Hello,

> what i *need* to know is about S-Video Out!  can i just pick up something
> like a low end ATI Rage with S-Video out and use that even though it doesn't
> work with X?  (i'm assuming it doesn't since most cards don't?)
Well, Sun's low-end PCI framebuffer (PGX32 or so) /is/ an ATi device (a Mach64 or an early Rage), so in theory there could be cards with TVout. 
Anyway, XFree should work witch some minor hacks in the ATi driver - just make sure the stuff trying to access legacy registers / framebuffer isn't used. If I remember correctly they're #ifndef __powerpc__ right now, so adding __sparc__ or Sun to all __powerpc__ ( as in #if !defined(__powerpc__) && !defined(__sparc__)  - or so - may do the trick ). I can't test it - no PCI Sun here.

good luck
Michael