[SunRescue] Silly Question.

[Gregory Leblanc]

James Lockwood wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, Jeff wrote:
> 
> > I'm not too sure if this will work, as I'm not familiar at all with the
> > workings of the PCi card, but you should be able to flsh the bios to use
> > faster processors.  My friend has an old K6-2 300 and when he bought it
> > I think he could maybe have gone to 350, but after he flashed it, he
> > could go up to the latest and greatest K6-3.  As far as I know, these
> > boards are a full computer, so they should have a real bios as well.
> > Mabey they don't because they don't have an onboard IDE controller...
> 
> They have a "real" BIOS, but it's one that's set up for the SunPCi.  If
> the current one does not support K6-3 I doubt Sun will add support to it
> unless they start shipping the boards with K6-3's.
> 
> There are also some minor board logic issues associated with changing to
> the K6-3.  If the SunPCi can't handle them then it may never be possible.
> 
> What does the lack or presence of IDE have to do with a system BIOS?
> 
> > Is it possible to put a "PC" PCI card in a Sun (with the PCi card of
> > course) and have Windoze see it?
> 
> No.  This would be a major pain to implement and I doubt Sun is even
> considering it.  The main market for the SunPCi is for people who need to
> run normal "office" Windows apps.
> 
> > I don't understand why someone doesn't write drivers for Voodoo 2's or
> > some form of "add-on" 3d accelerator.  I mean, the Linux guys did it
> > with Mesa, why not try to port that to Solaris?  Then if someone did
> > that, we might even see better games than Q2, like Quake 3 Arena and
> > Unreal Tournament.  You can use 3dfx boards under MacOS now, and they
> > were'nt made for Macs, and Sun's PCI now so why the hell not?
> 
> Most of it is due the the lack of documentation from the vendors.  3D
> graphics card vendors are notoriously tightfisted with programming
> information and since there is essentially zero profit to be made by
> writing drivers for "texture-blaster" cards for Solaris, driver developers
> have very little leverage.

I thought that Matrox was reasonably decent about releasing programming
information?  Their cards aren't all that good at 3D, but they're the
best that I've ever seen at 2D.

> 
> PCI cards aren't "made" for anything.  With the right driver any card that
> conforms to the PCI specs can be made to work.  The trick is getting the
> information to build the driver.
> 
> > With all the know-how in this list I'm sure someone could pull it off!
> 
> I have hopes for some of the newer generation of cards that have more open
> programming information.  nVidia looks promising at this point.