Bug in Graphics Board?

[Mark Young]

In <56682 at eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> stein-c at acsu.buffalo.edu (Craig Steinberger) writes:

>I've got a question regarding some info I've just received from someone
>on the Hotline. We just bought and had installed a brand spanking new 
>4D/310GTX, along with a Seiko color printer. It seems that when we try
>to use snapshot to capture part of the screen and then print it, white
>lines show up across the picture. This also happens if we use ipaste to
>look at the rgb file. 

>The (very helpful) person on the Hotline told me the that the graphics
>board for the GTX computers have a bug in them. Can anyone give me more
>information about this?

The straightforward answer to your question is...yes, there is a 
problem.  It is not a problem with the hardware though, it's a problem
with the GL interfaces to a new raster subsystem board, the RV2.

Specifically (I assume you're using icut):

icut uses another program called scrsave to actually snapshot the screen.
scrsave uses an undocumented routine in the GL that simulates the method the
hardware uses to determine the appropriate color for each pixel.

When I (yes, unfortunately, the fault is my own) did the GL interfacing for
the new board, I didn't rework this routine.

The good news is that there is a patch tape that has been certified for the
field.  I'm not clear on exactly who you should talk to for the tape.  I'll
try to contact the release guy whose in charge and have him inform the hotline
people of the correct procedure for distibution of the patch tape.

I'll also try to post the information here when I get it.

disclaimer:  it's actually designation may not be "patch tape".  I don't
really know what you would call it :-).

sorry for the inconvenience.

...myoung at joker.asd.sgi.com