[rescue] WTB: Ultra 60/80

[Jonathan Sadler]

I've seen a number of PCI Radeon 7000s (as well as relabeled cards based 
on the Radeon 7000 chipset) originally for the PC successfully 
re-flashed with the MAC flash image.

I'd be willing to try flashing one with a SUN rom image if someone with 
the SUN card would be kind enough to capture the flash image.  Capturing 
the image requires a PC with an AGP video card and some software that is 
readily available on the 'net.  Anyone interested in providing the image 
for this "test", contact me off list.

This may possibly be the cheapest way to put a video card into a SUN -- 
Office Max is currently has these cards on clearance for US$ 39.95 with 
a US$ 20 rebate, making the final cost US$ 19.95 (plus applicable 
taxes).  You can find them at your local store or at this URL:  (There 
are shipping charges for US online orders under US$ 50.00)
 http://www.officemax.com/max/solutions/product/prodBlock.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=no&prodBlockOID=537381619

Cheers,
Jonathan Sadler

On Mon, 9 May 2005 01:51:30 -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix said:

> On Fri, 06 May 2005 @ 22:16 -0500, Lionel Peterson said:
>
>>>> >Is there no hope of getting a fast PC graphics card working on a PCI
>>>> >based Sun?
>>>      
>>>
>>> Well, not sure, but my thoughts would be:
>>> 
>>> PC card, no - need OpenBoot on the card - think Mac, not PC
>>    
>>
>I've heard of people with FLASH based cards burning Apple ROMs, but it
>seems rare to have flash upgradable PCI cards.
>
>My graphics card (AGP) is flash upgradeable, and so were a couple of my
>PCI SCSI cards, but I almost never see that feature on a PCI card.
>  
>
>>> Fast card? Well, it would have to be PCI, and there aren't that many
>>> PCI-based Mac cards to begin with, so it could be tough...
>>    
>>
>Hmmm... that's about what I thought.  I don't keep up with Sun video,
>having been generally disappointed, but check around now and then to
>see.
>
>I suppose then you have the driver issue to deal with.
>
>I thought maybe now that PCI Suns had been out awhile, some of the
>faster PC cards would have encouraged someone to write drivers.
>  
>
>>> Fast is a relative term, there are faster PCI cards that will work,
>>> but they are rare and expensive (I suspect)... Why not add a dedicated
>>> 100 Mb/sec Ethernet connection to a fast computer acting as an
>>> XTerminal?
>>    
>>
>Two primary reasons: performance even on 100Mbit can be really bad for
>some applications.
>
>The other problem is that an increasing amount of X code will not run
>remotely, or runs very poorly.  Programs are starting to make more and
>more use of local server only features.
>
>A lot of graphics APIs and X itself is moving to the Apple method of
>accelerating graphics, by putting OpenGL underneath it all.
>
>Some of this stuff will not work remotely at all.  Even that which does,
>often is quite hungry for bandwidth.
>
>I suppose we'll have to wait and see how it all works out.
>  
>