[rescue] Recommended 13w3 to VGA adapter (Dave McGuire)

[Mouse]

> [...], about one of the simplest things in all of workstation
> computing: getting a modern display working on a Sun.

> Just plug it in and turn it on, man. ;)

That...disagrees with my experience.

If the Sun is running at 1152x900, you will often get something close
enough to use the ROM console code.  I would not go further than that.
Getting the monitor to not blur your pixels - well, unless the Sun
framebuffer can do the monitor's native resolution...I find it rare
these days to find a monitor that is willing to letterbox instead of
scaling.  Getting the monitor to not clip off some of the display,
well, I've found that to be a problem even with peecees; with Suns it's
pretty much a case of plug-and-pray.  (Though after my experiments of
2008, with a cg14 I have at least a decent chance of getting something
usable out of it.  Someday I intend to see if I can do as much for
cg6s, though I suspect it may depend on which model of cg6.)

Even if the Sun _can_ do the monitor's native resolution, it often
can't seem to produce the right porch sizes or some such, leading to
failure modes such as a handful of pixels cut off at one side of the
screen.

What we(tm) need is for someone(tm) to basically pick up the multisync
circuitry from a just-barely-pre-DDC monitor and marry it with the
framebuffer and video electronics from a flatscreen.  (Ideally, I would
prefer to eliminate the video electronics by putting some 24 bits or so
of static RAM behind each pixel, with addressing logic so the video
scan circuitry could write pixel values into that.  I'm told that's not
how flatscreens are made, but I've never really understood why not; it
seems to me like the obvious way to do it, rather than having a
separate framebuffer and scan circuitry, generating what is essentially
an internal video signal.)

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