On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 12:01:18PM EDT, Greg Folkert wrote: [..}
> Mind if I add snippets of you two posts to Owen to that Vesa Mode Page? Not in principle naturally. Just that I'd be a little concerned about the contents of my posts possibly misleading others .. A clear case of I don't understand it well enough to explain it .. to paraphrase A. Einstein, I think. I wish I had more solid knowledge of these aspects. Obviously, since I have not one but two systems that work flawlessly with the atyfb driver and a mach64, albeit somewhat differently (see below) .. I am in a good position to provide you with any files on my system that you think might be of interest. In any event, I should probably mention one other thing that I have read/heard on the subject, which is that if both vesa and the native driver are enabled in your kernel config, the native driver wins. This may be useful since grub lets you easily change your boot options on the fly .. eg. to recover from a messed up situation. Also, I am currently setting up an etch system on the same laptop and after my posting late last night, I noticed that my grub menu entries for the etch system do not specify anything regarding the fb console at all..! No video=atyfb or specifying the dimensions of my display in pixels. And yet, the laptop boots by default into its native 1400x1050 mode. No artifacts .. a perfect display as on a bran new high-end hardware terminal. This, btw is with the more recent 2.6.20 kernel (I typically run sarge with a 2.4.27 custom kernel). I also vaguely remember that, much to my delight, the 1400x1050 mode was already defined in the source file that contains all the modelines. But I had to compile custom kernels over and over for a number of other reasons .. so I'm not sure any more whether the kernel config I started off with had "ati" support enabled by default or if I had to enable it myself. The former, I think. Rather revealing of the maturity of the atyfb driver..! I requested from the ubuntu folks that they add this mode to their live system cd at least .. and possibly the installer .. to no avail .. that was about two years ago. Do you have access to a system where you could run some tests with possibly another video card than my old mach64..? I was thinking if you had some hands-on experience of this not so well documented area .. it might help clarify the process .. correct possible errors and omissions on my part .. make sure there is no miscommunication .. as well as .. if you are successful .. being able to add at least one video card to your database of video cards that we know for a fact are fully supported by a "native" driver. I should also add that from the user angle the results in my case were well worth the effort since the only (major where I am concerned) visual difference between my linux console and a full-screen xterm on my etch system is the fact that the linux console is limited to 16 colors rather than xterm's 256. Unfortunately, although I have fiddled with a couple of programs that let you dump an fb console to a file I have not been successful and so I do not have screenshots to prove it. Sorry about the vagueness/verbosity of the above but that's just about all I have been able to figure out so far. If I understood the fb console a bit better, I would be a lot more terse and I might consider updating that obsolete Framebuffer Console HOWTO. Regrettably, I have never had the time to work and play with the code of at least my own video card's driver. Oh, if you do decide to add something to your web page, please let me know and I'll be glad to take a look. Thanks, cga -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]