[rescue] Video card reco

[Mike F]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joshua D Boyd" <jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu>
To: <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 1:32 PM
Subject: Re: [rescue] Video card reco

> I've never heard any good reason why the Millennium II would be
> significantly better than the original, except I've heard rumors that it
> can be upgraded to 16megs of ram, which would be seriously cool under
> some circumstances, if true.
> 
> It seems to me that a few of the Millenium and Millenium II cards are
> something any self respecting geek should have on hand.  They seem to be
> the most widely supported, other than VGA, and they will work with any
> monitor (albeit a proprietary cable is sometimes required, and some
> driver tweeking might also be needed).
> 
> -- 
> Joshua D. Boyd

Well, I've got one of each, so consider me geekified. I actually use
the Millennium II on a Windows NT machine to run the 20" sync-on-green
HP workstation monitor that I picked up cheap. The Millennium line
is the only video card line I know of that supports sync-on-green
(and unofficially at that.) To further complicate matters, the Win2K
Millennium I/II drivers do not make it possible (or at least easy)
to enable sync-on-green. X also supports this combination quite well,
although it took some research and experimentation to get it right.
The monitor I'm using is fixed-frequency, so it only supports one
resolution and vertical refresh: 1280x1024x76Hz. As such, you don't
get any usable video during POST and the rest of the boot sequence.
If I need to get in the BIOS I just hook up a VGA monitor. Once winter
sets in and I'm looking for a project, there is a way to convert this
monitor to separate sync so I won't have to worry about the sync-on-green
anymore. All in all, getting this monitor to run was a fun rescue, and
I've been using it daily for over a year now. Back to the original
subject, yes the Millennium line is an excellent choice for a cheap,
universal, high-quality video card.