Hello Ray: On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> The vesa framebuffer is pretty generic; almost any *modern* video card > should be able to drop back to its standards. But I do have older cards, > like the ancient S3 I use in one of my test systems, that does not support > the vesa framebuffer. If you have an older ATI card, you might have the > same problem. I can't find a list of cards that work with vesa, at least > not one that is less than 4 years old, so I can't check about your card for Mine should be older than 4 years. This was originally a P2 350 system that I've been upgrading. So the (again, onboard) integrated ati rage pro in this was probably manufactured right around the 4 year limit. Originally had 4MB video RAM which I upgraded to 8-12. > If you have kernel source installed, look there in > ./Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt for some technical discussion of how vesa works. No source here, but I might try and take a look at that document somehow anyway. Thanks. > You said, in your other message, that the display works with Debian-Sid. > What exactly do you mean? That is, what kernel and version are we talking > about here? Since one installs Sid (usually) by first installing Woody, > then doing a dist-upgrade, it is possible that you are actually running > some Woody kernel ... conceivably even the old 2.2.something that > theinstaller uses ... unless you've explicitly switched to a Sid kernel. 2.6.5 kernel. I upgraded a few times, but have been with the 2.6.5 kernel for a couple months now. > Your problem description, though, makes me think that your monitor won't > sync at 1024x768, and that xdm "fixes" the problem simply because it > switches to a supported 1280x1024 mode. (That *sort* of problem is not > rare; I've had several monitors that supported 640x480 and 1024x768 in X, > but made a mess of 800x600.) 1024x768 is listed in the manual as one possible resolution, though they recommend 1280x1024. I actually had a bit of trouble getting a 1280x1024 display on this a little while back (insufficient video memory) and could only get it to do 1024x768. So I know it will do 1024x768 under X, though the crispness of the display leaves things to be desired--to say the least. > You might want to try 1280x1024 in vesa to see if it works > there. Depending on color depth, the values for that are: > > 8 bit 0x307 = 775 > 16 bit 0x31A = 794 > 24 bit 0x31B = 795 Ok. I figured if it would do 800x600 framebuffer but not 1024x768, it would be pointless to try anything yet finer. But what do I know? The imps that inhabit these things often have totally unexpected tricks up their sleeves, I've learned :) > Finally, I'm at a loss as to why fbset is not working for you. But I don't > have the only system with fbset installed here running at the moment. If > none of the rest of this helps, post again and I'll try to look at that > part of it. I'm at a loss, too. Meantime, I'll do some more fiddling and spare you the bulk of the gory details, hopefully. Thanks, James - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
