Hmph. I was wandering around my house a week or so ago and I
thought, in my tiny little head, about Inspirons having no real difference
in graphics resolution. In my mind, it is using 1024x768 to display our
text mode on the console. I have nothing to disprove this, since even in
the pseudo 640x480 mode of X without the XFCom driver, it is actually
640x480 pixels stretched to 1024x768. One such as myself, who uses the
console almost all the time, except when necessary to run Netscape or play
around running X applications off a powerful Sun machine that is on the
other side of a 28.8k connection, just to see if I can. BTW it does work
nicely. If I were less aware of time passing, I could probably work with
it. Annnyway. I was looking around and I found this nifty program called
SVGATextMode. I downloaded it and it sat there for a while before I
looked at it to see exactly what it was supposed to do. I was sitting
next to my trusty Inspiron, on the floor, where I am most comfortable, and
I noticed that it was exactly what I was looking for. Now, on a desktop
with a real monitor, I would not have really given a second look, because
text mode is so non-flickery compared to higher resolutions. However, on
this laptop, all resolutions are the same. They are all actually
1024x768x16 or 24 or whatever it is. I don't remember. Anyway, they are
all stretched to that at least. So you actually have no reason to run at
a lower resolution except for the minute amount of processor it might take
to display more lines of text. Even though you'd have to display them
anyway. It might run warmer. My real questions here now:
Has anyone gotten SVGATextMode to work on any Inspiron? I'm
thinking that the Neomagic card is making it hard to set to anything above
320x200 (or whatever normal text mode is, looks like 320x200). It
compiles all fine and stuff, but I go to run it and I can run any of the
320x200 modes dandy. When I try to go to the 640x480 modes it scoffs at
me as it displays a screen half full of short text. I try stty to change
rows, but nothing. Maybe what I'm really asking is if there is another
card that the neomagic pretends to be enough that I could use it? Or is
there a way to open my X with Neomagic support and, as stated in the
kbd.FAQ, dump the video registries and replace my console registries with.
I'm not sure exactly how it would manage that one, but if it could it'd be
goodness. I can see how the console would just be willing to fill
whatever room it had, and if it were at a higher resolution, it would
certainly have more to fill, so it might not gack at all about that.
Now, I may be sick here, but when I'm in X, I can pull open an empty
desktop and pop open a colourey Xterm at full screen. I get.. let me
see.. approximately 160x56 characters. I likeies. Right now I'm running
an 8x6 font with 80x66. Crappies. It is still running in 320x200 mode
though too so it looks bad. The X version doesn't look too bad. In fact,
it looks just the same as any other 8x8 or 8x16 font, just smaller. Heh.
You must see my situation. Oh yeah, the reason I don't just use X is
because when I'm in console, I don't have to deal with my mouseypoo to go
run over to another window, I just console around with consd ready to
spawn a new console and all that stuffies. Oh yeah, it also seems to not
like to take all my key combinations when in X. Like, minicom doesn't
work because X steals all the alt combinations. I guessssss I just like
it better here in non-gui textmode console land. It's more pleasurable to
my senses. Leave the mice to their own things. Live and let live! I
think I'm going to invent a pogo-stick like device that will plug into the
computer and I'll call it a kangaroo!
So.. I re-think this message for those of you who can't understand
my dribble:
Does the Neomagic fake any other video cards? I would assume not
because of the specialized XFCom.
Is there a way to use the video mode set in X and 'dump the
registries' so that you can set them in console?
Can you use the X program without xinit, but with a program that
would just use it for its graphics mode? Like.. run bash, but at
1024x768 through the X server.
Maybe if I exclude a window manager, but put in an xterm.. hmmmm.. I
dunna think it'll work, but I try.
---
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