[rescue] Free SGI 1600 sw lcd

[Nate Raymond]

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 1:27 PM, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:

> In article <
> CAF_SE-CWKqH9YfdN2RFtjWLVgEzaSB2Jsi-P0-wH-15Vsw1cCw at mail.gmail.com>,
>    Robert Darlington <rdarlington at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > The adapter allows you to use a very proprietary monitor on ordinary VGA
> > video cards.
>
> I suspect its more the connector that's proprietary than the actual
> signalling.
>

Not that proprietary I think, more that it predates DVI:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenLDI

SGI was doing digital signaling to widescreen LCD before DVI existed, and so
it was either VGA (and the silliness of going from digital to analog to
digital) or do something like OpenLDI.  The industry ended up going with DVI
instead, probably for reasons like being able to include analog VGA
signaling on some of the pins in the DVI-I connector and save money/space on
the back of video cards.

I remember lusting after the 1600SW at computer expos, and for a while I
used to regularly check the refurbished hardware section of SGI's website
for when the displays and converter boxes would occasionally show up.  It
was a lot of money back in the day, but these days it's little more than a
collector's item, since 1600x1000 is nothing special and I'm sure the panel
can't compare to a good IPS or S-PLS panel today.  Those converter boxes
just allowed you to use the monitor with a DVI (and maybe VGA?) connection
as I recall.

- Nate