SUMMARY: VGA vs 13w13

Thanks to all who answered.  
Ronald Loftin
sajeev nv
Christophe Dupre
Jonathan Loh
John Leadeham
Rick Francis
John DiMarco
sunmanager

My question was:

I have looked in the admin guide and on sunsolve and
can't find the solution to my problem.  I have several
Ultra 10s with 13w13 graphics controllers and would
like to enable the VGA connector instead of having to
use the 13w13 sun video connector.  We have lost
several sun monitors and would like to use standard
TFT monitors with vga input.

Most suggested an adapter from sun for 13W13 to VGA
conversion and I have ordered 3 (part number: X3872A)
for some older Ultra 10s.

John DiMarco's suggestion is:

Alternatively, you could simply pull the 13W3 video
card out of your U10s, do a "boot -r" and use the
onboard card instead.  Or, simply relink /dev/fb
to point to /dev/fb1 instead of /dev/fb0.  However,
the onboard card is not as capable a video card -- if
your ultra 10 is older, it may even not be capable of
24-bit colour at reasonable resolutions.

sunmanager's suggestion is:

Look at /etc/dt/config/Xservers file if it exists...
if not create one with
the line

 :0 Local local_uid@console root /usr/openwin/bin/X
-dev /dev/{fb_device#} defdepth (8|24)

replace fb_device with the appropriate frame buffer
and defdepth value with 8 or 24 bit depending on what
your card supports and restart.

you may also need to run the ffbconfig command to set
the proper resolution on the machine.

I did run into the problem of getting console to come
up on the proper frame buffer at times, but in worst
case scenario, you can remove the 13w3 card and do a
boot -r

this will reset the default /dev/fb to point to the
frame buffer on the mother board

for more information, the frame buffer FAQ is a good
resource
http://bul.eecs.umich.edu/~crowej/sunfaq/FrameBuffer.html

I will try these methods for my newer machines that
havn't been deployed to users and any new machines
that come in.

Thanks again for the quick responses.

-Jo

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