[1543] in Release_7.7_team
Re: Can't certify 24 Plane Ultra 5 without a test machine.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dennis)
Fri Nov 13 12:22:12 1998
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 12:16:45 -0500 (EST)
From: Dennis <Dennis.Aylward@East.Sun.COM>
Reply-To: Dennis <Dennis.Aylward@East.Sun.COM>
To: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Cc: Dennis <Dennis.Aylward@East.Sun.COM>, nschmidt@MIT.EDU, wfitz@MIT.EDU,
crockett@MIT.EDU, vkumar@MIT.EDU, rbasch@MIT.EDU, miki@MIT.EDU,
ghudson@MIT.EDU, release-team@MIT.EDU, owls@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: "Your message with ID" <kqGrCsQGgE6gQnes1Q@mit.edu>
Bill,
I'll check to see what we have. It there is a new 24 bit Ultra 5 available
real quick you'll get it.
-Dennis
> Summary:
>
> We need a 24 plane Ultra-5 in here pronto so we can determine what is
> REALLY going on.
>
> We can't figure it out from the information we have in hand, and the
> history with similar situations does NOT provide us with proper guidance.
>
> ----
>
> Dennis:
>
> I've conferred with my wizards of deployment, and we cannot make sense
> of the information in the 24 Plane Ultra-5 description:
>
> The on-board 24-bit PGX24 Graphics does not simultaneously support
> both 8-bit and 24-bit environments (Creator Graphics, for example,
> does support 8-bit and 24-bit environments simultaneously). This
> may cause a problem for some older applications that require an
> 8-bit-only environment. For some customers who use applications
> with this legacy requirement, the graphics setting for the on-board
> 24-bit PGX24 Graphics will have to be configured to operate in
> 8-bit-only mode, not 24-bit-only mode.
>
> It SOUNDS like there are a couple serious problems here:
>
> 1. Before being able to install Athena on the new machine, we might
> have to issue a patch release to carefully push the machine into 8 bit
> only mode.
>
> 2. The value of 24 bit planes is completely lost to us because the
> graphics system cannot support 8 bit and 24 bit visual simultaneously.
>
> Our previous experience was this: We were going to start X in 24 plane
> mode by default on SGI's but ended up NOT doing so because some
> courseware choked, and we didn't have source for it. Right now, when
> you log into Athena, X starts in 8 bit mode but knows how to offer
> Netscape a 24 bit visual so colors don't run.
>
> PERHAPS the Ultra-5's 24 plane graphics does this, but from the
> description it sounds like not.
>
> What SHOULD have happened was that the X server should have been so
> written that when started in 8 bit mode, it would offer 8 bits as the
> default visual and offer the following other visuals:
>
> depth 1, bits_per_pixel 1, scanline_pad 32
> depth 8, bits_per_pixel 8, scanline_pad 32
> depth 12, bits_per_pixel 16, scanline_pad 32
> depth 15, bits_per_pixel 16, scanline_pad 32
> depth 24, bits_per_pixel 32, scanline_pad 32
>
> (This is what the SGI does, and what I believe the Creator graphics
> does. It is, in my ivory tower influcenced opinion, the ONLY sane way
> to make a 24 plane hardware system behave.)
>
> We need a 24 plane Ultra-5 in here pronto so we can determine what is
> REALLY going on.
>
> If the PGX-24 graphics truly does not support mixed 24 and 8 plane
> modes, we will have to engage in a non-trivial survey and redo of legacy
> applications before we can give our customers the value they seek.
>
> -wdc
