[BL] can framebuffer damage a motherboard?
sindi keesan
keesan at sdf.lonestar.org
Wed Nov 23 01:09:11 EST 2005
On Wed, 23 Nov 2005, sindi keesan wrote:
> I have two Tseng ET4000 pci video cards which I was testing with David's
> framebuffer kernel on two computers that are dual-head (they have MGA card
> with TTL monitor and VGA card with VGA monitor). They both worked
> consistently in their two computers. Xvesa often crashed on exit. X
> worked on one not the other.
>
> We put the 'better' Tseng card into this computer where the other Tseng
> card was.
The Tseng that would do X on the other computer won't do X on this
computer. It is somehow related to the motherboard (a Soyo).
(I think I am using the same XF86Config on both boards). I will switch
computers (to something with USB) or cards (to S3). Matrox won't display
1280 on most 15" monitors.
I just ran across mention of a VESA 2.0 patch for S3 Trio64 and Virge
cards for DOS. Don't know why David's linux patch did not work. Maybe it
would work with a newer kernel? S3 cards seem to always work perfectly
and unlike Matrox and other AGP cards they display 1600 res on a 17"
monitor. But framebuffer makes for more readable smaller text.
I have one AGP S3, a Trio3D that won't do X except in 320x200 - perhaps in
a different computer it would do better? But everyone had problems with
it in linux. One Russian site suggested three cures: exchange the card,
use it in framebuffer mode, or try some different modelines. It works
fine with Xvesa for me.
>
> I booted into DOS and got lots of flashing characters all over the screen
> and saw nothing on the VGA screen. Booted to linux and it got as far as a
> line about ide1. Rebooted to DOS, more upper ascii - a small square full
> in upper right corner, lots of flashing. Typed mode co80 - "function
> co80 not supported on this computer". (So it is probably not the monitor
> or video card causing the problem).
>
> What part of the computer normally supports co80 (VGA)? BIOS? Some other
> chip onboard? I have had computers where MGA did not work, but I never
> lost VGA.
>
> Can using framebuffer do this sort of damage to a computer? I don't see
> how the old card could have damaged the new one.
I replaced the card, VGA worked again. I put back the old card, it works
in VGA now. Perhaps the card was not pushed in all the way?
xfbdev is not useful except where neither Xvesa nor X will
work, but you can't switch between X and cli without losing X.
All my video chips/cards but Tseng (and one WD laptop) do Xvesa.
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