Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005, David Moberg wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
>
> > The ATI card, on the other hand, appears to be a Mach 64, because
> > it works terribly (stripey effect as Mach64, displays properly with
> > chipset VESA but crashes on exit, all terminals blank).
>
> I have a Mach64: a 3D Rage Pro AGP card, which is my primary card.

Svgalib is probably autodetecting your card as

chipset RAGE # RagePro (and might work with some older mach64)

Try specifying 'chipset Mach64' and see if you have problems.
I tried ATI, Mach32 and Mach64 as well as VESA.  Only VESA displayed 
properly but it turned permanently stripey on exit.  chipset VGA worked 
fine but only 16 colors.

> > So I do not recommend EITHER the Virge or the ATI for use with
> > different numbers of columns and/or rows.

The Virge is okay on most boards - see below.
Older Mach64 PCI is probably not good for svgalib.  Maybe with other 
monitors 100 and 132 col would work better - I may test that out.

> My Mach64 works well with Xvesa and Fbdev. I tried svgalib, too.
> I didn't even configure it, and it worked great. The trouble I've
> had has been mainly 3D work. The 3D Rage is a horrible choice for
> that.

This morning I tested the Virge cards some more.  gs does appear to work 
(I must have been doing something wrong).

Two Virge cards crash with resizecons in one computer.  Virge cards were 
working fine in two other computers.  I removed the mda card and mdacon 
from the first computer - still crashed with the same two cards.  I put 
one of them into another computer (and spent half an hour getting it to 
recognize hdb again - the cables have to be in all the way) and it worked 
fine there.  The Virges all seem to have the same video settings as I 
could transfer 80x30 132x43 etc. between computers with different Virge 
cards.  Some monitors don't work right at some settings.

So I have one motherboard that is incompatible with Virge/resizecons.  Or 
could the monitor somehow be causing the crash?  17" Viewsonic which I 
cannot move without help as it seems to weigh half what I do.

I knew it was too good to be true when this motherboard worked with 
loadlin and all the DOSes, and loop BL3 (did not try playing stereo wav 
files on it yet). So now we have 2 ASUS, 3 DFI, 2 Gateway and this 
motherboard that are buggy in linux.  The Compaq works except it won't 
print on half our printers.

> > > > Is there any non-X image printing program for linux?
> > >
> > > Do the netpbm tools count?
> > They would if I could compile them.  I may try, and yell for help
> > on how to do this statically so everyone in the list can use them.
> >
> >
> > > > I can't print
> > > > images in X as root or get Xvesa with rxvt working as user.  You
> > > > should not need to view what you are printing so why X?
> > >
> > > Can't you just kill X and print?

> > Is there some way to print CLI with xv?
>
> Why do you need xv to print? Image conversion? Doesn't Image Magick
> do that?

Image Magick requires a lot of X libraries even to convert and is rather 
slow.  1 min per pbm > ps on my 200MHz computer, 99.4% cpu usage.  I am 
hoping netpbm programs will have fewer dependencies and not need X.

> > I will try gs with Trio64 instead of Virge video card when I crawl
> > under the desk again to take apart the computer to plug the cable
> > back into Com2. And also try it on the computer with a Virge that
> > is working correctly.

Have not yet tried it again but I recall problems.  I have a Trident as 
backup.

> I didn't compile it statically, BUT you can use it on any i386 PC by
> copying these 3 files from BL3:
>
> /lib/libc.so.5
> /lib/ld-linux.so.1
> /lib/libm.so.5

These appear to be symlinks.  I seem to already have an
ld-linux.so.1 linked to ld-linux.so.1.9.9 - will this do?
When I tried to cp ld-linux.so.1 nothing got copied over the old file.

libc.so.5 is a symlink to libc.so.5.4.44 but when I copied it the larger 
file got copied as libc.so.5 (not the link).  580K

Same for libm.so.5 - 32K file got copied.

So it should work on BL3, and with the above files, also on BL2.
Thanks!  Have you tried it out yet?


> > Remind us of your URL.  Perhaps James could link to it or copy your
> > files to his site.
>
> http://www.geocities.com/davidjmoberg/pbmtox.tar.gz starts a download
> of the tools. I only included the pbmto* ones, for space reasons. Once
> you download the package, you need to copy the library from there to
> your /lib directory, then you can run any of the converters. If I've
> left anything out that you need, or it is buggy/doesn't work at all,
> please let me know.

Will do after finding a video card usable in this computer and replacing 
the ATI in the other one with whatever is left over.

> > When resizecons crashes with the Virge, I cannot change the video
> > mode again.  Blank screen, computer does not respond to anything I
> > type, and
> > I cannot even reboot.
>
> Does Ctrl+Alt+SysRq+B reboot the PC?

Did not try.  Ctrl-Alt-Del does nothing.  I think the keyboard has stopped 
responding.  I don't want to put the card back in to test this as it is 
obviously incompatible with that board and will be replaced anyway.

> > > I would like to squash this color problem once and for all, by adding
> > > an option to Xvesa that allows you to simulate more colors to programs
> > > that connect to it. Probably just a dream, but maybe it is possible.
> >
> > What do you mean by this?  Fool Opera and Abiword into thinking
> > they have 15-bit color when they have 4-bit?
>
> Yes. When programs like that connect to the X server, they ask for a
> description of how many colors the server can handle. This patch
> would send an arbitrary amount back to the program. Then, when the
> application sends color information, I would convert it on-the-fly
> to whatever color depth you are actually using.

So Opera would run in 4-bit color?  In Windows, anyway, if you are 256 
colors Opera runs at 16 colors, and you need 32K to get 256 actual.
So 4-bit color might come out 4-color and not be very helpful anyway.
Maybe this was fixed since 7.23.  There is a beta 8.0 for Windows now.

> > Is anyone still working on XVESA, the 8-bit color problem?  Or has
> > it been abandoned for fb?
>
> What's the 8-bit color problem? You mean incompatibilities (argh...
> can't spell today) with certain cards? I believe that's a fault of
> the BIOS, and can't be fixed.

I did have one card that would not work Xvesa but the rest do.

Xvesa in 8-bit color looks garish - bright red, blue, green in all the 
wrong places.  On ANY cards. This means you cannot use it with Abiword or 
Opera or Links2 if your video chip produces 8-bit color or less.

> David
> --
> _______________________________________________
> NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at 
> once.
> http://datingsearch.lycos.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> BasLinux mailing list
> BasLinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux

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