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[tunedbytad]

My goal is to get Dual DVI @ 2560 x 1080

* I can not get the GeForce 4 ti 4600 to do it. (dvi/vga or dvi/adc versions)

Dual DVI @ 2560 x 1080... How is it done?

Willing to pay good money to sponsor a (uplifting our OS9 community) driver / firmware that enables the available Dual DVI GeForce 6800 AGP 8x to be used

[IIO]

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.)

[tunedbytad]

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...

[tunedbytad]

If the 50" Vizio could get better than 1600 x 1200 I could capitalize on alot of digital real estate

[DieHard]

Thanks for the picture, I really enjoyed looking at everything in the background

Nice Studio !

[IIO]

so missing acceleration would be ok for you? it might be worth a try to go this route then and use a GF6 or GF7.
 
 
otoh, as for "maxing out" ...

dual link... is mostly used for very high frequencies, followed by the resolution of older 30" monitors.

and a single 30" monitor would actually be smaller than two 1920*1200 monitors, which is what the GF4 can do out of the box and with acceleration.

it is 4096k pixels vs. 4608k pixels with a small bar in the middle...

[tunedbytad]

So I'm the uninitiated
are you saying a GeForce 7 with cut / taped traces will boot and run 2D in OS9 / MDD

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-7950-gt-agp.c754

[tunedbytad]

Dumb question
Can two video cards run at once?
 AKA add a PCI video card that has 2560 x 1080 DVI output (in conjunction with an AGP card)

[IIO]

yes of course, you can add 4 PCI cards (OS9 compatible radeons) and run 6 monitors with OS9.

i was using a PCI graphics for the third monitor for 20 years, an just removed it a week ago because i have other plans for that slot.
(unfortunately there is no dual head PCI card and only for the third monitor it seemed no longer appropiate to waste a slot. i have now only 2x powercore and 2x SATA, everything else is in hibernation in cupboard #2.)

you will have already noticed that i was missing that there are of course dual dual-link dvi cards, so my statement about the "maxing out" is wrong.

i think the second generation of G5 exclusively had those dual dual and that is where i would pull one from.
BUT i can not guarantee you that smaller monitors will work with those dual link ports. so you might actually end up with 2 30".

it should be a mac card though, not anything else. and the "no acceleration" includes 2D. that will be ok with protools, but it is not okay when you use solid window dragging or require to run programs which do it on their own (like ableton or photoshop)

with 2 30" you have to rethink your stereo triangle. (same problem here) or leave the stacked arrangement.

[IIO]

@xerograph is doing that for 10+ years i think.

[refinery]

IIO when you say dual-head PCI do you mean dual DVI? Cuz I have a 9200 PCI in my beige G3 and it runs dual head monitors fine at 1920x1200, albeit one is VGA.

[IIO]

dual DVI != dual link DVI

dual DVI means 2 connectors on 1 card, dual link DVI is a different DVI connector with more contacts.

due to its doubled bandwith dual link DVI supports 30" size or frequencies of >150Hz - and it is more or less directly compatible with HDMI (cheap adapter and you are ready to go)

only in theory you can mix or split between normal and dual link, not in practice.

vintage 30" requires dual link DVI-I or dual link DVI-D at the card.

[IIO]

and watch out, that a geforce 4 type of card might have a DVI-I connector, does not mean it would spit out more than -A.

to my knowledge the mac mini coreduo was the first computer which actually had -D.

[teroyk]

In my knowledge and it is also in Wikipedia
single link max is:
2560 × 1600 @ 30 Hz
but then there comes problem, what cards and monitors support those resolutions.
And nice think is that some monitors support even 24 hz so what is actual max with DVI,
lets calculate:
- bandwidth  4.95 Gbit/s (single link max)
- bits per pixel 24 bits or less(less is optional in standard) lets make 8 bits.
- hz 24 (although I have seen one Iiyama monitor supported even down to 40hz-interlanced (half of lines @ 40 hz))
= 4.95 G / 8 / 24 = 25,8 Mpixels in one frame
...it's almost 8K ! ofcourse there is blanking times and so on...
but at least 5K in real life if card and monitor support it...and I didn't even talk about dual link and dual head

My only question is that is there any low level tools for Mac OS 9 to tweak hz down to 24 hz?
Only that I know had come with Village Tronic VTBook 1.2 beta drivers, but I still looking for it (also with another reasons too).

[IIO]

higher than 8 bit also requires dual link DVI by default, no matter the resolution.

btw. i dont think that you want to sit in front of 30Hz all day long.

so for now lets just say DVI supports WUXGA at 59.9 Hz.

[teroyk]

higher than 8 bit also requires dual link DVI by default, no matter the resolution.

