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

[David Murphy]

Quoting <A5F46F4ED18FD211ABEE00105AC6CF077F7E68 at email.cu-portland.edu>
by Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc at cu-portland.edu>:

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

Creator cards are UPA slave devices, yes.

> > 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?

Correct.

> 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.

Essentially, the case is wider, so it can accomodate a creator card in
that slot. If you turn an Ultra 10 on its side, and sit a monitor on
top of it [1] you'll notice it's a lot taller than an Ultra 5.

> 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.

Random fact - AGP is just 66MHz PCI with some add-on bits for storing
textures in host memory, etc.

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

You could cut a slot in the case, and fit a "power bulge" over it, I
suppose 8)

That said, I had an Ultra 10 Creator 3D, 300MHz, 128MB RAM, on my desk
for a couple of months, and was profoundly unimpressed with it for my
pattern of use (typical sysadmin-style lots-of-xterms+netscape+the
occasional other motif app). My real-world experience is that if you
the same money on a PC, and drop you favourite unix-like OS on it,
you'll have a much faster machine.

[1] I believe the initial Ultra 10 systems weren't supported under a
monitor, but later ones (presumably strengthened) are, and come with
little rubber feet for use this way.

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