Dear AMMRL Members,
Thank you very much for the many helpful replies on the LCD for Sun Ultra 1 question. In general the responses were very positive on possibilities of putting an LCD on a Ultra 1 without much extra work. Sounds like the best way is to buy an adapter and test a few brands of LCD's to see which one works the best. I have a number of LCD's from a couple of manufacturers around the lab and offices here that I can try out.
I have listed all the responses below. Thanks again to all who responded. AMMRL is truly a GREAT resource.
Best Regards,
Mazi.
Maziar Sardashti
ConocoPhillips Co.
130 PL, BTC
Bartlesville, OK 74004
Phone: 918-661-4129
FAX: 918-662-2888
mazi.sardashti_at_conocophillips.com
Based on what my service engineer told me a few weeks back, you can put
pretty much any kind of monitor on these systems as long as you have the
adapter. I am still using one of the old 400-pound CRT's and would like
to swap it out. I have an adapter on my computer because the SunBlade
100 will take a regular computer monitor connection. The adapter I am
using I would think might go in reverse for you (I am not certain
though). The Sun part number for the adapter is 530-2917-01. All of
this provided you are using a Sun system, of course.
Hope this is useful.
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I think you will find the problem is with the refresh rate. If you
have the original specs you need to find out what is required. I don't
think you can use just any monitor. I am having a snow/sleet day and
can't look in my records but perhaps someone else will be able to tell
you. Look around for an old SGI monitor and try that.
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You can do this. Works like a charm. I had to make some minor
configurationally changes AFTER I'd booted up and tested the monitor so
that I got the maximum possible resolution supported by both monitor
and the Ultra-1. There is a Framebuffer command to do this, man
page, pretty straightforward but I don't recall the details.
We use standard dual-mode (analog or digital) monitors of the 19 or
20" variety with at least 1280 X 1024 pixels. The analog side plugs
into an adapter designed to convert the Sun output to regular VGA.
In fact, you can of course use any regular VGA monitor with the
adaptor but flat panel is much better.
you need a "13W3-M to HD15-M" cable or small plastic adaptor.
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I have been plugging different CRT monitors into my Ultra10 with wild
abandon, and they have all worked. If you're worried, borrow an LCD
you like and test it.
I remember that setting the monitor resolution in unix wasn't well
documented, but it was simple if you asked the right person. Also
that if the resolution was mis-set so the display didn't work, unix
didn't change back after a timeout (like Windows does). Just be sure
you have a way to telnet or rlogin into your Ultra10 to reset the
resolution if this happens to you.
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No advise or experience replace CRT with LCD, but I know of an outfit
that has just about any kind of cable converter you could want. I have
dealt with them in the past, and they supply quality parts and are
reasonable to deal with.
UltraSpec Cables, Inc.
www.ultraspec.com
1-800-622-2537
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I've found that most LCD monitors will work without any problem with
my Ultra-5/Ultra-10. I suspect is true for your system as well.
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I have LCDs on several older Suns; one may be an Ultra 1. In my
experience most models will work ok although some of the really cheap
ones have problems catching a signal (one particular BenQ model comes to
mind). Make sure you get one with a standard VGA port, however; I'm not
sure you really want to string two adapters together (13W3-VGA-DVI).
We've had really good luck with 19" Samsungs which are reasonably
inexpensive. Even a new 21" shouldn't be too bad these days.
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can't comment on using LCD on a Ultra, and I assume your monitor has
been acting up enough to know its the monitor?
The reason I say this is that my monitor on my system with an older,
less capable Ultra 5 has occasioned to do something similar to what you
described (only in VNMR however) with yellow/green and red flashes. I
have always attributed it to a memory/cpu problem as usually too many
windows were opened on the desktop when this occurs.
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Have a look at
http://www.computercablestore.com/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=80
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I have Sun Blade 150 and had CRT monitor from Sun, which I have replaced
with Philips LCD Monitor 170S and simply connected it to VGA port and it
works fine. If you have RGB out put then you will need an adapter. There
is website giving details of these adapters
See on
http://www.ramelectronics.net.there are number of such sites
selling adapters.
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No, you don't need anything exotic as long as you get one with a
sufficiently high refresh rate (75 or 80 Hz, I can't remember but it
should be in the Sun manual). The adaptors are also available. We have
done this successfully on Ultra-1 and Ultra-5.
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I replaced an LCD monitor with a defunct power supply with one of my old, LARGE SGI monitors. It's not as nice, but it gets the job done. You might check your wire. It just may be loose, causing you Hulkly Bp problems.
Good Luck,
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We replaced the old monitors on our sparc 5's (I can never quite
remember if they were ultra sparks or just sparks or what. the sun
nomenclature confused me.) with normal Viewsonic LCDs from CDW.
However, we did have some trouble getting them running. The old suns
wouldn't automatically detect the monitors, so they'd refuse to work
if you just plugged them in. Nothing like trying to configure your
display settings while you display is blank! Ultimately, we used our
old monitors to reconfigure the video output, then hooked up the new
monitors to see if the configuration was OK. There were several
settings that worked, but some were better than others, and none of
the automatic display detection worked.
I also encountered a strangeness where I had two different LCD
monitors and two supposedly identical sun computers, but one monitor
would work on both, and the other would only work on one. (we thought
we'd be smart and buy one LCD monitor first, soo if it worked, and
when it came time to buy another one, there was a better deal on a
better-performing model, hence the different monitor models.)
For these fussy old suns, I'd recommend begging friends to let you
borrow their monitor for a half hour, reconfigure the video output
with your old monitor, try out the friend's, return the loaner
monitor and thank your friend, and repeat until you find one that you
like and works.
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I have used 19" & 20" Dell Ultra sharp LCD monitors on my older suns,
Ultra 2 and Ultra 10s with out a problem. I have both adapter plugs and
cables that go from the 13W3 to HD15. The following links are to CDW's
government site with examples of adapters made by APC and Belkin.
http://www.cdwg.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=192460
http://www.cdwg.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=160078
Pick up one of the adapters and try out an LCD you have around the
office just to test.
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I forgot to respond to your posting yesterday, and you've probably already
received many responses.
I have replaced CRT monitors with LCDs on many old Sparks and Ultra-Sparks.
There are basically two concerns:
1) You need a DB13W3 to SVGA connector adapter. I've purchased these from
many sources, including Cables to Go; however, a quick search shows that
many vendors have discontinued these. I also found many of these on Ebay.
2) This is the tricky part. The old Suns use Analog video (RGBS) signals,
with reverse polarity (vs. PC-XVGA). Many multi-sync LCD monitors that I
tried did not work. I was fortunate to have the PC shop in our campus
bookstore allow me to try many of the ones that they had in stock. The
monitor that consistently worked on ALL suns was a Sony SDM-S71 (17") model.
These specifically listed specifications to sync to all analog RGB-sync
signals. If you can find a vendor who will allow you to try them out, with
the understanding that you will buy the one that works, it makes it a lot
easier to find a monitor that will work.
Another option is to buy a Sun-compatible LCD from one of the many
Sun-resellers out there:
http://www.solarsystems.com/spares.cfm?category=6
http://www.partnersdata.com
(Obviously I don't endorse or vouch for any of these companies, as I just
found them via google).
Received on Fri Feb 16 2007 - 17:46:17 MST