[SunRescue] Creator 2D/PCI card in Ultra 5?

[Gregory Leblanc]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 4steve at nycap.rr.com [mailto:4steve at nycap.rr.com]
> Sent: Monday, March 20, 2000 8:55 PM
> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> Subject: Re: [SunRescue] Creator 2D/PCI card in Ultra 5?
> 
> I thought that the Creator series of cards were built around 
> the UPA architecture.

Yeah, that's the notion that I had as well.  Dunno, nobody wants to give me
an Ultra.  :)

> 
> Sun has a good picture of all this at:
> http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/graphics/creatortech.html
> 
> The Ultra 10 has one UPA slot, while the Ultra 5 has only PCI 
> expansion slots.  As
> far as I know, this is the only reason the creator is not 
> supported in the 5.

Are you sure?  Don't they both use the same motherboard, with different
chassis/configurations?  Where's my FEH...  Hmm, found it, and this is why
we're using the FEH as an example of how NOT to do things.  Where are the
bloody motherboards listed in this thing????
Ah, fer frying out loud, there they are.  The Ultra5 and Ultra10 are listed
on the top of the same page with a diagram of the motherboard (I like that
term much more than this CPU crap that Sun uses).  Looks to me like because
the 3-slot riser card on the Ultra5 goes both ways, there's no room for a
UPA framebuffer.  The Ultra10 uses a 4-slot riser, which has slots on only
one side (hehe, found those two looking for the motherboard), so it has room
for the UPA FB device.  If you want to see a picture of the page in the FEH,
ask and I'll send it to you, as long as you know it's copyrighted and that
stuff by Sun Microsystem Inc.

> Now, If I'm wrong, and there is really a PCI version of the 
> Creator, it should fit
> in the 5.  As both the Ultra 5 and Ultra 10 accept standard 
> size PCI cards.   I
> guess the only exception would be if it was really long, the 
> tower case has the
> advantage here.

PCI is ok, but grapics demands exceptionally high bandwidth, and the slots
on those riser card diagrams all look to be 32-bit.  The PeeCee world has
forsaken PCI as a graphics device, and everything new is AGP.  I'm assuming
that pretty much anybody who wants really good graphics for a Sun goes UPA.

> It would be nice to have the option of accelerated graphics 
> on the Ultra 5.  It
> wouldn't have to be extremely fast (Elite 3d m6 etc...), but 
> something that takes
> advantage of the VIS instruction set on the CPU would be 
> nice.  Otherwise I'm very
> happy with the computer.

Well, start cutting that case apart, you should be able to make it fit.  :)
	Greg