Looking to hook up a monitor to Sun 3/60

[BrunoD]

Hi, I just bought a Sun 3/60. Its video output consists of 4 bnc connectors (RGB + sync). I have a cable (actually 4 coax cables with bnc connectors loosely kept together) but no monitor. I have been looking around and found some crt's with 5 bnc connectors. As far as I know these are RGB + Hsync + Vsync. I fear it wouldn't work on my 3/60 as the output is combined sync.

I also found some adapters on the internet to connect vga to 4 bnc's. These are usually meant to connect vga output to a monitor with bnc input so I'm not sure if they would work the other way around.

Does anyone have experience connecting recent monitor to a 3/60?

 

[paul]

I think many simple 1280 x 1024 LCD monitors will work with both composite sync (which you apparently have) and sync-on-green. Older Macs use composite sync too. Just check the monitor specs.

 

[saundby]

The Sun ECL video signal goes from about -1.7V to -0.7V, so it's not compatible with TTL signals. It's possible to make a convertor to shift the signal levels. The sync signals are standard, though. There are ECL to TTL translator chips, or you can use CMOS logic as a go-between to make a convertor box.

It sounds like you've probably got a cg4 card from your description. It's a fixed-frequency 8 bit plus alpha channel frame buffer that provides 1152x900 at 66.7Hz. Alpha channel is a monochrome overlay with an enable bit. Set or clear the monochrome bit, then set the enable bit to display it on top of the 8-bit color video. I wish we still did bit planes like this today, it was an awfully nice feature for having text with graphics.

The 3/60 is a sweet machine. I used to love developing on one under Sun OS 3.