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OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: Dariusz Piatkowski on December 31, 2015, 02:59:42 am

Title: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on December 31, 2015, 02:59:42 am
Hi Everyone,

Well, my trusty Samsung 245T 24" monitor (1920x1200) finally gave up the ghost...literally nothing happens upon power-up, not even the "blue glow" of ON/OFF button. Per the Service Manual I have that implies either an internally blown fuse or as per the suggestions provided by previous post responses (I had an issue with my LCD coming out of DPMS save, screen was showing flickering for a few minutes each time) it may have been showing some issues with capacitors.

Anyways...as much as I'd love to keep it, the US and Canadian locations are having some pretty crazy Holiday sales still and I might as well take advantage of it.

So...I understand that with SNAP drivers I can define various resolution modes, but that is still driven by the EDID monitor information being correctly recognized by the driver and thus telling it what the screen capability it. Assuming that all that works correctly, what is the highest screen resolution you have been able to use?

My video card is an old ATI X850 XT PE, info as reported by SNAP drivers is:
=== START ===
Graphics device configuration:
  Manufacturer......... ATI
  Chipset.............. Radeon X850 Series
  Bus Type............. PCI Express
  Memory............... 262144 KB
  DAC.................. ATI Internal 24 bit DAC
  Clock................ ATI Internal Clock
  Memory Clock......... 400 MHz
  Default Memory Clock. 400 MHz
  Maximum Memory Clock. 400 MHz
  Driver Revision...... 3.2, Build 29
  Driver Build......... Sep 25 2006
  Certified Version.... 1.60
  Certified Date....... Sep 25 2006
=== END ===

As best as I can tell the single-link DVI connector can display a maximum resolution of 1920×1200, while the dual-link’s maximum for that same screen is 2560×1600.

My ATI X850 User Guide indicates I have a DVI-I connector, which means I'm maxed out at 1920x1200...so I'm curious if anyone else has done better with different hardware?
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Andi B. on December 31, 2015, 01:13:28 pm
Quote
but that is still driven by the EDID monitor information being correctly recognized by the driver and thus telling it what the screen capability it.
TTBOMK you can bypass all this DDC stuff in SNAP when choosing 'Unknown monitor'.

As you know max. for single link DVI is 1920x1200 / 60Hz. And there is no OS/2 driver which supports DVI dual link. So for today no chance to get more than 1920x1200 (one display) on digital interfaces with OS/2.

Of course you can try the analog output. In theory this is not limited to the above numbers. But I fear the result will be not very good. Given the cheap converters and cables and the two times A/D conversion it probably will look ugly. Even if a monitor will handle higher resolutions on Sub-D (VGA) connector the image will be not very good compared to the digital transmitted one. Nearly no one uses analog interface these days. So do not expect good analog support at high resolutions. Even 1920x1200 / 60Hz is rather high for analog interface these days. It looks worse than via DVI. Useable, but not good enough for me.
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on December 31, 2015, 06:00:22 pm
Hi Andi,

Quote
but that is still driven by the EDID monitor information being correctly recognized by the driver and thus telling it what the screen capability it.
TTBOMK you can bypass all this DDC stuff in SNAP when choosing 'Unknown monitor'...

Interesting..tell me more about this option because as best as I can remember I was never actually able to make this work, and we're talking here about shutting off the GAOPTION DDC mode, etc, etc. In other words, to make my 245T 1920x1200 capability known to the SNAP driver I had to literally re-program the monitor EDID...a bit of a crazy effort when you manually assemble the EDID record based on VESA standards, etc, etc...did it once, I would prefer not to have to do that again....and I say "again" because I have 3 other 245Ts currently at home, 2 linked on my professional/work PC and the 3rd one on kids's PC.

