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5500/250 directors special screen res

uridium

uridium

6502
G'day,

I've got a 5500/250 cranking and fed it upto 9.2.2 using third party installer.

Specs at everymac say that big Bertha's capable of 1024x768 in 16bit. I can't seem to find anything beyond 8x0*6xx at any depth.

Anyone know how to increase the resolution?

Thanks in advance.

Al

 
I would poke around for the 5500 disk to make sure it installed the old ATI drivers first.  My 5200, upgraded to G3/500 needed original install to get the correct ATI drivers.  I didn't go to OS9 though.  

 
You should be able to achieve 1024x768 in 16-bit on any 5500 built-in screen... in lower resolutions the display itself and the card are capable of rendering 32-bit. Sounds as though there is an issue with display drivers only partly supporting the inbuilt ATI graphics controller, in which case the above suggestion would be a good place to start. The other highly unlikely but still possible scenario is the machine is a frankenmac that has had a boardswap from a lesser machine, which is possible as there is fairly universal connectivity between many of the PowerPC-powered Performa desktop and AIO machines... In fact I even successfully plugged an early 6xxx-series Performa board into a 68k Performa 580 chassis. Was a simple matter of swapping the rear port bezel.

But yeh, I ran up to 9.1 on my 5500/225 and my 5500/250 black beast and both supported 1024x768 @ 16-bit... driver incompatibility due to an unsupported hardware system would seem most likely.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for the advice guys. I'm a bit of a noob where PPC and drivers are located.. can someone give me a pointer as to where they are?

@360alaska:

I've pondered the same thing. My first OSX box was a 233mhz Gossamer with 128mb ram with 10.1 and later 10.2, so this shouldn't be much of a stretch. Might give that a go later. :)

 
360alaska said:
I wonder how 10.2 would run on that thing?
Click to expand...
I have a 7600/200 that runs 10.2 under with the help of XPostFacto, and it was usable, but still pretty gluggy and a bit painful an experience. Admittedly, even with the ability to expand VRAM to a fairly decent amount (for an architecture first released in the mid-90's anyway), the 7xxx boards do not have a terribly sprightly graphics controller, and also are limited by SCSI. Not that SCSI is a slow interface by comparison to the early IDE buses, but fast drives for it arent readily available as they used to be. So with the extra few MHz, a fairly capable Rage video controller onboard and using a fast modern hard disk, the 5500 may have potential to perform a little more respectably under  Tiger, however it was a slow OS even on the lower end of officially supported hardware by comparison to Panther, so I think it may still be a bit of a disappointing experience. The other issue with the 5500 logic board is the RAM ceiling, which is realistically 128Mb... Compatible 128Mb DIMM's are available and theoretically if the machine can recognise them in their entirety then the RAM ceiling becomes a more usable 256Mb, but it is not easy to get these days. I was running 384Mb with all 8 slots filled in my 7600 after pillaging the largest DIMM's I could muster from various redundant and junk machines I had. The largest that are commonly available by virtue of being the usual factory items in later machines were only 32Mb per module, and you only have two slos to play with in the 5500.

 
I think I'd probably go 10.2 if I was.

I don't have the original CD for this machine. What should I be looking for driver wise? Quite un-chartered territory here with powermacs. :)

 
10.2 is definitely the best option if running X at all... 10.1 will be painfully slow.

The 5500 came with OS8 (the original variant) when new, however retail copies of 8.1, 8.5, 8.6, 9.0 and 9.1 will have full driver support for it... Of those, I would recommend either 8.6 or 9.1 as the most stable and functional systems, with 8.6 being faster but 9 having a bit better support for certain later hardware and software.

 
Good to know.

I spent a fair whack of time on an old gossamer with 10.2 ..was pretty good.

Hmm. I still can't locate the drivers or what/where they are on the older media. I'd like to see if I can strap them into the 9.2.2 I've got installed.

 
Been ages since Ive used 9 regularly so my memory is fading, but from what I remember the display and other hardware drivers are installed as extensions and load at startup that way. If I had one of my 5500's still bootable then I would just boot it up and tell you which ones you need, based on what mine has installed, as I dare say the drivers supplied with 9.1 should still load on 9.2.2... hopefully. Maybe somebody else with a 5500 running 9.1 could have a look. You need I beleive the Ethernet CSII extension to have the network card supported, and there are various extensions that support the ATI Rage II chipset. This link may give you somewhere to start as far goes looking for these...

http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~haffner/MQP-RAVE.html

 
Hi Schmoburger,

Thanks ... I didn't think it'd be extentsions, rather something attached to the kernel and need resedit to get at so I feel a bit silly.

The quake page is pretty interesting. The driver url is dead sadly, but I'll try and track that down. :)

Thanks.

 
 
Yep that URL pointed to he actual ATI page unfortunately which I dare say has silently killed off support for it's old Rage cards which have now been around for close to 20 years. :( I would happily try and get the various ATI extensions to you somehow electronicly, the only issue being that I have no access to either of my 5500's at the moment and unfortunately it is not practical for me to dig them out and get them working any time soon.

 
Slightly off topic:

I've seen where someone transplanted the analog board out of a 575 into a Color Classic Mystic mod (with 575 logic board) and thus got 640x480 on the CC, with rumours (as far as I remember, unconfirmed) that it might be able to go even higher. This required trimming down both the 575 AB and the inside of the CC to make it fit.

I wonder how a 5500 AB would go ...

 
I have a Performa 580 with a logic board from a 6360 in it among my collection and that worked a charm... certainly the fastest 5xx I have ever driven... the only change required was swapping the port bezels over to suit the 580 case. The board connects the same, however that being said, the 580 is different from the 575 in a number of was including that the 580 uses an IDE hard disk controller, whereas the 575 has a SCSI internal drive. That being said, the chassis both seem similar enough that this could also be possible on a 575 and possibly a CC if given enough PSU and AB to support it... Just a bit more food for thought whilst we are on the topic of more in-depth hacks of the 68k AIO's.

 
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