Sun x2100 M2 & kubuntu

[trm1361]

I have been given a Sun x2100 M2 with 8 gigs ram, 500 gig disk but a video of only 8 megs. It has 2 PCIe x8 bus slots but I can't find any x8 cards and the PCIe x16 slot that those 2 are run from won't work with any x16 video card I try.

Do any USB video options work? It has USB 2.0 ports.

My old system is stuck at 12.04 and I'm very tired of Unity so I've loaded Kubuntu on the Sun but the poor video is a drag.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[dmeyer]

I have been given a Sun x2100 M2 with 8 gigs ram, 500 gig disk but a video of only 8 megs. It has 2 PCIe x8 bus slots but I can't find any x8 cards and the PCIe x16 slot that those 2 are run from won't work with any x16 video card I try.

Do any USB video options work? It has USB 2.0 ports.

My old system is stuck at 12.04 and I'm very tired of Unity so I've loaded Kubuntu on the Sun but the poor video is a drag.

Any ideas?

Thanks

This is a server machine, ideally its designed to be run headless. USB projectors aren't really an option. If I were you I would and really needed a GUI I would basically SSH in, start X as a host/server and connect to it remotely as a client. You could try a usb projector/screen but the kernel support is a little flaky. You could probably run a full non-composted desktop like KDE very comfortably on that hardware, just no fancy 3D effects.

Unity will fallback to LLVMpipe or something and just eat system resources. KDE is the last of the "Complete" DEs to work on non hardware accelerated systems.

[trm1361]

Yea it was a server and I am looking to use it as a desktop. The throughput is very good even though the system is 5+ years old. The biggest problem that the video has is anything with movement (and just forget videos). KDE is kind of fun. I was on Ubuntu for 6 years but Unity spoiled it for me. I tried a bunch of distros and my favorite was Mint+Cinnamon but it just wasn't stable enough. About 8 years ago I had tried KDE and figured I'd give it another try. What a great setup. Very nice. Stable and understandable.

I'll keep looking and if anyone has any suggestions I'll try them.

[trm1361]

Yes you were right. It was not much help finding the cards because they cost between 250-900 USD. You can get an entire system for that and the cards are not even that good. I just inherited some other old hardware but it has decent video and accepted the RAM from the x2100.

Anyway if anyone else has an old Sun x2100 server here are the options:

XVR-200 Graphics Accelerator Features

The Sun XVR-200 graphics accelerator offers the following advanced features:
■ 32-Mbyte PCI-Express (PCI-E) x1 bus interface
■ 8+24-bit simultaneous visuals
■ Off-screen pixmap caching
■ Sun OpenGL® for SolarisTM support through Sun Direct Pixel Access (DPA) extension

Option # Manufacturing Part # Description

X3777 375-3433 XVR-200 Graphics Accelerator

XVR-300 x8 Graphics Accelerator Features

The Sun XVR-300 x8 graphics accelerator offers the following features for full-height
and low-profile Sun PCI-Express systems:
■ 2D 24-bit graphics
■ Flexible 8- and 24-bit color application support
■ 24-bit color, high resolution for multihead display supported systems
■ HD15 (VGA) and DVI monitor connectors for a wide range of Sun and third party monitors
■ 3D support through Sun OpenGL® for Solaris software

Option # Manufacturing Part # Description

X3000A 375-3545 XVR-300 x8 Graphics Accelerator

[oshunluvr]

If you only need better video, what's wrong with something like this?

http://www.4allmemory.com/video-card...-x2100-m2&cid/

$35-40 bucks seems reasonable.

[trm1361]

If you only need better video, what's wrong with something like this?

http://www.4allmemory.com/video-card...-x2100-m2&cid/

$35-40 bucks seems reasonable.

It won't work. I saw the add as well and I actually have one of those cards in another computer so I tried it. I had to get a PCIe X16 bus cable because a card won't fit in and faces the wrong direction. Didn't work at all. That site doesn't know what they are talking about on that issue.