Alpha screen resolution

[Bobby Coleman]

Hi,

I'm currently setting up an Alpha station with OpenVMS 7.3 and am trying to
figure out how to set the display resolution and refresh rate of the card
(it is a Compaq combination video/ethernet card). The system boots to a low
color depth and screen resolution by default.

Thank you,
Bobby

[Hoff Hoffman]

In article <c9q4p4$q9r$1...@sws1.ornl.gov>, "Bobby Coleman" <cole...@ornl.gov> writes:
:I'm currently setting up an Alpha station with OpenVMS 7.3 and am trying to

:figure out how to set the display resolution and refresh rate of the card
:(it is a Compaq combination video/ethernet card). The system boots to a low
:color depth and screen resolution by default.

You will want to more specifically identify the graphics card when
asking these. If you do not know what card it is, you can use either
the SRM console or the SDA (ANALYZE/SYSTEM) command CLUE CONFIG.

I'm guessing that this cited card is the 3X-DEPVD-AA series Permedia
2 graphics card; a GZ-class graphics device. If so, here are the
available settings:

Resolution Color Depths Refresh Rates
640 x 480 8, 16, 24 60, 65, 70, 75, 85 Hz
800 x 600 8, 16, 24 60, 65, 70, 75, 85 Hz
1024 x 768 8, 16, 24 60, 65, 70, 75, 85 Hz
1152 x 870 8, 16, 24 60, 65, 70, 75, 85 Hz
1152 x 900 8, 16, 24 60, 65, 70, 75, 85 Hz
1280 x 1024 8, 16, 24 60, 65, 70, 75 Hz
1600 x 1200 8, 16 60, 65, 70, 75 Hz
1600 x 1280 8, 16 60, 65, 70, 75 Hz
1920 x 1080 8, 16 60, 65, 70, 75 Hz
1920 x 1200 8, 16 60, 65, 70, 75 Hz

This particular card configures using DECW$PRIVATE_SERVER_SETUP.COM.
If you don't have this file present on your system or have a version
that was previously tailored, you can recreate it by copying over:

SYS$COMMON:[SYS$STARTUP]DECW$PRIVATE_SERVER_SETUP.TEMPLATE

to create a new:

SYS$COMMON:[SYS$STARTUP]DECW$PRIVATE_SERVER_SETUP.COM

Now you can configure the desired setting for the card. For example,
the following configures 1280 x 1024 with 24 bits depth at 75 Hz:

$ decw$xsize_in_pixels == 1280
$ decw$ysize_in_pixels == 1024
$ define/exec/system/nolog decw$server_pixel_depth 24
$ define/exec/system/nolog decw$server_refresh_rate 75

Restart the DECwindows server:

@SYS$STARTUP:DECW$STARTUP RESTART

If this is *not* the 3X-DEPVD-AA, I'll need to know specifically
which graphics card is involved.

The OpenVMS FAQ has some related information and contains DECwindows
troubleshooting details, though it does not contain controller-specific
hard (eg: jumper, dial, switch) or soft (eg: see above) settings.

---------------------------- #include <rtfaq.h> -----------------------------
For additional, please see the OpenVMS FAQ -- www.hp.com/go/openvms/faq
--------------------------- pure personal opinion ---------------------------
Hoff (Stephen) Hoffman OpenVMS Engineering hoff[at]hp.com

[Bobby Coleman]

Thank you for the prompt reply! The video card is a 3X-DEPVZ-AA. According
to the manual that came with it, the maximum display resolution is 1280 x
1024. Is this correct and can the same procedure be used for setting it up?
Also... I tried the sda clue config but it didn't show the video card name.
It showed a few system parameters... but nothing about the video. The SRM
output shows a Permedia P2V graphics controller.

Bobby

"Hoff Hoffman" <ho...@hp.nospam> wrote in message
news:ts2wc.2994$Xf3....@news.cpqcorp.net...

[Hoff Hoffman]

In article <c9qbcv$5kj$1...@sws1.ornl.gov>, "Bobby Coleman" <cole...@ornl.gov> writes:
:Thank you for the prompt reply! The video card is a 3X-DEPVZ-AA. According

:to the manual that came with it, the maximum display resolution is 1280 x
:1024. Is this correct and can the same procedure be used for setting it up?

AFAIK, yes, the same general configuration steps.

Within the resolution limits of the particular card, of course.

:Also... I tried the sda clue config but it didn't show the video card name.

:It showed a few system parameters... but nothing about the video. The SRM
:output shows a Permedia P2V graphics controller.

Yes, that's the 3X-DEPVZ-AA 3DLabs Permedia P2V series -- IIRC, the card
you appear to have also has SCSI. (That's why I had guessed the other
card; you'd mentioned the video and network connections, not the SCSI.)

[Bobby Coleman]

Well... hoping not to sound too dumb about this... I followed the steps and it didn't
change anything. The system boots to 1024 x 768 x 256 colors regardless of what I do.
I've read through all of the FAQ and other documentation that I could find today without
any luck. I guess I'll have to try again next week sometime.

Bobby

[Bobby Coleman]

I finally got the video working the way that I want... but I don't know how.
Adding the specified lines to the config file by itself didn't work. It
continued to boot with the old settings. I then decided to explicitly
specify a 100 dpi screen value and a DECW$SERVER_DEFAULT_VISUAL_CLASS=="4"
value in the DECW$PRIVATE_SERVER_SETUP.COM file. After doing this and
rebooting... the display went blank completely and wouldn't come back under
X! I managed to rename the file and restart to get back to where I'd
started. I then removed the 100 dpi and visual_class settings and left the
other configuration settings the same. When I restarted this time it worked.
The correct resolution and color depth. To make it easier... be sure that
you can log in remotely before doing this.

I thought that I would post this in case someone else had the same problem.
Hopefully, this was a fluke. I will be doing the same thing to a second
machine and really hope that it works the first time.

Thanks for the support.

Bobby

"Hoff Hoffman" <ho...@hp.nospam> wrote in message

news:Pm3wc.2999$Dh3....@news.cpqcorp.net...