One of the first Steam Machine prototypes, the Xi3 Piston mini-PC, was examined in detail on the Bringus Studios YouTube channel. This 2013 PC runs Windows instead of the Linux-based SteamOS operating system. According to Bringus Studios tests, the PC, which Xi3 later released as the Piston, has mediocre gaming performance, and even in its day it wasn't very fast.
The Xi3 Piston has an AMD Trinity processor and 8GB of RAM. This chip is called R-464L, but in fact it is an analogue of AMD A10-4600M from 2012. But the most interesting part of a computer can be seen not from the inside, but from the outside. This is a combined DisplayPort and HDMI connector.
So, after a video about the Xi3 Piston from Bringus Studios, a former Xi3 employee reached out to the team on Discord and explained the purpose of the DP port with support for an HDMI signal (the pins are still not fully compatible). Experimenters changed the HDMI or DisplayPort settings in the BIOS, but the employee says the default BIOS setting should automatically detect which device is connected.
The PC Watch website took a closer look at the connector: it turned out to be a REGO Electronics HDMI/DisplayPort 2-in-1 model. It uses a non-standard 21 pin. When it's free, the connection acts like HDMI, whereas DisplayPort essentially closes that pin and enables its own protocol. The HDMI and DP plugs work great with this particular port and fit snugly, just like the original ones.
Regular HDMI and DP connectors are frankly physically incompatible. The extra pin and elimination of some parts of the original connector helped create DisplayPort, which accepts the HDMI plug well. Taking into account the current status quo of video cards, which usually have 3 DP connectors and one HDMI, and monitors, among which HDMI actually predominates, manufacturers of motherboards and video adapters could take advantage of this 13 years of experience.
Source: Tom's Hardware
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