[Virtualacorn-list] MDF for 2560x1440 pixel monitor

[T.O.M.S.]

Hello Folks

Many thanks for all the interesting overnight postings - but don't you
guys go to bed?

For brevity, I'll try to summarise the inputs so far, along with a few
comments but without quoting names and addresses.

Including the reports in a couple of direct emails, it looks like both
the suggested 2560x1440 pixel MDF - plus mohsen's larger 2560x1600
MDF - appear to work routinely on the several PCs mentioned. So that's
OK. (I just need to convince Bossman that we need a 27" monitor as a
Christmas bonus...)


As yet there are no reports of the 2560x1440 MDF working trouble-free
in full-screen mode and in 16M colours under VirtualRPC/RISC OS on the
27" screen variant of the Big iMac. So any further reports will be
very welcome.

I'll put this to Aaron to ask whether there might be a reason for the
different symptoms on the iMacs.

> The [2560x1440 pixel] MDFs appear to work well with the
> StrongARM model but at 32k colours.

Good. That at least gives 'Mr Keen' a good pointer to consider whether
or not to make the Big purchase.


> I have to report continued instability here on my iMac which
> ... does occur with ARM7500 in fullscreen mode even at the
> native screen resolution 1920x1200 which is just over 8MB.

OK, thanks for that. That's the first time I've heard of the problem
at the lower resolution (on Macs or PCs), so again I'll see if Aaron
has any pointers.


> To stop the instability I just have to Alt-Enter into windowed mode.

Again a potentially useful pointer.


> Could it be that the respondents set-up is running out of
> ordinary memory, rather than video memory?

Good point. Care to comment please David P?


> The processor type is displayed as RISC OS starts.

Unless as often happens, the screen blanks out for a few seconds
during RISC OS start-up in full-screen mode. (I think the blanking may
be due to the time taken to drop RISC OS down to the low-res start-up
screen. Once it reaches the RISC OS desktop, the higher-res display
then appears immediately.)

If this does happen, press <Alt-Enter> to drop VirtualRPC into a
window immediately it starts up, then the initial RISC OS start-up is
displayed in the window, with the processor type, etc etc.


>> We've tried this on 3 of our 1920x1200 pixel monitors -

> May I ask what machines these test were done on?

A mix of Compaq/HP/Philips desktop PCs, all running Intel duo- or
quad-core E6600 processors at 2.66GHz and with NVIDIA graphics cards.
100% stable, very powerful, perfect for running VirtualRPC/RISC OS
plus all the Windows goodies.

I plugged one of the 1920x1200 pixels monitors into our netbook
running a single-core 1.66GHz processor with built-in graphics set.
The 2560x1440 pixel MDF displayed perfectly under VirtualRPC in
full-screen mode - but not surprisingly the oomph needed to emulate
that dropped the screen refresh rate plus everything else down to
ultra-slo-mo!


> Thanks for the Good Old Yorkshire work on behalf of the community!

Thanks. For us, this is simply pay-back in response to Graeme B and
Aaron T having provided us with the means to run RISC OS in such a
hugely-productive manner, which under-pins the business. Plus of
course we all learn from the useful and friendly dicussions on this
forum.  :-)

Regards to all

Alex Hamilton
pp T.O.M.S.