On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, JOHNSTONE,IAIN (A-Scotland,ex1) wrote: > King of Framebuffers ........ I wish (-: > > Last night I tried to install an other brand of linux (shall remain nameless > but there is a "hat" involved) because I have had problems getting hold of > potato for alpha. I assume that my problems are generic rather than with the > "hatted" brand.
did you try the "hatted" brand in text mode? > When booting the AlphaServer 1000A from SRM with a CD the GUI install the > screen goes blank as it the VGA card is not supported. After replacing the > VGA card with a more generic Cirrus card all went well ... almost (a story > for another day). The screen went blank also when booting with the Voodoo3. well, FWIW I've had mixed luck with Voodoo3 cards and X 3.3.6. In some machine they work fine, others seem to have problems. 4.0 looks to be much better in this respect. > I have heard it rumoured that Alphas have problems with fancy video cards > .... is this true? Should I just go back to Potato for Sparc? Are Alpha's > too much hassle? Alphas can be difficult at times, however once you're over the hurdles I find them much easier to deal with. As for video cards, the only cards that have a real problem are the NVIDIA TNT2 based cards...they use extended bios calls that the x86 emulator in the Alphas doesn't understand, but if you get to SRM/AlphaBIOS/ARCBios then things are looking good. --rdp > Cheers > Iain > > ______________________________________________________________ > > Iain Johnstone > Technology Engineer, > GIO, ESO NT > Agilent Technologies UK Limited. > South Queensferry, > Scotland, EH30 9TG. > > Telnet 313-3367 > External +44 (0)131 331 6367 > Home Office +44 (0)141 636 9039 > Mobile +44 (0)705 0044753 > > Mail mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Web http://www.agilent.com > http://www.hp.com > ______________________________________________________________ > > -----Original Message----- > From: Christopher C. Chimelis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 06 September 2000 16:08 > To: JOHNSTONE,IAIN (A-Scotland,ex1) > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: FrameBuffers > > > > On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, JOHNSTONE,IAIN (A-Scotland,ex1) wrote: > > > Are there limitations on what king of framebuffer can be useds on Alphas > ... > > in particular can I use my Voodoo3 3000 in my AS 1000A? > > King of framebuffers? Wish I had one of those! > > All joking aside, there are only a few "framebuffer" drivers that work on > Alpha (that is, using the framebuffer device driver). I just quickly > looked in the kernel docs and the only ones that I could find listed are > the Matrox and TGA framebuffer drivers (the docs may be outdated, though). > > HOWEVER, this does NOT preclude you from using that card in an Alpha. In > fact, most Voodoo3 cards are known to work in Alphas (I haven't heard of > one that doesn't yet), although we don't have an X server for them > yet in the stable tree of Debian. You could compile one, however, if > you're so inclined to install XFree86 4.0.x. > > C > > > -- Rich Payne [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.alphalinux.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
