Baslinux mailing list

["David Moberg" <davidjmoberg AT lycos.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
 
> The first card I tried with framebuffer and David's patchedkernel 
> that works with S3, was an S3 Trio64V and it did not work as a 
> framebuffer device.

Try vga=ask. When it asks for a mode, try a lower resolution, and also
try (separately) using the scan option to look for different modes.
Does it work on any other S3-style cards? If it doesn't, then I built
a kernel for no reason, and the patch is useless.

> The second card, Stealth II 220 with Rendition chip, worked as 
> framebuffer and looks nice at 800 and 1024 resolution, but could 
> not open GPM mouse for links2, and it crashes completely to a black 
> screen, not rebootable, with xfbdev (in BL2, with libm.so.5 from 
> BL3 - BL3 can't even find the cursor font for it).

I hope to have solved both of these issues, by building a new Xfbdev.
I botched the previous job, and built a server that kind of works,
but has some bugs. Try the new one, it's in the vesafb.tar.gz file at
my site. It's compiled statically against uClibc (with -static) so it
should run well on either BL. It also has built-in fonts, so that
problem should be gone.

> I have not got links2 -g to work with framebuffer.   svgalib won't 
> work with 2 of these 3 cards either so I don't recommend using them 
> unless youdon't want to use zgv, seejpeg, bmv, and svgalib outside 
> of X (won't work in svgalib or in fb modes).

Does this links2 even have framebuffer support? It's optional.

> THese cards produce nicer looking 132x50 than does resizecons, and 
> also 100x37, but not 80x37 (unless I get fbset to work with matrox).

Does it not work with matrox? For matrox cards, you need to boot normally,
without a framebuffer, then load the matroxfb modules.

> Any ideas how to get links2 to open GPM mouse?

Is that the problem? Or does it not work at all?

> > When I dial my bbs I am in 37 lines but when I use pine 80x25 and after
> > exiting pine everything stays at 80x25 - how to fix this?

> > The fb cursor offline was a rectangle alternating between dark 
> > and medium bright but online it is bright all the time (at least 
> > after exiting pine - did not pay attention before this).

Is this with the framebuffer? Does it actually switch resolutions on you?

> I don't know if you could simply substitute xfbdev for 
> Xvesa - anyone want to try this?

For certain you can, as long as the framebuffer is working. Xfbdev and Xvesa
are nearly identical, except for the different drivers.

> This still  does not fix Chips and Technologies problems - laptops 
> where Xvesa thinks you have 4 color when is really 16M.

That may require a bigger X server.

> The vesafb.tar.gz package contains some modules (for which kernel?) 

2.2.16. The custom one I made.

> Is this file taken from Slackware 4.0

No. To my knowledge, 4.0 isn't even a 2.2.16 kernel.

> or did you compile it, David?

I did.

> I was expecting to install the XFBDev.tgz package from Slackware 7.1 
> - does this xfbdev program do something different from that server?

I believe that's a full-size X server. Much larger, more complicated, no
more functionality.

> fbset in this same package tells me my resolution and H and V frequencies.
> I have not tried setting modes with it yet as I don't know how - 
> David said it would not work with S3 but maybe it will with the 
> Rendition chip.

It won't work, period, with vesafb, as VESA does not allow for changing beyond
the defaults.

> ATI framebuffer cards need a different kernel from matroxfb and 
> vesafb so I can't try that one yet with framebuffer.

I thought I put that in my kernel .config.

Summary:

1) New Xfbdev binary, try it and see if it works
2) S3 VESA 1.2 cards may be usable, otherwise that patch and kernel based
on it were pointless.

Did I miss anything you asked for in the messages today?

David
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