Actually no...in standard single-link is 24 bit/pixel...less bits is optional in DVI-standard.
25-48 bits/pixel is only with dual link...and it's only data not what monitor can really show.
And many modern HDMI cards and TVs and monitors are less than 24-bit.

btw. i dont think that you want to sit in front of 30Hz all day long.

Actually some flat-panels doesn't flickering at all..they are too slow for that.

so for now lets just say DVI supports WUXGA at 59.9 Hz.

Yes it is easiest think that way with single link DVI with 24bit colors.
And reality is that many times you have even lower because card or monitor.
I have seen with PCs that both card and monitor support 1920x1200, but
reality what worked together was 1600x1024, because it was best
that both find with EDID identification, because they had little different
preferred hz and aspect ratio. That kind of automation sucks, if you cannot
turn it off.

[IIO]

Actually no...in standard single-link is 24 bit/pixel...

according to the DVI specs it should not be used with single link - of course it might be that there is a monitor or a GPU  somewhere which would allow it.

in our OS9 world we should not worry too much about

Yes it is easiest think that way with single link DVI with 24bit colors.
And reality is that many times you have even lower because card or monitor.

transmission via longer cables is getting really problematic with more than 2k/1080p. you need to fix that using $$$ cables.

and there IS a noticeable difference between analog and digital connection. but let´s be happy what we have in OS9 and not run after foreign girls.

the only thing on my personal wish list would be a dual head PCI card.

[teroyk]

Actually no...in standard single-link is 24 bit/pixel...

according to the DVI specs it should not be used with single link - of course it might be that there is a monitor or a GPU  somewhere which would allow it.

Where yo find that specs, I found this
from Digital Visual Interface DVI revision 1.0:
from page 18:
"The system must support the 24-bit MSB aligned RGB TFT data format as a minimum"
https://web.archive.org/web/20120813201146/http://www.ddwg.org/lib/dvi_10.pdf

in our OS9 world we should not worry too much about

Yes, because I think all Mac OS 9 compatible DVI cards support 24bit and 16 bit.
Except one. And I noticed that Village Tronic VTBook support
1600x1024@60 32bit and 1920x1200@60 16 bit and there is not 24 bit
between those resolutions and only way get resolution between them is lower refresh
or put VGA adapter...HDMI adapter makes it even worse if monitor doesn't support
HDTV refresh or 32bit (quite normal with HDMI, and don't mix that modern computers
show in control panel, its only 32bit in GPU memory).

transmission via longer cables is getting really problematic with more than 2k/1080p. you need to fix that using $$$ cables.
and there IS a noticeable difference between analog and digital connection.

Yes short cable and high quality cable that you can.

but let´s be happy what we have in OS9 and not run after foreign girls.
the only thing on my personal wish list would be a dual head PCI card.

Actually I am happy that we have those DVI-connections even with some Powerbooks.
There was still PC laptops in 2010 with bad quality VGA-connector. With OS9 Macs we
have always high quality monitor connector was it DB-15, VGA, ADC or DVI.

And my personal wish is to find version 1.2 beta driver for Village Tronic VTBook-card:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,5548.0.html

[IIO]

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.

[robespierre]

Different fields use incompatible nomenclature for the "bitness" of color representations. In photography, scanning, printing, fields the depth of each color channel is normally given. For example, a 16-bit RAW image has 16 bits per channel. Graphic display adapters, on the contrary, normally give the number of bits stored per pixel in the frame buffer. These numbers can't be compared, since the data in the buffer may not be a direct color representation, but instead an indexed or colormap representation. For example, 256 color mode doesn't represent each color in 8 bits: 8 bits are an index into a colormap, and each color in the colormap has 24 or 32 bits of data representing it.

The classic MacOS color model (from the time of 32 Bit QuickDraw around 1990) uses 16 bit precision for color components, i.e. it is a 48 bit color model. The same is true of ColorSync. Software normally must decimate or reduce the precision of these color components when data is transferred to hardware, where the maximum precision is usually 24 bits (8 bits per component) or 32 bits (8 bits per component with 8 spare bits, sometimes used for alpha or transparent blending). 32 bits is a common pixel size for framebuffers even if no alpha channel is supported, because multiplication by 4 is a trivial operation in hardware that adds no delay or cost, while multiplication by 3 is not.

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.

Analog VGA / DVI-A can be used with any color depth. Indeed, there are many systems that use 12 or 16 bits of precision per component in the video DAC. This additional precision helps with color uniformity and gamma correction and is an element of DICOM certification for medical radiography.

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.

There are quite a few dual-head PCI graphics cards; there are even dual-head ISA graphics cards. The I/O speed of the bus interface has nothing to do with how RGB signals are output to monitors.