Re: SPARCStation VSIMM

Thank you to everyone who replied and for the great info below
Michael! As you suggested, it seems the Southland and Fujitsu have
both passed into legend, but I did manage to track down an 8MB SX!
Paid more than I'd have liked, but nowhere near the current eBay rate
at least.

Just to confirm a few things, it works great at 1280x1024@24bpp (known
by many, but since it was cited as a potential concern earlier in the
thread). Increasing to 24-bit also resolved the NetSurf blank window
issue so I'm partying like it's 1994.

 - Aaron


On Thu, Oct 21, 2021 at 10:31 AM Michael <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> On Wed, 20 Oct 2021 09:26:26 -0600
> Aaron <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Hello! Let me start with a preemptive apology for posting slightly
> > off-topic, but after a year of searching, I've exhausted every other
> > avenue I can think of! My SS20 is running NetBSD 9.2 quite nicely, but
> > its capabilities in X are hamstrung by an 8-bit SBUS framebuffer.
> > E.g., NetSurf won't render, Afterstep looks terrible, etc.
> >
> > I'm not interested in a ZX/Leo for several reasons (poor driver
> > support, very unreliable hardware, heat issues), which leaves an 8MB
> > VSIMM (p/n: 501-2482) as the only real option. Since this is the
> > closest thing to an online SPARC community I'm aware of, might anyone
> > on this list have a lead on one of these rare birds?
>
> There are a few other options to get 24bit graphics on an ss20,
> although they're also mostly made of unobtainium:
> - the Fujitsu AG-10e is basically Frankenstein's Monster of graphics
>   cards, it has three(!) PCI graphics chips behind a custom bridge, the
>   24bit part is handled by a glint 300SX. Needs EXA support but should
>   work as dumb fb. Double-wide SBus card, the glint has 12MB
>   framebuffer.
> - Southland Media MGX, another PCI-behind-custom-bridge thing, single
>   slot SBus card, 4MB fb.
>
> Both have kernel support and X works in 24bit colour, although
> unaccelerated but with shadowfb and hardware cursor it's mostly usable.
> There's XAA support in the ag10e driver, converting to EXA shouldn't be
> hard, I've done it for Permedia2 which is basically a low end Glint
> with VGA support. As for mgx, I need to finish the native X driver at
> some point...
> Both cards stay relatively cool, they don't even have heatsinks
> anywhere.
>
> There are other cards, but the above are the ones we have driver
> support for.
>
> have fun
> Michael