Dual head VidCard for DA QS & MDD Suggestions?

Setting up a 4-way HDMI KVM Switch. So I need a decent card that will do at least 1440p and 1920x1200, preferably in the digital output realm. DVI to HDMI cables I have on hand for the latter. No luck finding ADC to HDMI cable or adapter, only ADC to DVI with its severe limitations so no go for 1440p.

Switch handles 4k, not getting a bigger display soon, but eventually hoping to. I have DisplayPort and DVI to HDMI cables for Win10 and Ubuntu setups on HP ProBook docking stations for inputs #1 ans #2, G4 on #3 and setting up my RPi Compute Module 4 on #4 with its twin 4k HDMI outputs.

Don't need crazy acceleration for the G4 trio, they're just your basic Illustrator/GraphicConverter workstations running under OS9.

Any ideas?

I've been running an ATI FireGL X3 in my MDD G4 which @herd flashed with an Apple X850 XT ROM. It'll drive a 30" Cinema at 2560x1600 on one dual-link DVI port and the second port can run a 1920x1200 simultaneously. OSX drivers only, however.

I'm not sure any Dual-link DVI card will have OS9 acceleration. One technically possible way to achieve this resolution from OS9 with acceleration is to use VGA. A capable CRT like the GDM-FW900 will accept 2560x1600@60Hz if the card is capable of sending it over VGA (the only one I tested in this manner is the Quadro FX 4500). The other consideration is most VGA->DVI converters will have a single-link DVI output and will treat 1920x1200 as the maximum resolution. There may be exceptions to this, but I haven't gone looking...

Yeah, I don't think there's any overlap between OS 9 acceleration and dual-link DVI. I have a flashed Quadro4 900 XGL; it's basically a Geforce4 Ti 4600 with two single-link DVI ports instead of DVI and ADC. So it will do 1920x1200 but not 2560x1440.

Thanks for the quick input, guys!

No need for acceleration doing line art in Illustrator under OS9, just looking to get as many pixels as I can squeeze out of the MDD. I can wait for redraws in GraphicConverter as well.

What's the max resolution that absurd ADC port supports? Can't find an ADC->HDMI solution for my KVM. Is there such a thing? ADC to 1920x1200 max of DVI is no problem, why no ADC->HDMI conversion solutions? Am I missing something, anyone know of one?

Worse comes to worse, I can just drive the 1440p screen at 1920x1200, pretty sure no card with OS9 support will do 1440p anyway?

Trash80toHP_Mini said:

why no ADC->HDMI conversion solutions?

Click to expand...

Well, there are indirect solutions, since ADC is basically a fancy DVI port with Apple-specific features.

So, you could, for example, convert ADC->DVI and THEN convert DVI->HDMI.

Trash80toHP_Mini said:

only ADC to DVI with its severe limitations so no go for 1440p.

Click to expand...

Are you sure that's not DVI->ADC? There's an Apple adapter that can convert an ADC-equipped display to accept regular DVI input, and that indeed has some limitations (given that no ADC display supported a resolution greater than 1920x1200, that shouldn't matter). An ADC->DVI converter should just be straight through with the Apple bits stripped out and the DVI signals put onto a standard DVI port for output? Why does that have severe limitations compared to plain DVI? Perhaps I'm not understanding something???

Some variants of DVI have analog signals as well, which can be exposed and converted to VGA with a simple passive adapter. I'm fairly sure ADC has those signals too, but perhaps most ADC->DVI adapters ignore them? I don't know! I haven't tried to mess with any of this for at least a decade now!

c

I haven’t bothered to try it with an interposed ADC-DVI adapter (which is indeed just a rewired plug connection and shouldn’t matter), but I can tell you that DVI can indeed do 2560x1440 because mine is right now. It has to be dual-link though – maybe that is the source of your reported difficulties with ADC conversion? I honestly don’t know whether the aforementioned plug adapters always hook up the second link or not.