Kahenraz wrote on 2023-02-11, 14:54:

That's amazing. I love vintage Sun computers, as I have a personal fondness for Unix systems (as in, I actually know how to use them!)

It's particularly interesting to see such heavy graphical silicon. I wonder if they can be utilized by normal OpenGL, or if they require a more complex software configuration to get going.

The Silicon Graphics graphical hardware certainly can, as they originally created OpenGL! (You should maybe think of getting into Silicon Graphics Systems then! 😀 )

The Silicon Graphics InfiniteReality4 system in my Onyx2 (Single graphics pipeline consisting of a GE16-4, 2 x RM11's and a DG5-8) is absolutely amazing, as it can run 8 screens, each running @1920x1200 and not even brake a sweat! (It has 2GB of texture memory and 5GB of raster memory, and it's a graphics system from the year 2000!!!!)

Here's a picture of the original Infinite Reality3 graphics system that my Onyx2 came with: (GE16-4, 2 x RM10's and a DG5-2)

These are the two RM11's that I fitted to upgrade it to IR4:

This is the DG5-8 that I fitted, allowing it to drive up to 8 screens:

Here are some details on the InfiniteReality system:

That's incredible for the time. Was there ever a build of GL Quake for this? I can't think of any actual games that could be used as a point of comparison, with full knowledge that it would be a very futile comparison. It would be interesting nonetheless.

I would love to have a small Sun workstation, but I must draw the line at my collecting somewhere. I already have way too much stuff as it is.

I'm happy to be an observer, and appreciate those who put in the time and effort to preserve and restore these things of beauty.

There's a very dirty port of quake III that we use to demonstrate these systems, but unfortunately Quake III was not build with an Infinite Reality system in mind, so it's not at all optimised for it! (Remember that optimisation is pretty much everything when it comes to performance!)

Here's a shot of it running on my Infinite Reality 4 system: Take note of the full screen 8x8 antialiasing (you can't seen any jaggies!!!)

That really looks fantastic. It takes some horsepower to pull that off at 60+ fps. What resolution are you running it at?

It's 1280 x 1024 as I was using an analog output into a screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and you can't drive 19020 x 1080 through an analog output (you can run 1920 x 1200 though!)

But in the case of this system, you'd be able to run Quake III at the highest resolution possible across multiple 1920 x 1200 monitors with little to no drop in frame rate!

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2023-02-12, 18:03:

That really looks fantastic. It takes some horsepower to pull that off at 60+ fps. What resolution are you running it at?

I agree. Even unoptimized, this is still very impressive at 60+ with AA. Quake 3 was a challenging benchmark for its time, especially with AA. The FPS may be trying to lock itself close to the refresh rate as well, so maybe this number is misleading.

Irinikus wrote on 2023-02-12, 18:07:

It's 1280 x 1024 as I was using an analog output into a screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and you can't drive 19020 x 1080 through an analog output (you can run 1920 x 1200 though!)

But in the case of this system, you'd be able to run Quake III at the highest resolution possible across multiple 1920 x 1200 monitors with little to no drop in frame rate!

That's seriously impressive. That was hardware I always dreamed of playing with.

I wish 16:10 had become a thing. I'm not a fan of 16:9. It's a pretty terrible resolution for laptops. There are so many panels of the era wasted on 1366x768. What an awful resolution.

All of these cool Sun gear reminds me of this panel from XKCD. This Sun system will be perfect in the event that early OpenGL makes a comeback. Just in case.

For the longest time I owned a 1440x900 panel before switching to a 1920x1080 panel in 2011. I always thought the 16:9 AR was TERRIBLE for desktop computers. 16:10 was robbed..

I fully agree that 16:10 is better than 16:9. I'm still daily using my 1680x1050 16:10 Scepter monitor I bought back in 09

I had a Dell 2005fpw 1680x1050 as my first LCD my monitor, after sporting 19" 1600x1200 CRT for years. I loved it. After my next upgrade to 1080p, I was very disappointed. I actually preferred the feel of the smaller 16:10.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-02-12, 19:59:

I wish 16:10 had become a thing. I'm not a fan of 16:9. It's a pretty terrible resolution for laptops. There are so many panels of the era wasted on 1366x768. What an awful resolution.

Yep, I hated that resolution which felt like a downgrade. 16:9 became "acceptable" on computers starting from 1920x1080 resolution.

