Thanks Michael,

fascinating stuff!   very confusing.

It has a line :
(--) ATI(0): 2048 kB of SGRAM (1:1) detected (using 2047 kB).

so perhaps that means that the vidram is 2MB ?  shock horror...


If so it's now doing pretty well.
What I mean by graphics suffering is that I ran 1280 x 1024
on an LCD display and then ran dillo browser. Which worked.
Only the images were degraded. Usually a symptom of not
enough ram. Anyhow after mucking about all DAY!  i now
have 1152x864  at 16bpp  !  And it doesn't look too bad! :)


of course intel machine is 1280x1024 with umpteen bpp
but something about this sun sparc64 is such a buzz with
even moderate achievement. what is that? i dunno, hack
value i suppose...

Paul.











Michael wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hello,
>
> > on my Ultra10 dmesg i have detected:
> >
> > machfb0 at pci1 dev 2 function 0: ATI Technologies 3D Rage I/II (rev.
> > 0x9a)
> > machfb0: 16 MB aperture at 0xe1000000, 4 KB registers at 0x00000000
> >
> > the video card is detected as having 16Mb.
>
> No, it's not. The aperture size is 16MB, as on most mach64 chips. This
> has little to do with video RAM size.
>
> > But /var/log/XFree86.0.log shows only 8MB:
> >
> > (II) ATI(0): Using 8 MB linear aperture at 0xE1800000.
>
> Just read the rest of machfb's output and the rest of XFree's log.
> It's very likely that you have only 2MB video RAM.
> Again, the aperture size is the address range used by the graphics chip
> which doesn't have much to do with video RAM size. All mach64 chips for
> instance map two views of the framebuffer and registers - one with
> endianness translation, one without - in their 16MB apertures.
>
> > despite in my XF86Config trying:
> > VideoRam    16384
> >
> > Any ideas on how to get all the ram recognised?
>
> Since you don't have more RAM that's rather pointless.
>
> > The graphics is suffering.
>
> What exactly do you mean by that? Slower than modern graphics boards?
> Of course, it's 90s technology.
>
> have fun
> Michael
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--

____________________________________________

Paul
Australian Bureau Of Meteorology
____________________________________________




"In a world without walls and fences,
who needs windows and gates ?"