Use Sun 13w3 vga adapter on an Indigo2

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Title: Use Sun 13w3 vga adapter on an Indigo2
Post by: nextchef on October 10, 2006, 04:21:24 PM
I was trying to start my Indigo2, but cant find the 13w3-vga adapter I usually use.  I tried a sun branded one from my ss5, but I get no picture on the monitor.  Are the 13w3 adapters for sun and sgi the same?  The pn for the sun adapter is 130-3034-01

Hoping for some confirmation before I go troubleshooting any further.

Chef
Title: Use Sun 13w3 vga adapter on an Indigo2
Post by: nextchef on October 10, 2006, 04:56:20 PM
Finally got some video after letting it sit for a while.  It appears I have an internal scsi issue, as it failed in the internal scsi device diagnostic.  Hopefully something just got jostled around in storage, as opposed to a dead hard disk.

Chef
Title: Use Sun 13w3 vga adapter on an Indigo2
Post by: nextchef on October 11, 2006, 11:11:28 AM
It looks like I may have a couple of problems with this.  I get no picture on two of my crt monitors that I normally use on my sun, but I do get some signal on an acer 17in lcd.  The problem is that the picture is not consistent.  It will flash up the image for a second, and then dissapear, then flash, then dissapear.  Is this a sync issue with the monitor?

The other issue is that one of the connectors on the cd sled has come loose, and I do not know where it goes.  It is a jumper bloc of 3x2, and I think it goes on connector 16p.  I will snap a picture and upload it, after I get some more batteries for the camera, so everyone can see what I am talking about.

Thanks,

Chef
Title: Use Sun 13w3 vga adapter on an Indigo2
Post by: brams on October 11, 2006, 11:48:44 AM
I helped set up an Mitsubishi monitor on a friends Indigo II Solid Impact a while back, we used a Sun 13w3 adapter, there are a couple of the small pins that need to be snapped out on the 13w3 side of the adapter (the sync pins) I can't recall exactly which ones they are, it might just be better to snap 'em all out as they are not needed by the SGI or the NeXT.  The reason is Sun use one or two of the small sync pins as they don't SOG like SGI and NeXT, thus is you use a Sun adapter the monitor picks up a signal (don't think it's sync as it's wired to somthing differnt) on the C or H/V sync pins and tries to use that instead of the SOG.  Thus by snapping the pin off, it locks onto SOG assuming you have a SOG monitor.

That's the reason Sun and SGI adapters are sold under different part numbers, the small pins are used on the Sun if they where compatible with each other they'd only make one part.

I also found this from http://www.reputable.com

"On some monitors, such as the Viewsonic, I had to break off one of the pins on the 13W3 side of the 13W3-HD15 adapter. This pin (10) is used by Sun framebuffers as composite (H+V) sync ground. It is connected to the HSYNC pin on the female HD15 connector. The Indy has this pin tied to ground. Turns out the the Viewsonic was "sensing" this pin was not floating, and was not using the sync on green because of this. Break off this pin (on the 13W3 side of the adapter), and that line (HSYNC on the HD15) is floating, and the monitor works fine."

It's also worth noting that although some Sun & SGI monitors look the same, SGI GDM 4011-P like I have for example, the SGI monitors are usually tuned for SOG, the Suns are tuned for C/H/V sync first.  There are some tricks you need to do with the menu buttons on a Sun monitor to switch it to SOG if you want to use it on an SGI, I can't recall exactly what though.
Title: Use Sun 13w3 vga adapter on an Indigo2
Post by: nextchef on October 11, 2006, 01:14:39 PM
Thanks for the info brams.

So SGI does not use any of the 13 small pins, just the 3 coax?  As this is currently my only adapter for my sun stuff, I will not be breaking the pins on that one.  I will have to order another adapter that is more SGI compliant.  Any suggestions, as most of the ones on ebay say sun/sgi compliant.

Chef
Title: Use Sun 13w3 vga adapter on an Indigo2
Post by: brams on October 11, 2006, 01:25:41 PM
These people are pretty good and helpful.

http://www.deepspacecables.com/
Title: Use Sun 13w3 vga adapter on an Indigo2
Post by: nextchef on October 11, 2006, 01:39:00 PM
Found an old monitor cable that works.  It is an IBM branded cable with a 13w3 at one end, and vga at the other.  This is why I never throw anything away ;)

Chef
Title: Use Sun 13w3 vga adapter on an Indigo2
Post by: brams on October 11, 2006, 01:43:20 PM
Quote from: "nextchef"Found an old monitor cable that works.  It is an IBM branded cable with a 13w3 at one end, and vga at the other.  This is why I never throw anything away ;)

Chef

Yup thats 'cos it off an RS6000 and they use SOG ;-)

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