Ultra 80 dual headed xwindows in solaris 10

Chrisheg

New member
Dec 22, 2020
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Hi, I'm new here. I once had many types and models of Unix workstation - SGI, Sun, Dec, IBM, and HP. Now I'm down to two. I have an SGI Iris Indigo XS24 running Irix 5.3 and a Sun Ultra 80 running Solaris 10. The Ultra 80 has two Elite3D framebuffers. The system sees them, gets status, and sends settings but I can't get the second one to send out any signals. I've confirmed the boards, cables, and monitors are good by swapping and have set Xservers configuration file for dual monitors but nothing comes out. Anyone have a suggestion on how to make it work? Thanks.
 

Elf

Storybook / Retired, ex-staff
Feb 4, 2019
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Mountain West (US)
Welcome to the user group :)

We probably don't have as much Sun knowledge here as SGI knowledge, but hopefully someone can help you out!
 

mgtremaine

Member
May 3, 2020
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San Diego, Ca
www.stellarcore.net
First I'm betting that Solaris 10 would not auto configure this so you are going to have work directly with the X11/Xsun configuration. I think step 1) would be to make sure both video cards are detected. At openboot use show-devs to tell you if the system has detect both at the lowest level. "prtconf" within Solaris should also tell you what the system sees. If everything is detected then you should be able to move on to configuring X .. I don't have this step for you but some googling is likely to turn up a HOWTO Dual Video Cards Dual Monitor X11 setup. It will take some trial and error and obviously have SSH running and possible a Serial cable if things go wrong. Just remember not to have the exact same device names for them.

-Mike

edited for horrible typos
 
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Chrisheg

New member
Dec 22, 2020
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Update - Thanks for the suggestions. No joy so far. I tried a combinations of 2x Elite3d-m6 and an m3+m6 and swapped Upa slots. Both boards are detected in OBP and solaris but nothing comes out of one when I follow the X11 instructions. Using xinerama I can extend the desktop across both monitors but one has no picture. The U80 service manual is ambiguous. It never actually says anything about dual fbs, just 'provides 2 UPA slots for framebuffers'. I'll keep plugging away. Thanks.
 

mgtremaine

Member
May 3, 2020
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San Diego, Ca
www.stellarcore.net
Do you have Dual Procs on that Ultra 80? I just read a not that say Maximum Number of UPA Bus Cards Allowed and shows all the machine types. The Ultra 80 says 1 or 2... But doesn't explain why, I assume it is single vs dual processors.

The Elite 3D Graphics Just the Facts pdf : http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=52EE419D21161935AC6FC41DC8EA91EE?doi=10.1.1.195.8501&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Says this for the Ultra 60.... But no mention of the Ultra 80 (or Ultra 420 which is the same Motherboard)
  • Two UPA slots capable of supporting two high-performance graphics frame buffers: one Sun
    Elite3D m6 graphics frame buffer and either a Sun Elite3D m3 or Creator3D frame buffer or two Sun Elite3D m3 graphics frame buffers

So it maybe a hardware thing.

-Mike
 
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