SGI: Hardware

Hello,
I plan on buying an LCD monitor in the next few week and would like to find one in the 17' inch range that'll work with a 13w3 adapter. If Anyone here has any experince with running non-sgi LCD panels (17' or 19' inch) please let me know. Thanks!

I know Neko has a 20" Philips that works with his Octane...
So I'd imagine the 17" Philips would as well? Atleast that's what I'm hoping when I pick one up this coming weekend...

Just make sure it supports sync-on-green and you should be ok.

Good idea. I'll probably just have Tony order me a phillips so I can test it with my Octane. If it don't work, I'll just ship it back. I'd be great if you could keep me posted on that vegac .

Well, my CURRENT plan is to go down to Frys this Friday morning (I love direct deposit! don't have to wait to get my money) and hopefully pick up an LCD to replace my big 19" CRT...I figure I'm already used to 1280x1024, so going to an LCD will be alright...

though it's too bad I can't afford that 20" beast that'll do 1600x1200

Coo. I think I'm going to order a viewsonic VX700 from work:
http://viewsonic.com/products/lcd_vx700.htm
It's SOG, has good image quality, and at cost I can get it for $420.00.

semi-fly wrote: Coo. I think I'm going to order a viewsonic VX700 from work:
http://viewsonic.com/products/lcd_vx700.htm
It's SOG, has good image quality, and at cost I can get it for $420.00.

Yep, as long as it lists SOG in the specs like that you shouldn't have a problem. Looks like a good choice!

I'm gotten two LCD (17") to work with Octanes with SE graphics one was a NEC and the other a Samsung (I think) I'll go look up the specs and get back to you. My experience was that the sync rates (vertical and horizontal) had to closely match the modes supported by the SGI graphics driver. For example, the NEC did work with the Octane SE, but not an Octane2 V6. Also both nedded two run at 1280x1024 60Hz.

I'll need to verify this on the machines and let you down model numbers.

That would be great!

LCD screens are strange beasts - while most will tolerate vertical refresh rates greater than 70Hz, you'd never want to use one at this rate as the image quality degrades. Ideally, you want as low a refresh rate as possible. Some of the best results I've seen (using analog inputs) have been in the 50-60Hz range..... and 4Dwm looks really special when using an O2 on an LCD screen!

LCD screens are strange beasts - while most will tolerate vertical refresh rates greater than 70Hz, you'd never want to use one at this rate as the image quality degrades.

Now somebody tells me

I picked up a fairly inexpensive Compaq TFT8030 (18" LCD) that
includes SOG as one of it's capabilities. I've been using the analog input driven by my O2 (when it's not plugged into my 1600sw) and have been made physically sick by the display. I'll have to drop the refresh rate and see how that looks -- hopefully it'll make CDE on Tru64 look better too (not that there's much hope for making CDE look better...)

The reasoning for the refresh rate thing is the LCD response time
Most have a response time of 16ms, which comes out to be 60hz...
While they'll deal with 72 or 75 or higher rates, the pixels themselves cannot refresh faster than that, and that's when you get a lot of the ghosting and other issues...

I can live with the ghosting issues and what not; LCD's monitors are easy on the eyes. Another big issue with me is not being able to get straight lines on a CRT monitor. My sgi triniton does this:
) (
Even the View Sonic looks squashed from the right angle.

Well... does anyone know of inexpensive SOG ultra high resolving LCDs? I mean... it´s all sweet and all, but if it doesn´t handle 1600 pixels across... I don´t really want it. In any case, the original SGI Flatpanel was sweet. The new ones (especially the 22 inch) are just soooo expensive.

I'd love to grab a 1600sw (in working condition). They show up on ebay quite offten, but for $300-$400 I'd rather drop an extra 50 bucks and get a boxed retail LCD monitor with a warranity.

My TFT8030 was $550 and does 1280x1024 and has SOG capability. That, and you get a 3 year warranty from HPaq.

Sony SDM-S94 with VGA and DVI inputs working very well so far with O2 awaiting adapter for Octane ESSI graphics.

I just got a sun 13w3 to vga adapter for my sony lcd that worked on my O2, but I get ano signal from my octane. any ideas on this? thanks

Omega_Trion wrote: I just got a sun 13w3 to vga adapter for my sony lcd that worked on my O2, but I get ano signal from my octane. any ideas on this? thanks

Sun has wired some things differently than SGI - sync signals, IIRC, which is why it won't work.
You can, however, break some specific pins off the adapter (can't remember which, do a search on google groups ) and it should work then.

You can also try the adapter from UltraSpec that I've mentioned, that one works perfectly here.

amigo wrote: I've tried my Octane2 with V6 on Samsung SyncMaster 191T which does SOG. It did show those stripes and Auto button mostly gets rid of them but what I've also done is compile my own .vfo file to match the parameters for the LCD so I think it makes it better

Neat! I'll try it here...
*wanders off searching for a VFC manual*

i never bother remembering which pin is the culprit.

if the monitor can do sync-on-green then just rip out all the 'little' pins on the 13w3 side and just leave the 3 main (rgb) coax lookin ones.

just bought a Viewsonic vp171s (16ms , 2x vga input +1 dvi input, sog, pivot mode that i use wiith mame shootem'up is pretty cool )
work great with my Indigo2

they give one dvi-d cable and one vga cable with it