9.2 on G4 mini — video query

[displaced]

Hi!

Like a few others, I wanted to make an old mini into a great OS9 machine.

Installation went smoothly, temporarily hooked up to my test VGA monitor.

But I wanted the machine to be part of my main retro setup — a bunch of machines outputting via a KVM to my OSSC, which upscales and converts pretty much anything to HDMI for use on my TV.

After hooking the mini up to the OSSC, I see the startup as normal, but just as the desktop is about to appear, the screen goes black. The OSSC still reports an incoming signal of the expected frequency and resolution,, but the display shows nothing.

So then I did a shift-boot to disable all extensions, and the desktop appears perfectly via the OSSC.

So I began a trial and error test to see which extension or control panel might be messing up the output.

I hit Space during OS startup and got to the Extensions and Control Panel manager. I disabled everything and rebooted, expecting everything to work. Because shouldn’t that be the same as holding Shift?

But no — even with everything disabled via the manager, I still see no desktop. Which seems odd?

What does holding Shift do that disabling everything in Extensions Manager doesn’t?

 

[tkn]

I believe that the Shift process disables all control panels, extensions, CSM, and everything, including system files, whereas the Spacebar/Extensions Manager process only disables user-specific CDEV, CSM, and extensions, leaving core files to load. Not sure, tho. It's a good question.

 

[displaced]

Seems like I’ve resolved it!

I’d neglected to realise that chosen resolutions are reset for each connected display.

so, setting it to a low resolution on the monitor which worked did nothing to set a resolution when connected to my OSSC via a KVM.

Having set up a VNC server, I could see that either the KVM or OSSC’s DDC data was causing the mini to choose a really odd, high-resolution mode.

Having set the mode to a reasonable size and refresh rate via VNC, the machine works perfectly via the OSSC.

Excellent. I think I can call this machine done!

(oh — and so, it seems that holding Shift also skips whatever the machine was doing to switch to a really high, strange mode due to DCC)

 

[Jeff]

Do you have any idea how to make this work when you dont have any monitor that works due to the DCC?