited.  Stick with a good TGX unless
you're into serious pain.  The XFree S24 (TCX) driver is even slower and
more limited than Sun's.

> I'm intrigued, is your `Fujitsu card' not just a dual-slot ZX?

The ZX is a dual-slot.  The Fujitsu board is an exotic, as far as I know
the drivers only exist in binary form for Solaris 2.x.

> Yes, Sun make rocking hardware but ship backarsed software to run on them,
> and seem to stop supporting it very (too?) soon; XFree 4.0 had the Mesa GL
> implementation intergrated along with all the other loads of other grovvy
> features that occured in the rewrite for 4.0;

Remember the timeframe that these boards came out in.  The ZX dates from
1993 at the latest, and OpenGL drivers are available (from TGS, if memory
serves).  The acceleration was reasonable for the time, but pales severely
in contrast to any modern framebuffer.  You can of course use a purely
software pipeline OpenGL implementation if you like.

> 3 Months ago (while employed), I would have brought a U30/C3D at anything up
> to about $1000 without even thinking about it;  now, several months later of
> running down my reserves;  I'm not sure if I even have that much money to my
> name....  A synopsis of my life at the moment might be:

If you really want 24bpp on a pre-Ultra, sell the SS5 and get a SS20 with
an SX VSIMM.  It will be reasonably usable as long as you don't ask too
much, and the driver support in XFree is relatively functional.

-James

--
James Lockwood
Guy on Summer Vacation (dot-com bombed)
http://www.foonly.com/resume/