I had actually pulled the kids' 245T and plugged it in, but the SNAP driver would NOT recognize the monitor successfully (using the "Detect Monitor" option failed, importing the Windows INF file failed as well, although I suspect that is b/c SNAP only supports Win95 versions of monitor INF files). When I querried up the DDC/EDID info the SNAP utility came back with "...invalid EDID record..." error message, which I believe is very similar to what I had experienced way back when with my original 245T display that just died.

So...long story short...LOL...if there is a way to force the SNAP driver to 1920x1200 resolution regardless of what capability the monitor reports or SNAP driver is able to establish I'd love to give this a shot.

Thanks again!
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: ivan on December 31, 2015, 06:42:25 pm
Hi Dariusz,

We have never tried anything better than 1920 x 1200 on our workstations using  ATI X700 series cards and Hans-G HH281 28" monitors - this is the max resolution for these 16x10 monitors.

If you are looking for a new monitor make sure you get a 16x10 version (they are rather hard to find as almost all are 1080p (16x9) to cater to the film market.

You might be able to get an ASUS 27" MG278Q that will max out at 2560 x 1440 which I think SNAP is capable of driving.  There is also an IIYAMA XB2779QS-W1 27" with the same resolution.
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Andi B. on December 31, 2015, 07:24:38 pm
Dariusz, I ever set Manufacturer to '(Standard monitor types)' and Model to 'Unknown monitor'. AFAIR I could choice 1920x1200 then. Maybe I used gaoption to add this resolution but I don't remember anymore. I do this an all my systems since I'm using PCs. And that predates all this shitty DDC stuff ;). I see no reason for letting a software decide which resolution and refresh rate is good for me and my monitors.

Now I tried the 'Detect Monitor' button probably the first time. The HP ZR24w was detected cause this is that one attached to DVI. The Samsung 245B is currently connected via Sub-D / analog RGB. But I had it at DVI without problems a few years ago when I only used one monitor. But don't think I ever used 'Detect Monitor' with the Samsung. It simply works with the standard setting above.
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Dave Yeo on December 31, 2015, 09:53:02 pm
I never had any luck getting my 1680x1050 monitor working correctly with Snap, neither as unknown monitor or with gaoption. Using an Intel Q35 Graphics controller under VESA.
Even with Panorama it was a struggle to get it working consistently (liked 1920x1440 which didn't display) and even now sometimes it displays the correct resolution squished into the 2/3rds right of the screen until I open a full screen session and then close it (occasionally needed a couple of tries)
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on December 31, 2015, 11:28:00 pm
I never had any luck getting my 1680x1050 monitor working correctly with Snap, neither as unknown monitor or with gaoption. Using an Intel Q35 Graphics controller under VESA.
DDC never appeared to work properly with VESA, not for me anyway, which is why I always hunt down NOS SNAP supported cards

I am fairly sure however that 2560 x 1440 is attainable on an accelerated card, the old IBM UHD resolution monitors all had OS/2 drivers
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on December 31, 2015, 11:47:18 pm
Well you guys...some good news...I took apart my dead 245T panel, as it turns out the power board shows 2 capacitors looking pretty dead...as in you know, all buldging and the icing on the cake is the leak of the internal chemicals right through the top of the capacitor, this shows there is a crack in the aluminum casing, etc, etc...so I'm thinking I will replace the two 1000 uF 35V capacitors first, will give it another try...now good lucking finding capacitors locally...yikes!

Now, here is an OS/2 thought: there was an announcement out a few weeks back about ArcaNoae picking up and re-starting the development of the SNAP drivers. With my previous EDID decoding experience and somewhat of a decent of an understanding of the monitor EDID structures I wouldn't mind getting involved in that aspect of the SNAP drivers development. So in other words, while the core of the heavy lifting is in the core drivers development (I think) it certainly would be a blessing to smarten up the anciliary logic so that modern monitor INF files are recognized, or the EDID information handling is more robust.

