[1649] in Release_7.7_team
Ultra 5 and 10 colordepth issues
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Abby Fox)
Tue Feb 9 18:13:58 1999
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
Cc: ccount@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 18:13:49 EST
From: Abby Fox <ajfox@MIT.EDU>
OK, so as some of you have heard, there have been more questions about
forcing 24-bit color depth in classrooms with both the new Ultra 5 and
the Ultra 10 with Elite3d. Here's where we need advice:
Ultra 5
-------
We gave Tom Grayson the incantation from Greg:
m64config -depth 24 -res 1152x900x66
and he proceeded instead to try it instead at
1152x900x76
in 56-114, then encountered problems with the machine (details below)
and ended up (gulp) pulling the plug. Hotline is going to look it,
but I wanted to double-check with you all about whether you think the
specs above are out of bounds? FWIW, the man page says:
Not all resolutions are supported by both the video
board and by the monitor. m64config will not permit
you to set a resolution the board does not support, and
will request confirmation before setting a resolution
the monitor does not support.
Ultra 10
--------
Apparently ArcView is unable to utilize the 24-bit capability on these
unless it's the default visual...While we will make it clear to the
11.520 folks that this is something they should complain about to the
vendor, we also want to do what we can to allow them to take full
advantage of the hardware in 1-115. To this end, we've done some
poking around and it seems that:
afbconfig -deflinear true
sets the depth to 24 planes. Does anyone see a problem with this as
an interim solution for classes in 1-115? (Unless there's a
non-persistent way to do it, our idea there and in 56-114 is to tell
them to reset the machines to default settings when they leave.)
Longer term questions
---------------------
We mentioned to the 11.520 people that there may be a patch release
this spring to provide a pre-login option on the Ultra 5 for
colordepth. Is this still on the plate?
I'm not sure how many apps. like ArcView may crop up, but what are
people's thoughts on a means for general users to force 24 on the
Ultra 10? The 11.520 folks also want students to be able to use
ArcView in glorious 24 in public clusters but of course we don't want
machines being reset to a state that would interfere with subsequent
users...
Big thanks if you've read this far,
Abby
====================================================================
To: f_l@MIT.EDU
Cc: 11.520staff@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 16:22:30 EST
From: "Thomas H. Grayson" <thg@MIT.EDU>
I am encountering some problems with the new Ultra 5 in 56-114.
I tweaked the video settings so that it's now in the 1152x900x76
24-bit graphics mode. This seems to work OK at first, apart from
seeing some garbage on the screen just before the Athena login
window appears. Then if I launch ArcView, close it, and logout,
the machine appears to crash. The screen goes completely blank
and the LED on the front starts blinking. The CPU will respond
neither to pressing and holding the power button for 5-10
seconds, nor pressing Stop-A on the keyboard and typing either
'boot' or 'power-off' at the hoped for but invisible PROM prompt.
To restart the machine, I have been forced to physically remove
its plug from the outlet, which requires crawling under the
instructor's console. When the system reboots, the disk is in
such sad shape that it goes into system maintenance mode and
demands that fsck be run manually. This fsck run reveals many
errors and requires input from the user. After a lengthy reboot
process, all seems well, but then it happens again. It's gotten
into this weird state three times today.
Sometimes I am able to logout and return to the Athena login
screen, but sometimes it won't. Once I saw something like
"Starting cleanup" in the console window before the machine died.
I'm logged into the machine right now. If it locks up again when
I logout, I'm going to leave it that way for you to see for
yourselves.
