Dual DVI @ 2560 x 1080

[IIO]

Analog VGA / DVI-A can be used with any color depth.

if there are no components which can send and receive such signals you still cant use it.

There are quite a few dual-head PCI graphics cards

care to recommend one?

The I/O speed of the bus interface has nothing to do with how RGB signals are output to monitors.

i´ve no idea how realistic that scenario is, but one possible scenario is always that you might want to send a different fullscreen picture every 16.66 ms.

so when the GPU and the monitor can do 2500x1400 but your RAM or the card´s bus is slower, that slowest part is the bottleneck.

(plus no double buffering and small VRAM sizes under mac os 9 conditions, if you know what i mean.)

[teroyk]

Yes, because I think all Mac OS 9 compatible DVI cards support 24bit and 16 bit.

i wonder if OS9 itself would support more than 8 bit i.e. "more than million of colors"?
given that there is no digital transmission available for computers which boot OS9.

Except one. And I noticed that Village Tronic VTBook support
1600x1024@60 32bit

how does their 32 bit work? you cant even divide 32 by 3.
while thinking about this villagetronic thing i just noticed that this is probably also the reason why there are no dual head PCI cards for OS9: because the bandwith of of most of our PCI slots would not be enough to max it out, especially for VGA.

8 bit = 256 colors.
16 bit = thousand colors.
24 bit = million colors.

There is original Mac OS 9 bootable Powerbook G4 800/1000Mhz versions that has DVI. Also Quicksilver and up Powermacs has ADC or DVI-digital connector.

32 bit colors has 3x10bit colors...so actually 30bit, but some has extra bit for G and/or B in memory. But it is not actually in use.

Video-cards doesn't have to use all PCI bandwidth, because they have own memory witch is used when actual monitor signal is made. When refreshing picture and nothing new drawn to screen no PCI-bandwidth needed (actually it use only some bytes to tell OS when vertical blank and some another stuff happens). So Dual Head doesn't need more PCI-bandwidth if you don't try play video in full screen in both monitors.

[IIO]

When refreshing picture and nothing new drawn to screen no PCI-bandwidth needed

i am more worried about the moment where you do need to write new pictures.

because that is what i do sometimes. not like in OSX, where even the finder consists of GL objects.

but i am still wrong, because PCI is not the bottleneck here anway.

[darthnVader]

As far a dual-link DVI and APG G4's there really has not been found a solution. The GeForce 6600 GT AGP should support it, but without any drivers of OS 9 that is going to be a no go unless we can work some magic.

The Mac X800 XT supported it, however it was AGP PRO, so it only works in the G5. A PC X800/X850 XT didn't support Dual-link DVI, tho the cards that had Dual DVI ports may have supported it. Whatever the FireGL equivalent of the X800/X850XT was would be the best bet, but there are still some things about outputs we don't understand in the Mac FCode ROM for those cards.

Lightbulbfun did flash a FireGL X3 that works in G4's and G5's with AGP, so I asked him to test Dual-Link DVI resolutions, let's see what he says.....

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/eeprom-replacement-and-flashing-x850-xt-rom-on-firegl-x3.2016538/

 

[IIO]

i think only the monitor must support it? because people are successfully using their 30" monitors in OS9.

[darthnVader]

As far a dual-link DVI and APG G4's there really has not been found a solution. The GeForce 6600 GT AGP should support it, but without any drivers of OS 9 that is going to be a no go unless we can work some magic.

The Mac X800 XT supported it, however it was AGP PRO, so it only works in the G5. A PC X800/X850 XT didn't support Dual-link DVI, tho the cards that had Dual DVI ports may have supported it. Whatever the FireGL equivalent of the X800/X850XT was would be the best bet, but there are still some things about outputs we don't understand in the Mac FCode ROM for those cards.

Lightbulbfun did flash a FireGL X3 that works in G4's and G5's with AGP, so I asked him to test Dual-Link DVI resolutions, let's see what he says.....

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/eeprom-replacement-and-flashing-x850-xt-rom-on-firegl-x3.2016538/

 

LBF reported a flashed FireGl X3 works just fine with Dual-Link DVI in a AGP G4 under OS X.

So we should be able to extract the 'NDRV' and create a OS 9 Driver for the card. It won't allow for graphics acceleration, but if you're just looking to use the card to drive a high resolution desktop and be able to change the screen resolution and color bit depth the FireGL X3 flashed with a Mac FCode ROM should bring up to 3840 x 2400 to OS 9.