Therefore the question I have is: who is the person to contact regarding this?
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 01, 2016, 12:57:49 am
Probably Lewis would be best, lgrosenthal at 2rosenthals dot com
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 01, 2016, 03:53:13 am
Hi Dariusz

If you want to help with something with SNAP, I also agree that you should contact Lewis.

Steven Levine is working (for Arca Noae) to update this driver, it may be interesting for you to check his Warpstock 2015 presentation about this subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8og6AqIr0o (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8og6AqIr0o)

Regards
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: ivan on January 01, 2016, 12:38:51 pm
Hi Dariusz,

Experience with monitor power supplies says that you not only replace the obvious dead capacitors but also any other electrolytic ones as well.  It might also be a good idea to have a good look at any on the panel driver board and replace any that have the slightest bulge at the top.
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Andi B. on January 01, 2016, 05:13:25 pm
Quote
I am fairly sure however that 2560 x 1440 is attainable
But not on digital outputs with our OS. This is one more reason why I try so hard to push SNAP development. Although with limited success :(

And if you set the graphic card to produce this resolution and use the analog output there is probably no monitor available which can display this resolution. Even when some can handle that resolution at the input they simply can not display it. I can not think of any affordable monitor which can display such resolution satisfactory well when delivered at analog inputs. Nearly all can not even handle 1920x1200 good enough with analog input.

So what is badly needed is updated SNAP which supports current chips (at least Intel) and DisplayPort output.
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on January 01, 2016, 10:46:30 pm
Quote
I am fairly sure however that 2560 x 1440 is attainable
But not on digital outputs with our OS. This is one more reason why I try so hard to push SNAP development. Although with limited success :(

And if you set the graphic card to produce this resolution and use the analog output there is probably no monitor available which can display this resolution. Even when some can handle that resolution at the input they simply can not display it. I can not think of any affordable monitor which can display such resolution satisfactory well when delivered at analog inputs. Nearly all can not even handle 1920x1200 good enough with analog input.

So what is badly needed is updated SNAP which supports current chips (at least Intel) and DisplayPort output.

There are plenty of monitors out there that support high resolution analogue inputs, perhaps not at the sub 100 UKP/120 Euros level, but my dirt cheap DGM does 1920 x 1200 via VGA with no problems, if at slightly lower quality than DVI if the VGA cable used is cheap and unshielded, the RAMDAC's integrated onto even budget chipsets are actually reasonably good these days. The DGM (actually a Tatung monitor in a drag) was simply bought because it was the cheapest 1920 x 1200 I could find at the time and it is not exceptional in any way, in fact it is a bit s**t, but beggars can't be choosers.

While I agree that it is important to get support for HDMI/DisplayPort/DVI for SNAP, painting analogue as being being useless for higher resolutions is just silly repetition of an old "Tom's Hardware" type cliche , you might have a point if you are talking about mostly unshielded consumer VGA cables and the low budget 19" type consumer monitors they are shipped free with. 20 years ago I personally ran OS/2 Warp on 2048 × 1536 @ 70Hz and 85Hz using Martox and Diamond S3 cards with the VGA and/or VGA > Component cables that came with the monitors, nothing more, that is considerably more bandwidth than 1920 x 1200, in fact it is just approx 15% less than the bandwidth needed for 2560 x 1440 at the same rate and if the rate is lowered to 60Hz, 2560 x 1440 would actually need less bandwidth than the resolution I was using back in the stone age.

P.S. I actually keep an old CRT monitor here although I run it at either 1800 × 1440 or 1600 x 1200 since I no longer have a working Matrox card with a high speed RAMDAC, but that is just for the occasional graphics editing because only one of my LCD monitors are actually a true 8 bit panel, the rest are 6 bit panels that use software interpolation to pretend to be 8 bits. I would kill for an 11 bit IPS panel.
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Andi B. on January 02, 2016, 11:16:00 am
Quote
There are plenty of monitors out there that support high resolution analogue inputs
That does mean nothing. As stated above handling high resolutions at input stage is useless when the panel can not display the resolution. What's the point in feeding your monitor with pixels you never can see? (Okay you see part of them washed out - aliased but....)

