Hi Abraham,

You wrote,

> Your problem is that DDC is failing, so it can't figure out what modes your
> monitor / lcd is capable of. You'll have to hardcode the modelines in your
> XF86Config. Here is some which I have made especially for testing the 830M
> driver.

Thanks for the modelines, but I don't believe that they are
the problem.  In fact, I tried to use the modelines that you
sent, but it didn't change the error message at all (in
fact, it didn't have any effect on the log file).

AFAIK, XFree86 these days comes with a set of default
modelines already, so that it is not always necessary to
have them explicitly in the configuration file.  The other
reason for me to believe that the modelines are not the
problem is that in 8pp in three different resolutions as
well as in 16bpp with 640x480 the system works perfectly
fine without me having to provide explicit modelines.  (I
don't want to rule out that I need explicit modelines, but
at least they don't seem to be the only problem.)

Since my original message, I have done a little more
research and have come with a conjuncture as to what might
be the cause of the problem.  According to Intel's support
page

  http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/intel830m/tti004.htm

the i830M manages two sorts of video memory.  One of those
being what they call "legacy VGA/SVGA memory."  The amount of
memory allocated as legacy VGA/SVGA memory apparently
depends on the BIOS and can be 512kB, 1MB, or 8MB.  (Intel
also suggest that this should be adjustable in the BIOS
setup, but, as far as I can see, it isn't in the Dell C400.)

At boot time, I get the following messages in `dmesg':

  agpgart: Detected an Intel 830M Chipset.
  agpgart: detected 1024K stolen memory.

>From a quick look at the agpgart source code, it seems as if
this "stolen memory" is the same that Intel calls "legacy
VGA/SVGA memory."  If that is true, the chip may just have
allocated to little memory to run in high-resolution with
anything more than 8bpp.

The question then is, how can I get the i830 to allocate 8MB
instead of 1MB?  I would suspect that it requires a BIOS
call at boot time.  If you have a i830M-based machine at
hand, I would be grateful if you could check which amount of
"stolen memory" the agpgart module reports on your hardware.

Thanks,
Manuel
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