Pictures of the Power Series 4D/360 GTX and descriptions of boards and connectors

These pictures show a Power Series GTX with optional CG2 GENLOCK card.

 The populated card cage. The slots and cards are as follows:
 

VME Slot 1	1/2" tape drive controller
VME Slot 2	Empty
VME Slot 3	Parallel I/O port interface
VME Slot 4,5	Empty
VME Slot 6	CG2 GENLOCK card
Slot 7	IO3B
Slot 8,9,10	IP7 dual R3000/33MHz SC boards
Slot 11	Empty
Slot 12	MC2 memory board
Slot 13	MC2 memory board
Slot 14	GM2 graphics manager
Slot 15	GE4 geometry engine
Slot 16	RM1 Raster Manager
Slot 17	RM1 Raster Manager
Slot 18	RV1.5 Raster Video board

Close up of the CG2 GENLOCK card and connectors. From the top the connectors are as follows:

1. Connects to RV1.5 Raster Video card
2. 4-wire connector to B-Gate, C-Sync, C-Blank, Field-In on front I/O panel CG2 control board (see next image)
3. 4-wire connector to Rem In, Rem Out, Vid Out, Vid Ctrl on front I/O panel CG2 control board (see next image)
4. 4-wire connector: 3 wires go to a  panel supporting to 2 adjusting screws labelled CSC PH and HOR PH below the control port and one wire goes to the CSC Ref - all on front I/O panel CG2 control board (see next image)
5. Connects to DB25 Control Port on front I/O panel control board (see next image)
6. BNC connector to RV1 Raster Video card

Front I/O panel CG2 control board (part no. 030-0200-001). The ports are all connected to the CG2 card as indicated in the description of the CG2 ports above.

Close up of the RV1.5 raster video board and connectors. The four connectors are as follows:

1. RGB output for monitor (I/O panel)
2. Connects to CG2 GENLOCK board
3. RGB plus alpha output (RGB to I/O panel, alpha to I/O panel Video Connectors)
4. BNC connector for GENLOCK board

GTX and 1/2" Tape + Parallel I/F Board Revisions

Here are the board revision numbers for the GTX boardset and the 1/2" tape controller and parallel I/F cards.
 
 

1/2" Tape I/F controller	030-0206-001F
Parallel I/F controller	030-0217-001F
CG2 Genlock	030-0045-002
GM2 Graphics Manager	030-0085-004B
GE4 Geometry Engine	030-0075-001F
RM1 Raster Manager	030-0078-001D
RM1 Raster Manager	030-0078-001D
RV1.5 Raster Video	030-0154-001M

Just how good is GTX?

A.J. Corda's "This Old SGI" page shows GTX having the capability to do 100,000 Gouraud shaded, z-buffered polygons per second. GTX does not have hardware texture mapping support and it is only supported on IRIX 5.3 or earlier - support for it was dropped at IRIX 6.2. Finding more detailed specifications for this boardset is difficult. One of the reasons why this might be so is that GTX does not support OpenGL.

According to "This Old SGI", GTX is actually a derivative of the GT graphics set as used in the Professional IRIS 4D/85GT with the difference being the GM2 graphics manager board. ie. GTX has the GM2 whilst GT has the GM1 board.

I'll never test this GTX config as I have now stored it to make way for a much more useful VGXT boardset. However, up until February this year, the previous owners of the machine (the Australian Cranio-Maxillo Foundation) were using this machine (as a 4D/220GTX) and its video digitizing functions to record cranial scans.

Other GTX Links

A. J. Corda's This Old SGI page has details of GT and GTX as used in the professional IRIS series (4D/70 and 4D/85) with some mention of their use in the Power Series machines in the appropriate section.

Also check out some pictures of a twin-tower power series GTX machine on SkyWriter's site: http://www.reputable.com/~skywriter/twintower. This machine also has powered serial ports for a nifty dials and buttons box!

Comments to: simon@dpiwe.tas.gov.au