[rescue] Old Sun graphics systems (HW & SW)

[Michael Doyle]

Hello to all!  Happy Friday!

I've been working around to comparing the graphics systems (HW & SW)
available in Suns over the years to see their evolution firsthand (my
day job has not involved this too much so I didn't seen it for myself,
really).  I've picked up many of the later SBus- & UPA-based boards
(MG2,CG3,GX/TGX/+,SX,S24,ZX,Creator3D,Elite3D,Expert3D-Lite) but
haven't found any of the early ones for Sun-4's (GS [CG12],TC [CG8])
and, of course, nothing in the Sun-3 line (re: my question about
Sun-3's yesterday). I have seen a couple of GT's
offered on eBay but of course they were missing the SBus board and
corresponding cable that interfaced the unit with its host Sun.

SW-wise, I've got a copy of SunOS 4.1.4 (running it on my IPC) but at
least in my installation of it - which was so very long ago - I see no
headers for anything like SunView, PixRect, GKS, SunPHIGS, PEX, XGL
etc. and I would imagine these were all unbundled from the OS. Gonna be
really hard to find this stuff, especially versions that perhaps used
any acceleration present in the graphics boards. I really hope that
some folks out there have saved this stuff!

Guess I'm in a little better shape as far as the graphics libs and
headers for Solaris are concerned. The XIL and XGL headers came bundled
in starting with Sol 2.5 (until these were dropped in Sol 2.8). Direct
Xlib is also there. For Sun, OpenGL started using graphics HW beginning
with the Creator3D, and the headers are present in the pkg on the
companion CD for Sol 8 (as well as being in the base of Sol 10 I've got
on my Ultra60). I do need to find a version of OpenGL that is HW-accel.
on the ZX - there were versions from TGS, Nth Graphics/Portable
Graphics/DuPont Pixel, and Evans&Sutherland.  Anybody have a copy of
one of these?

Cheers,
Michael
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E-Mail: Michael Doyle <gmike at cstone.net>
Date: 18-Mar-05
Time: 08:41:26

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