Why did 16:9 even won out? Because it has something like 5% smaller surface area for the same diagonal size?

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-13, 15:10:

Why did 16:9 even won out? Because it has something like 5% smaller surface area for the same diagonal size?

Because it was cheaper to manufacture given that TVs at that point uses the same aspect ratio, unfortunately.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-02-13, 15:14:

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-13, 15:10:

Why did 16:9 even won out? Because it has something like 5% smaller surface area for the same diagonal size?

Because it was cheaper to manufacture given that TVs at that point uses the same aspect ratio, unfortunately.

I feel like this is the same reason that HDMI won out as the predominant digital display connector on computers, video cards, and laptops, despite DisplayPort literally being the next generation standard after DVI. It was cheap, convenient, and could be hooked up to a TV.

Even now, I use DVI-to-HDMI cables to hook up my flat panels. Very rarely do I ever see a DisplayPort connector on a monitor. On the plus side, I haven't run into any VGA-only flat panels in years. E-waste straight out of the factory.

Main PC with ultra wide screen:

Gigabyte 970A-DS3P
AMD FX 8320E
32 Gb RAM
Radeon HD 7770 low profile
2 x 1Tb Crucial SATA SSD
Asus M-Disc DVD Reader / Writer
Asus Xonar AE
Behringer UMC404HD
Cooler Master NR600
Be Quiet! Pure Power 11
Be Quiet! Dark Rock ?
Arch Linux (installed in 2014, Xfce, Conky, Plank)

Laptop:

Lenovo ThinkPad E545
Haiku OS

Under the desk:

Machinist X79
Xeon E5-2648L (8 core/16 threads)
64 Gb ECC RAM
Radeon HD 2400 PRO
Intel PRO/1000 PT dual ethernet adapter
Crucial 512Gb NVMe SSD
2 x 2TB Toshiba P300
Silverstone CS380
Cooler Master RR-H412-20PK-R2
Corsair 500W
Arch Linux (running VMs of all kinds)

ASRock K7VT4A PRO
AMD Geode NX 1500
2Gb RAM
Radeon 9600 PRO
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
Intel PRO/1000 GT ethernet adapter
Silicon Image 3512a SATALink host controller
Front CompactFlash card reader
Hitachi 160Gb SATA disk
NEC 1.44Mb floppy drive
DVD drive
Rajintek Arcadia
Seasonic SII 430W
Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0

Next to the other desk:

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
Athlon MP 2400+
3 Gb RAM
Radeon HD 3650
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 SE
3ware 8006-2LP hardware SATA RAID controller
Intel PRO/1000 GT ethernet adapter
Kingspec 64Gb PATA SSD
2 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 250Gb SATA HDD
Sony 1.44Mb floppy drive
Plextor PX-130A DVD drive
Cooler Master N300
Corsair 750W
Windows XP Pro

IBM Aptiva 2137-E30
ALi M1531 Aladdin IV chipset
Pentium 200 MMX
64 Mb RAM
Matrox Mystique 220 Business
Sound Blaster AWE64 Value
3Com 3C905B-TX Fast Etherlink XL
Promise FastTrack Ultra 100 TX2
80 Gb Maxtor PATA HDD
Back CompactFlash card reader
FreeDOS, PC-DOS 7.1, DR-DOS 8.x, Windoze 95 (for "nostalgia" of general protection faults)

Amstrad PC1512SD
AMD 8086 8Mhz
512k RAM
360k floppy drive
40Mb Seagate ST MFM HDD + Controller
FreeDOS, ELKS (dual boot)

Except for most of the Windows XP computer, a lot if not most of this stuff is hardware I kept over the years.

dpirate wrote on 2023-02-18, 22:35:

Except for most of the Windows XP computer, a lot if not most of this stuff is hardware I kept over the years.

something about those photos made it looks like captures from an atmospheric new first person game!

This my current living room retro gaming setup. I designed it so I can swap tower systems at one end and desktop setups at the other end.

Currently set up with a Tandy 1000 TL, NES in the middle, and pair of Pentium systems (133 and 200 MMX) at the far end.

Does that wall have a fireplace in it? And what kind of table is that such that it's so long and narrow? It fits perfectly.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-03-01, 22:26:

This my current living room retro gaming setup.

Beautiful! I'd feel right at home there.