[IIO]

3840*2400... that is... 9,2M... or in other words... dual dual link. so you would think one can combine different outputs by writing a custom driver?

[tunedbytad]

How do I do this?

[darthnVader]

3840*2400... that is... 9,2M... or in other words... dual dual link. so you would think one can combine different outputs by writing a custom driver?

Sorry Max res. of 2560 x 1600 @ 60Hz on the Dual-Link port.

[darthnVader]

How do I do this?

It maybe necessary to solder a new lager EEPROM to the card, but there is a reduced ROM for the FireGL X3:

http://themacelite.wikidot.com/local--files/wikidownloads2/FireGL_X3_mac.rom.zip

You need to disable PINS 3 and 11 on the card because the G4 used some Reserved PINS on the AGP PINOUT.

You flash the ROM to the card and install the Mac OS 9 'NDRV' that can be extracted from OS X, then the card should just work.

[darthnVader]

Here is the old guide on disabling PINS 3 and 11.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070117013024/www.fishface.web.aplus.net/images/taping.jpg

You should be able to backup the PC ROM FIRST!!!, and flash the X3 ROM on your Mac with this tool:

Read the instructions!

We have an 'NDRV' in the ATI ROM Xtender, decompress under OS X and put it into the OS 9 Extensions folder:

Should work with this card, not my auction:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234533346129?hash=item369b46db51:g:fbYAAOSwuMtibbYk&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAA4INH%2BtLtdtSy%2BiSafrsqS69KauEOMrFnjdmoKalQ8NgeWvpA6aJjoLBAmPL3o2xf9wUW5HCpxOiQakSGEHeo1areGjYDQYEcFRTrapV%2FBieW0ENgKW9jKQ%2Bii%2FjcSd80uh%2FCmDnkBaJnpt4RIpo1wdqA8gHO3E6aBEfKbDg9imyNauoHeRYemCRvTrG4WgxTs%2F1aBU3YQ4Qa%2BL%2BE69NLa1SGglGsW60K6sZaURiMvscUGXpyoIYKIX1Wn%2BTLNM75kTrYHuIhWRuxb81%2Ftyqcd7CmZa1%2FLt7g%2BQqUH3TXxsmB%7Ctkp%3ABFBMpq3wsMBg

[darthnVader]

I ordered a FireGL X3, converted it to Mac and disabled pins 3 and 11 and booted OS 9 in all it's 2560x1600 glory.

As long as you don't mind losing 2D/3D graphics acceleration, it works just great to display the desktop and the full range of desktop resolutions and color bit depth are fully working.

Best in a Mirrored Drive Door system, some Digital Audio and Quicksilver G4's have an AGP race condition bug that makes them incompatible with the X3/X800/X850/R9600 PC/Mac.

[darthnVader]

when i am not mistaken, the dual link cards use 2560x800 (for the frist generation 30" monitors) - 2560x1080 is far too much for DVI.

also, these 30" monitors are DVI-D only (i believe every DVI dual link connection is), which is why it cant work using ADB or VGA for one of the connections.

the third problem is that the connection usually only works when the graphic cards accepts the connection the monitor suggests: after it is found, it will tell your GPU that it requires dual link, and then a GF 4 mostly likely will simply answer "sorry, not in stock, try elsewhere".
 
 
while the GF6 will work to connect a 30" monitor, it will do that without (any) acceleration. and this is no fun unless you really only do protools TDM or display images in a store window.



however, you will be limited to 1 of them because there are no compatible PCI GPUs. in other words: it wont raise your pixel count above the use of WUXGA sized monitors (which are not limited only 2 monitors.)

I'm interested in what GeForce 6 card was used here?

Years ago a flashed a GeForce 6600 GT AGP that has dual DVI, but I did not have a dual link DVI monitor to test with, I always wondered if one of the two DVI ports would support Dual-Link with the Mac FCode ROM? Maybe even both as I think the PCI-E 256MB GeForce 6600 OEM card that shipped with the 2005 G5's supported two Dual-Link connections?

