G4 Cube: Monitor working great under X, woes under 9.2.2

[BeniD82]

Hi There,

I just wanted to see if anyone has any clue about this particular issue (not so much an issue I guess but annoying nontheless). So I've aquired this nicely loaded G4 Cube (1.8 GHz G4, 1.5 GB RAM, 120 GB HD, stock ATI Rage 128), currently running OS X Tiger (10.4.11) and OS 9.2.2 (that one was fun setting up, let me tell ya). It's attached to a Samsung 24" LCD via VGA running at a resolution of 1920x1080 60Hz (native). All supported resolutions work great under OS X and OS 9, the only snag I'm running into is under OS 9 when I am running at the native resolution.

Whereas under OS X everything's peachy, when booting into OS 9, at some point my refresh rate appears to be modified presumably either by the OS or the monitor/video driver, which changes it to something not quite compatible. Even though the display remains at native resolution, the actual image appears to be slightly "compressed" or "skewed," meaning that it now has black borders on both the right and left hand side of the screen (which it shouldn't since it's the native resolution).

When checking the On Screen Display of the LCD panel, this is what I am presented with (not sure what the difference between PP and NN is, couldn't find anything):

Normal Native Settings:

67.5 KHz, 60 Hz PP

1920x1080

After OS 9 Changes it:

67.4 KHz, 60 Hz NN

1920x1080

What is strange, if I boot into OS 9 with all extensions disabled (shift pressed during boot) while the resolution is set to the good setting, everything's loading fine. If I boot with all extensions on or if they are disabled using the Extension Manager, the OS modifies the screen resolution and overrides the current setting. This is driving me nuts. Obviously the graphics card is able to handle this particular resolution but I have not found a way to keep OS 9 from updating it to whatever *it* wants. Makes no sense. I do not have an ADC->DVI adapter so I can't test whether it'll do it under the digital mode as well.

Do any of you guys have experienced anything like this before, and are any of you aware of any tips/tricks/tweaks/tools that could override the OS 9 settings? Sometimes I'm really not surprised why Apple killed off OS 9, it can be such a pain the the ... neck ... sometimes, I swear.

-- BeniD82

 

[Bunsen]

First up, have you got the newest available ATI drivers?

 

[BeniD82]

Hi Bunsen!

I've tried it with both the stock drivers which came with the OS 9.x installs as well as more recent drivers which I've downloaded from a repository of ATI drivers located on a Hungarian server (http://gona.atw.hu/ATI_Mac). I can't seem to find out why it does what it does, it strikes me as peculiar since obviously the hardware's capable of supporting the required video mode. Perhaps you know of a certain driver build which will work best on this platform?

The adapter is currently connected to the flat panel via the analogue VGA port (had no ADC converter), so there's definitively a chance that the analogue-->digital conversion may be the culprit. I'll try and see if perhaps using a digital connection to the flat panel will make a different. I've got an ADC -> DVI-D adapter shipping my way as we speak and therefore won't be able to test my theory until I receive the hardware. Also, since the Rage 128 Pro card is "kinda gimp" in comparison to more recent models, I was able to get my hands on a Radeon 7500 Mac Edition which should make a rather decent upgrade in terms of being more recent generation hardware, giving better 3D performance, and Quartz Extreme under X, so perhaps that may also do the trick. I guess it will remain to be seen. Unless I/we can figure out what may cause this I'll have to wait until the upgrades comes in so I can retry this again... this blows

 

[BeniD82]

Pardon my spelling, just got out of the hospital due to kidney stones, so I'm still kinda out of it...

I know that even a digital signal still uses frequencies and refresh rates (but more for legacy compatibility purposes than actuall need) so I'm hoping that a true digital connection will work. Also, from what I was able to research, using a DVI connection (or ADC since ADC's just a modified version of the DVI standard) may also allow for more *oddball* resolutions considering that DVI also uses the EDID extension to idientify advanced monitor compatibility/modes rather than just DDC. I might be wrong, but it sounds good in my head anyway *laughs*

 

[BeniD82]

Status Update:

Typing this using Classilla on OS 9 at 1080p So needless to say, I finally received my Radeon 7500 Mac Edition, chucked the Rage 128 Pro, installed the Radeon, and now everything' s working like it' s supposed to! All possible resolutions appear now, in both OS 9 and OS X, up to the maximum of 1920x1080. Can't seem to get the ADC/DVI connection to work properly but it works flawlessly using the analogue connection (I'll just leave it on VGA, doesn't seem to make much of a difference in comparison anyway).

So yeah ... OS 9 looks wicked in 1080p, especially considering that I've never really seen it on a resolution higher than 1024x768 ... so much space on my screen, woooooh! Anyway, just wanted to let you guys know that changing the video card made a big difference, literally! :lol: