Matrox (soopah!) and monitor sizes (was RE: [rescue] 13W3 -> vga)

[Loomis, Rip]

Hi Mike... 

They'll take away my Matrox cards when they pry
them from my cold dead fingers...specifically,
the Millennium II.  Three of the four x86 boxes
in my basement have Millennium II cards (all of
which started as 4MB cards, one system has two
MillII cards one of which is upgraded to 8MB).

I started "rescuing" x86 hardware over the last
several years, and the only real competitor to
the MillII cards for non-AGP systems (IMHO) is
the 3dfx Voodoo3 family...which is what's in
the other system in my basement.

Highly recommended, to use a Jerry Pournelle
phrase.  I'm typing this on a system where the
MillII card is driving a nice 21" 1994-vintage
fixed-frequency NCD monitor and the picture
quality is awesome.  Given that I picked it up
for $20 since the corresponding terminal (I
assume an Xterm) was missing and no one knew
how to drive it, so much the better.

Matrox seems to use RAMDACs that have both
a continuous range (rather than gaps in their
ranges) and a really large range of supported
frequencies.  End result is (as was already
observed) that they can drive almost anything--
and can be "tweaked" under Windows through
a .ini file (mmm...text based configuration
files instead of point and drool...)

Anyone know if the G450 or the follow-on (G550?)
is still available as a PCI card?

And for the ObSun, WTF?  I just measured this
NCD monitor and it's 20.5" diagonal...but my
20E20 is only 18" diagonal.  How the heck do
"they" call the 20E20 a 20" monitor?

  --Rip


-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Nicewonger

> 
> I'm with Bill.  Get yerself a nice Matrox (my G450 dual seems to do
quite
> nicely), run Linux and FBconsole, and you can send output to darn near
> anything.  You may have to play around with configuring it, but Matrox
cards
> have the hardware onboard to output any signal I've ever wanted them
to.

Oh my, I knew there was yet another reason for me to keep my old Matrox
cards.
:)

I will be looking into this ASAP as I need a bigger tube on my PeeCee
Linux box