[BL] Gateway 2000 solo Xfbdev problem (Neomagic)

baslinux at lists.ibiblio.org baslinux at lists.ibiblio.org
Mon Jun 29 20:04:49 EDT 2009


Using the same kernel that worked in a Dell with Neomagic Magicgraph video 
chip (2.4.31 bzimlfnv.431 that I compiled and posted), after adding 
cursor.pcf.gz to the misc fonts directory and to fonts.dir in it, xfbdev 
libc5 segfaults (it worked in the DELL and in my desktops with various 
video cards).  Xfbdev glibc21 (from the X.org tinyX package posted at my 
site for glibc 2.1.x) starts to load but then complains it

"Could not open default font 'fixed'"

which is according to fonts.alias the 9x15 font which normally works.


I found something about 'Your version of AcceleratedX does not know how to 
handle this.....gzip -d the fonts and then run mkfontdir'.  ???

Nice computer for BL3 apart from the video problem.

See http://www.thehayesweb.com/jhayes/solo2500.html

The computer has 48MB RAM and one free slot and can take 128MB.

MagicGraph 128XD (Neomagic NM2160) with 2MB video RAM.  800x600 resolution 
16-bit color on a 12" LCD screen.

The sound is Yamaha OPL3-SAX (I need to compile the driver for my 2.4.31 
kernel which I am using to support usb-storage).  Hitachi I think uses 
this too.  See this site for the settings for  opl3sa2.o  Said to work 
fine with OSS but not ALSA.

This author got the neomagic X driver from 4.1.0 to work somehow (how?).
We have an older X. There were posts about fixing a bug in 4.1.0 that 
produced this error message.  The bug may have been introduced in that 
version of X but I cannot quite follow.
Bug 397126.

Someone else had this problem on their Solo2500 with Xfree85 4.1.0 and 
kernel 2.4.4.  Identical video chip.  Neomagic video driver.
http://www.mail-archive.com/neomagic@xfree86.org/msg00012.html

The solution involved using (I think) a regular Neomagic X server
with XF86Config file and
/etc/init.d/xfs start
and/or  chkconfig --add xfs
How would this translate to BL3.5?

Scrawny text without framebuffer, and vesafb produces garish colors and 
crashes on exit.  Xfbdev uses less RAM than the SVGA server and worked 
fine in the DELL with neomagic video chip (I forget which one).

I will try the SVGA server.  Windows 98 video driver works on here.

Sindi Keesan



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