[darthnVader]

IIO

I ONLY DO PROTOOLS 5.1.3 TDM MIX PLUS Expansion x7

For me the point of OS9 and PPC G4 MDD is driving my "all in" / "Maxed out" 2002ish era ProTools Rig

no games
no 3d
no cad
not even word / text / or spread sheet

Driving a:
-LG 32 wide Screen DVI Monitor
-50" Viso HDMI TV


I am getting 2560 x 1080 out of the LG 32 Widescreen...

I don't understand the kit you are using here, is this the OEM GF4 Ti with DVI/ADC?

Anyway I can't see how you are getting 2560x1080 at all, isn't the max resolution of single link DVI 165mHz 1920x1200@60?

Did you use switchres to lower the refresh rate, or maybe your LG natively supports 30Hz refresh rate?

[IIO]

his original question was along the lines if you could combine two DVI ports to use it as dual link.

[IIO]

I'm interested in what GeForce 6 card was used here?

i dont know what drivers people use to make it available to OS9 (or if that is even neccessary) but every example i saw until now were geforce 6x and 7x taken from the apple G5 models.

[darthnVader]

I'm interested in what GeForce 6 card was used here?

i dont know what drivers people use to make it available to OS9 (or if that is even neccessary) but every example i saw until now were geforce 6x and 7x taken from the apple G5 models.

It just takes the video setting from Open Firmware, you can set the screen to a compatible resolution/bit depth in OS X and it will save that somehow to Open Firmware and the Mac OS ROM will just use that for OS 9.

Sadly 'NDRV's work a lot different with GeForce cards and everything pasted the GF4 lack a classic Mac OS Rom based 'NDRV'.

That's why I went to the trouble to test this with an ATI card as the OS X 'NDRV's are normally compatible with the classic Mac OS, and it was with the X800/FireGL X3 ROM. While we don't get any GFX acceleration at least we can change the screen resolution and bit depth in OS 9.

I also tested with my QS 800Mhz and it works just fine with the Apple 30" display in both OS 9 and OS X, so we can at least say the QS 800Mhz doesn't suffer from the AGP race condition that some QS and DA's suffer from. I have a few 733Mhz QS's and a 867mhz model sold as Education without the L3 cache that the production model had, I'll test those when I get time.

The Radeon 9600 Mac/PC edition also supports Dual-Link DVI on one port, but also suffers from the AGP Race Condition bug in some DA/QS models, but good luck finding one, they are rare as hen's teeth.

[refinery]

There's one on eBay right now for $120

https://www.ebay.com/itm/265791838278?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=BhrxgrksTj2&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=SJ9KN-eSRDy&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

[darthnVader]

There's one on eBay right now for $120

https://www.ebay.com/itm/265791838278?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=BhrxgrksTj2&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=SJ9KN-eSRDy&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Saw this yesterday, that's actually a great price for a super rare NIB card. No muss no fuss with taping pins, works great in MDD or G5's, but ATI removed support for DA/QS G4's due to the spotty AGP race condition.

The card is dual DVI with one Dual-Link port that mixes tow external TMDS's to drive the dual-link. Tho I have some question if the second DVI port can drive a digital display if you are using Dual-Link on the other port.EDIT check that, the card has 3 TMDS's and the Dual-Link port supports displays up to 330mHz:

With the firmware problem taken care of, the rest of the card works just fine in either type of system.  It's an AGP 4X card that'll work in both 4X and 8X slots, meaning that it can be used in both Power Mac G4 and G5 systems, as well as PCs, obviously. The card features two DVI outputs, one of which is driven by the two external Silicon Image TMDS transmitters on the board itself.  The two TMDS transmitters in conjunction enable one of the DVI outputs to support dual-link displays, such as the 30" Cinema Display, at full resolution.  ATI wants the 9600 Pro Mac & PC Edition to be the card that enables other display makers to bring out similarly high resolution desktop displays, as this one card can drive them regardless of platform.  The dual-link DVI port supports a maximum 330MHz pixel clock, and only approximately 270MHz is required to drive the 30" Cinema Display's 2560 x 1600 resolution, so higher resolutions will be supported if other panel makers are so inclined.  The single link DVI port is a standard 165MHz connection, the fastest speed supported by a single TMDS transmitter.  ATI includes a single DVI-to-VGA adapter in the box.

[DieHard]

I am shocked that this card is not sold already, I highly doubt you will see another of these NIB, if this lasts more than a day or 2 it's a miracle.

I love when new old stock is found in some warehouse