cctalk Digest, Vol 41, Issue 65

[Scott Quinn]

>
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 10:12:03 -0700
> From: Richard <legalize at xmission.com>
> Subject: Re: Strange things found in a free SPARC 20
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
> 	<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Message-ID: <E1H92iB-0006EE-00 at xmission.xmission.com>
>
>
> In article <45B4DDBC.5080303 at gmail.com>,
>     Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com>  writes:
>
>> [...]  Did Sun ever make an
>> accelerated 24-bit card?
>
> Yes, they made a bunch of different 3D accelerators during the 90s
> (and most likely beyond, but I haven't been attending SIGGRAPH often
> enough to say for sure).  Ironically, they didn't start making good 3D
> accelerators until they hired ex-Evans & Sutherland engineers.  I can
> concur that working at E&S was good training in 3D!  They really knew
> their engineering, its such a shame that marketing and management were
> utter failures.
> -- 
> "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for 
> download
>       <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
>
>         Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
>

There was, I believe, something that could be paired with a CG9 in the 
Sun-3/early Sun-4 days. Ah yes, here it is: the GP2 graphics processor. 
VME based, with Weitek engines.

Then there was the Leo/ZX option for SBUS.

Can't tell you anything about performance of either of these two.

With the introduction of the UPA bus things got better: Sun introduced 
Creator/Creator3d and Elite3d. Of course, none of these graphics could 
touch what SGI was putting out, but it was a valiant attempt. Creator3d 
used the SPARC for geometry but had onboard Z-buffer calculations, 
Elite3d had a full graphics pipeline but not much texture cache.

Can't say anything about the really off-topic stuff for the current 
machines.