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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] BL3.32 - fun with Xvesa
  • Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 23:21:06 +0000 (UTC)

The Gateway which is having problems with Xvesa/swm in BL33 has the video card it came with. AGP STB Velocity 128 VESA 0300 4 MB.
One or both of the other two computers (Gateways) has a PCI card but I think one has this same STB card (not sure). They both work with swm.

Xvesa displays 4 or 16 bit color or 24 bit color until you add swm, at which point anything over 4-bit crashes with an XPM cannot allocate colors.

I installed icewm. BL3 now works just fine with 15 or 16-bit color (this video card won't do 15-bit and apparently displays 16-bitinstead ) or 24-bit, blue or greenish blue background, jpegs displayed properly. 4-bit works as expected.


4-bit gives a purple background and greyish faces with red blotches.
I forget what color the red kings were in freecell. In 16 bit they were red.

8-bit and also 9 10 11 12 bit color sort of work but the background is mustard and the red kings are blue and photos are completely scrambled (random mixture of pixels).

I had thought 12 bit in Xsetup displayed as 15-bit (or 16-bit). On this card at least it displays as 8-bit. I don't know any cards that display color depths between 8 and 15 bit. COnsidering that 12 bit color is causing a serious problem here (it acts like 8-bit, which never works in Xvesa) and it is an imaginary color depth anyway that displays as 8 (here) or 15 (usually, I think) it would probably be a better idea to change it from 12to 15 in Xsetup to avoid this sort of problem. SOme video cards support 15-bit. Those that don't (like this) display it as 16-bit.
This card displays 12-bit as 8 and 8 is bad for Xvesa. Other cards display 12-bit as 15. Maybe on video cards without 15-bit color 12 displays as 8, and on cards with 15-bit 12 displays as 15? On cards without 15-bit 15 displays as 16 so it is a safe choice.

So this hardware is usable, but not if I stuck with the choices in Xsetup (links2 for BL3 and abiword won't run in 4-bit color - links2 is compiled for X not SVGAlib where it does run in fewer colors).

Please change from 12 to 15 so as not to lose other people using this apparently common video card (it came in 3 of 4 Gateway boards given to us and the fourth came without a card and 1998 qualifies as 'old hardware' 7 years later).


How much larger would it make links2 to include SVGAlib support so it would work on old laptops with only 4-bit color? The delilinux links2 is statically compiled but I don't think that includes glibc.

The card works fine in DOS and Windows. Probably also with a non-Xvesa server. The mouseport (PS/2) appears to be dead which is why we have the computer. Icewm is happy without a mouse as is links2 and abiword. A serial mouse would probably work (we have not checked if those ports are dead too) for freecell.

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, sindi keesan wrote:

I have three Gateway boards (made by NEC/Intel, something like JN440BX, all with the three pins missing from the configuration jumper needed to upgrade the cpu and change speeds but we are told we can run a wire between the solder blobs where the pins should have been).

One came with a 266MHz cpu, the others with 233MHz.
AGP video in the first, AGP or PCI in the second, 4MB RAM.

I booted them all with Win98 DOS and system files, and put on BL3 (various versions but the same Xvesa).

1. 266MHz. The system files do not interfere with Xvesa, and it all works properly at all available resolutions and color depths. AGP.
I don't recall the version number but I think it is BL3.0 or something shortly after that.

2. A 233MHz with PCI video, I need to bypass the system files in order to use Xvesa at all, otherwise I get a black screen (something like Interrupt pointers... flashes by briefly first). This is the only computer where I need to bypass Win98 DOS system files (not needed on two other Win98SE and one Win98FE). Then it works in lots of colors, specifically with Steven's swm setup at 800x600x12, PS/2 mouse, 2 button. This one has BL 3.0.

3. Another 233MHz with AGP video, does NOT need to bypass system files with Win98SE in order to run Xvesa at various resolutions and color depths, all of which works fine (I tested up to 1024 and 24 bit color without a window manager). Using BL3.32 just downloaded today, with swm and not icewm.

BUT if I run Xsetup and startx it works at 640, 800, 1024 in 4-bit color. In 8-bit or higher color it starts to load the expected screen (in 8-bit it is doubled and odd looking) and then crashes with the message:

XPM: could not allocate colors.

If I spell things out with xinit (which I note BL3.0 does not have)
xinit -- /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvesa -screen 800x600x12
it also crashes.

If I leave off the xinit -- it works fine (but no swm).

I think I also tried
Xvesa -screen 800x600x12 & swm (but I did not keep good notes)

4-bit color works fine with swm, 8-bit or higher gets the XPM message.

I am wondering if, since these boards all behave differently, the two 233MHz ones were rejected by Intel/NEC as slightly defective (not able to go faster than 233MHz) and had some other bugs in them as well. One appears to have some sort of memory problem (the only one that won't let me use Xvesa with Win98 DOS himem.sys) and the other has some strange conflict between Xvesa, swm, and more than 4-bit color.

The one with the color problems was given to a thrift shop recently, the other two came from a friend whose office upgraded.


I was trying to figure out which of the 233MHz machines would be better for Xvesa. I guess it is the one which does not like himem.sys, since I don't know of any way to bypass the color problem on the other, however I will first see if icewm cures it and report back if so. First we need to figure out why all the modems we have tried at that location except one (a 28.8K) won't dial unless you first separately give them an ATH1 - two 33K's, a 14.4K, and a 56K winmodem. Bad phone line slowing down some signal? Too many phone lines in a row? We also tried running the telephone cable directly to the modem rather than through three computers and a fax machine. I have put ath1 at the end of eznet.conf. Otherwise there is 'no dial tone'

We might try the upgrade since someone gave us two 300MHz Slot 1 cpus identical to what is in there except for speed (same bus speed, different multiplier). To upgrade you need to find the pdf manual, jumper pins 2-3 (which are not there) and reboot which puts you into a special Maintenance Mode with its own additional menu for setting speeds, power off, remove the jumper pins, and reboot again. To make things more interesting, google could not display text from the pdf manual nor could pdftotext. I got a message something like ' it is not permitted to extract the text from this file'. xpdf worked perfectly with 128MB RAM.


Not that we need 300MHz but that seems to be what is free now.
The bottom tends to drop out of the used computer market at about 7 years, which will soon be 1998, the age of these cpus.

Steven, could you compile JUST pdftops for BL3, which could be used in conjunction with the SW4.0 gs on newer pdf files by first converting to ps?

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org




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