I always post with current available and affordable hardware in mind. It does not make much sense for me to talk about 10 years old or even older professional tube displays which were capable to display 1920x1200 (Not more than that. I do not know a single tube which can handle more. If you know one I bet no one here does have such still working today. The average user did not even know about and never would buy such device priced more than a months salery).

Quote
I run it at either 1800 × 1440
It did not make very much sense when you drove your tube with higher resolutions what the tension mask or shadow mask really could display. Your 2028 or 2560 were simply analog down-scaled to what the tube can handle. Although this analog scaling worked smoother than most of todays digital scaling it was down scaled to 1600 pixel horizontal for 24" 4:3 tubes at best. If you talk about bigger sized tubes used f.i. for air traffic control then that's another story. But I hardly think anyone here needs such (todays) theoretical discussion.

TFT which is what we can use today can be driven of course with analog signals. But the resulting image is always worse than when digital driven. Usable if you do not have high quality requirements but worse compared to native digital driven.

Quote
silly repetition of an old "Tom's Hardware"
I don't know Tom. But I know the inner working of tubes and LCDs and I know whats physical possible to display. I can distinguish between what's technically possible and what's marketing bla bla. High input resolutions much beyond the tube or LCD is capable to display are marketing bla bla. At least for the average computer user these modes are not useful.

Btw. I still do have some Matrox cards with good DACs. But they are useless today as I never will drive f.i. a current available 4k display with analog signals when the whole world drives them digital. I bet if you do not buy a professional monitor (which is out of question for all but the very rich) there analog input and conversion electronics is crappy. 
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on January 02, 2016, 03:19:36 pm
Ivan,

Hi Dariusz,

Experience with monitor power supplies says that you not only replace the obvious dead capacitors but also any other electrolytic ones as well.  It might also be a good idea to have a good look at any on the panel driver board and replace any that have the slightest bulge at the top.

Excellent point sir...I did actually closely eye-ball all the capacitors on the power board...luckily only these 2 appeared damaged. There was at least 1 other 1000 uF/35V piece that actually looked "brand-new" (visually that is...LOL). I also pulled the logic board to take a peek at it...this is mostly IC though and contained none of the aluminum case capacitors.
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on January 02, 2016, 03:24:31 pm
Dave and Martin,

Probably Lewis would be best, lgrosenthal at 2rosenthals dot com

Exchanged a couple of emails with Lewis, he is going to follow-up with Steve. For those of you who reviewed the SNAP 2015 video there is some on-going work, I just hope we can narrow the scope down to a workable range of hardware and optimize that. Anyways, my input in that project can only be limitted to the driver <=> monitor interface as I have no video driver development skills.

Appreciate the right pointer to the correct contact point!
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on January 02, 2016, 05:37:33 pm
Olafur and Andi,

For what it's worth, here is a personal experience of mine when it comes to the CRT style displays.

I have always invested heavily into the displays, primarily because given today's way of "human computer interface" the display is really how we gather much of the information. This is slowly starting to change, tablets and mobile computing in general are a good indicator of this, however, we are not quite there yet.

So...in my previous high-res setups I have used Mitsubishi displays (yeah, the price tag was somewhat astronomical, even by today's standards)...specifically, the last model prior to switching to the LCD panel (Samsung 214T) was the DiamondPro 1010. This 21" CRT was fully capable of displaying 1800 x 1440/76 Hz NI resolution providing a pretty decent 0.26 mm aperture grille pitch. While my Matrox cards had no problem driving the monitor, especially since I was using heavily shielded BNC cabling (each cable carrying separate RBG signals), the attempts to use 1800x1440 resolution on a 21" CRT panel (remember the darn CRT geometry problems??? even with a high-end aperture grille displays like the 1010 you always fought the converegence issue - separate beams not quite aligning on the surface of the display thus causing a drift and fuzziness). The end result was that the 21" CRT (which really was a 19.7" diagonal display size) was far too small of a format for this high of a resolution unless you were doing pure CAD/graphics work. The text, especially smaller fonts was simply hard to deal with. I ended up running 1600x1200 on that display and was extremely happy with it for quite a number of years.

