indigo2 video

indigo2 video

[Timothy Daly]

Hi all. :)  

AFAIK, none of the SGI graphics cards for the indigo2 are yet
supported by linux or X.  However, it recently struck me, these
machines have EISA slots.  It might be pretty straightforward to use
an old EISA card like an ATI Mach32 instead.  Sure, it's not as cool
as an Impact card, but it's perfectly adequate for emacs.

Is this a good idea? How would you estimate the effort involved?

Thanks for any feedback,
Tim


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Re: indigo2 video

[Mat Withers]

Timothy Daly (remote_bob@yahoo.com) wrote:
> 
> Hi all. :)  
> 
> AFAIK, none of the SGI graphics cards for the indigo2 are yet
> supported by linux or X.  However, it recently struck me, these
> machines have EISA slots.  It might be pretty straightforward to use
> an old EISA card like an ATI Mach32 instead.  Sure, it's not as cool
> as an Impact card, but it's perfectly adequate for emacs.
> 
> Is this a good idea? How would you estimate the effort involved?
>

I was also wondering this. On the intel architecture EISA slots also supported ISA cards. Is this also the case on the Indigo 2 ? or are the EISA slots a bit more "non-standard".

Just a thought

Mat

-- 

Mat Withers
mat@minus-9.com
http://minus-9.com
phone/fax: +44 7092 375299
"a sarcasm detector, *that's* a real useful invention."

Re: indigo2 video

[Andrew R. Baker]

Mat Withers wrote:
> 
> I was also wondering this. On the intel architecture EISA slots also
> supported ISA cards. Is this also the case on the Indigo 2 ? or are the 
> EISA slots a bit more "non-standard".

The EISA slots on the Indigo2 do support ISA cards.  I was running an
old 3Com Etherlink III card in a Linux Indigo2 several years ago. 
Running a video card on one of them may be a bit more tricky, but should
be possible.

-Andrew

Re: indigo2 video

[Jim Paris]

> > I was also wondering this. On the intel architecture EISA slots also
> > supported ISA cards. Is this also the case on the Indigo 2 ? or are the 
> > EISA slots a bit more "non-standard".
> 
> The EISA slots on the Indigo2 do support ISA cards.  I was running an
> old 3Com Etherlink III card in a Linux Indigo2 several years ago. 
> Running a video card on one of them may be a bit more tricky, but should
> be possible.

You're going to have a problem initializing the card because you won't
be able to execute the BIOS.  Solutions would be to disassemble the
ROM on your particular card and see what it's doing (all cards I've
seen are initialized slightly differently); or perhaps some cool
solution involving an x86 emulator like Bochs.

-jim