How to run a 16 or 24 bitplanes single buffer on OCTANE ESSI

From: Olivier St-Cyr (olivier.st.cyr_at_utoronto.ca)
Date: 12/01/03 

Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 10:51:52 -0500

Hello:

I just bought a used OCTANE System with an ESSI Board (running IRIX
6.5.21f). I have a simulation software which currently run on an O2 with a
CRM graphic board (running IRIX 6.5.12m).

When I try to run the simulation on my OCTANE, all I see is a black window.
After playing with the O2 machine a bit more, I realized that my software
only runs on a 16 bitplanes single buffer configuration. So, when I go to
xsetmon on the O2, I have the choose (16) under Valid Combinations. If I
choose 32, 32x32, or 16x16 I get a black window on the O2 as well.

My problem now is that when I go in xsetmon on my OCTANE workstation,
nothing appears under Valid Combinations for any given resolutions in
xsetmon. Thus, I cannot seem to configure my Octane to run a 16 bitplanes
single buffer combination.

Does anyone know a way to do so? That would really help me because we would
like to transfer our simulation program on the Octane very soon.

PS: My simulation will also run under a 24 bitplanes single buffer
configuration.

Many thanks

Olivier St-Cyr
University of Toronto
olivier.st.cyr@utoronto.ca

Here are the details on the ESSI OCTANE BOARD:

[root@SGI_OCTANE]% /usr/gfx/gfxinfo
Graphics board 0 is "IMPACTSR" graphics.
        Managed (":0.0") 1280x1024
        Product ID 0x3, 2 GEs, 2 REs, 0 TRAMs
        MGRAS revision 4, RA revision 0
        HQ rev B, GE12 rev A, RE4 rev C, PP1 rev H,
        VC3 rev A, CMAP rev F, Heart rev F
        unknown, assuming 19" monitor (id 0xf)

        Channel 0:
         Origin = (0,0)
         Video Output: 1280 pixels, 1024 lines, 75.92Hz (1280x1024_76)

Here are the details of the O2 BOARD:

Graphics board 0 is "CRM" graphics.
        Managed (":0.0") 1280x1024
        16 bitplanes
        board revision 2, CRM revision C, GBE revision B
         Monitor 0 type: SGX 512
        (Could not contact X server; thus, no XSGIvc information available)