I've attached the monitor spec file if you are interested in the details.

Now, once I upgraded to my Samsung 214T LCD, boy, all geometry issues went away...yeah, the colour was never the same, but how could it when compared to an extremely high end CRT display like the 1010? I accepted that because for me geometry rendering was far more important. Moving on to the 245T display simply carried on with the display resolution progression, that gave me 1920x1200 but required me to move to a DVI connector video adapter, which was the ATI X850, top-of-the-line in SNAP supported video chipsets at that time.
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Andi B. on January 02, 2016, 08:20:24 pm
Quote
This 21" CRT was fully capable of displaying 1800 x 1440/76 Hz NI resolution providing a pretty decent 0.26 mm aperture grille pitch.
Doing a bit math with your stated 19.7" and the 0.26mm mask you'll see this CRT is able to display about 1540 pixel horizontally. If you stretch the image to max out the tube best you can display will be 1600 pixels per line. But you talked about it - who will ever accept the convergence problems again these days?

1800x1440 was way to much for this tube and you never could see that much pixels. Simply cause there were not that much stripes in the grill. You can't cheat physics. Btw. that's one reason why your text was hardly readable with such high resolutions.


Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on January 02, 2016, 10:13:28 pm
Quote
This 21" CRT was fully capable of displaying 1800 x 1440/76 Hz NI resolution providing a pretty decent 0.26 mm aperture grille pitch.
...1800x1440 was way to much for this tube and you never could see that much pixels. Simply cause there were not that much stripes in the grill. You can't cheat physics...

Completely agree with all you stated...however, you are leaving out the intended use of the hardware. So while I may have been focused on text quality, the person doing CAD work on this display would certainly be able to take advantage of the higher addressable resolution. In other words, the monitor electornics had the ability to physically address (turn on/off) some 1800 locations on the X-axis...this very much translates to having a functionality where the display can choose from 1800 different points, even though not each of these 1800 points was a unique physical screen location, sort of an interpolation solution I suppose.

For me anyways it all boils down to the functionality one indends to utilize. Image/graphics work on displays is very different then text work. Today's hardware, where the RGB gamut is wholly covered (near 100%) will still fetch a good price at the cash register...and if one is willing to spend that money I can only assume it's because he/she is not focused on text only.

If anyone reading the post is looking at a pretty good review of panel capabilities head on over to http://www.tftcentral.co.uk (http://www.tftcentral.co.uk), these guys do a great mix of usability and tech analysis.
Title: Re: Highest display resolution supported on ATI X850 PE card & SNAP drivers?
Post by: Daniel on January 03, 2016, 02:49:47 am
Quite a while back I decided to update my old computer:
Works fine with a cpu that came out after the bios was written. It just says "AMD processor model unknown". New wireless card etc. And now for the video...

So I searched around for what I figured was the fastest video card for eComStation. I ended up with the Radeon X850 XT, a PCI Express card with two DVI ports and supported by SNAP. They were being sold off as new OEM for $17. Bought one and a spare.

Since I am only driving a TV (and only one of them) I have no problem with 1920x1080 being too fast. My problem is that they never finished the DOS & Win 3.1 compatibility. I have to run several old CAD programs that use their own drivers. VVGA.SYS or VSVGA.SYS with every /pcitrap option I could find just gives me full screen DOS. Windowed anything or WIN3 gives a "wait, loading" forever or a hang.

It would seem that this would be something that could be fixed without too much difficulty. It was done for all previous cards and just wasn't done because the project got stopped...  He stated hopefully.