Re: framebuffer refresh

On Aug 16, 2011, at 2:23 PM, Ian King wrote:

> We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.  I stand corrected on Sun machines and sync-on-green: upon review, I realize I've never run any of my Sun boxes with a non-Sun monitor.  It was with other machines, in particular the Octane I recently acquired, that I most recently ran into the SOG challenge.  My DECstation 5000 is also dependent on SOG, and with both machines I've seen the odd behavior that occurs when the monitor doesn't grok SOG.  And I'm trying to move to LCDs as much as possible, both for space and power considerations. -- Ian 

FWIW - I did a lot of research on LCDs a couple years ago due to this very consideration (and others). I went home with a Samsung 245BW, which was a relatively affordable 24" display supporting separate and composite sync, on green or otherwise, with vertical pixel count of at least 1200 (for 1600x1200 operation). 

The display quality has been very good with reasonable contrast and uniform color presentation (i.e. the color quality doesn't change noticeably over the visible area, unlike the cheap-ass TFT on my desk at work). It's handled every analog signal over 31kHz I've thrown at it---SGI, Sun, RS/6000, HP9000, Apollo DN, Mac, the 2MP display from one of my Intergraph Clippers, etc. The only complaint I have is that there is no way to prevent it from stretching a non-native resolution to fill the entire display. As a bench monitor it has been a completely effective replacement for my old NEC 5fg. The only thing missing is a 15kHz range, but the 5fg doesn't have that either. I wasn't able to find a panel at that time that had the vertical pixel count I wanted AND 15kHz compatibility.

Another thing I found is that some manufacturers don't publish sync ranges for their displays, or publish incomplete ones, or even make you go out of your way to find that much. Samsung was relatively straightforward about showing the display's capabilities, so I was happy to buy their thing. It also helped that I could just walk into Fry's and buy one. I don't know that they're still selling this model today, but possibly this could be a helpful place to start looking.

ok
bear.


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until further notice