[SunRescue] 16/24bit SBus fb

[James Lockwood]

On Thu, 29 Jul 1999, Reagen Ward wrote:

> I recently rescued yet another IPX (folks literally throw 'em away!), and it's
> time to give my wife a better framebuffer.  I've only got CG6-based cards, 
> mostly TurboGX, but I need something that's at least 16bit.  Any ideas?

Yes.  Learn to live with 8bpp (at least for now).

The only solutions for 24bpp (Sun never shipped a 16bpp framebuffer) that
will work in an IPX are either very slow (GT, ZX) or very expensive and
somewhat buggy (MGX+).  All are unsupported in recent releases of Solaris.

IMHO the only pre-Ultra 24bpp setup that makes sense spending any money on
at all is a SS20 with an SX VSIMM.  The other supported alternative, the
S24 card in a Sparc 5, is far too slow for what you would pay for it.

Save those pennies.  If you can stand 8bpp the IPX is still a useful
machine.

-James