Nekochan Net

i have an indy with 24bit XL graphics and an sgi hl7965kw-sg monitor. when in IRIX 6.5.18m (and .14m) i have lots of grey vertical lines through the monitor. this exact same computer/monitor combination had debian on it for a bit, and gnome never had this problem ... i've tried every resolution/refresh combination available, but still these lines persist. of an interesting note, these lines aren't there during the "boot screen" ... they only appear as soon as the login prompt appears. help?

When you have a error that displays in a pattern like that it usually means that there is an error in the memory. The RM4 board on my Onyx I had went bad and looked all speckled. Same sort of thing with PeeCees. It might be that the errors existes in the video memory but not in the fisrt meg or so where the prom is using. I could be wrong, but it's just a thought.

yeah, makes sense. gnome wouldn't show errors under debian b/c it's an unaccellerated X server & therefore not touching the video ram. bah.

My XL24 has bad memory, but it only shows up when I use 3d in a window over 640X480 in size and only in double-buffered mode. Fortunatley it only shows up as small speckles of the wrong color (eg. purple instead of green) .

Wow, I already made 4 posts in under an hour!

If you want to get really tricky... You can canniblize an 8 bit FB or two and replace the memory chips. You could even swap them out one by one and see if you manage to fix it that way, or even see if you can get any white papers on what parts of the memeory are getting used at what points of operation. That's a bit on the extreme side, but it might work for you.


Now you jut need to find a few 8 bit cards....

I've already heard of someone converting 3 XL 8-bit cards into one 24-bit, by cannibalizing the memory and some ASICs. Then moving a resistor to make sure the indy knew it was a 24-bit board. It was posted in one of the comp.sys.sgi.* newsgroups recently, however I can't find it at the moment...

UPDATE: I just found it, http://www.jfc.org.uk/documents/indy_gfx.html

I have a bunch of those XL 8-bit cards too ... but the soldering work required is way beyond my meager skills.

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for those of you that are curious, it was the video card. i swapped a new card in and the lines went away. yay.

I had a similar problem with my Onyx RE2.

I didn't have it very long, and it dimmed all the lights in the building when I fired it up. It had a bad RM4 board and had very a speckled display. We pulled out and reseasted the video boards and the video never cam back. Fortunately I on't paid $75 for it and was able to trade it off for stuff that was a bit more usefull for me.