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

I just tried David's vesafb kernel (based on BL3 kernel) with two more 
VESA 2.0 cards - An AGP ATI (Rage?) with 4MB and a Tseng with 2.25MB video 
RAM.

It works perfectly with both, to 1280 (which is as much as either card 
will do).  xfbdev also works, but as usual looks atrocious with 256 colors 
(blue on black icewm).  Xvesa also works on the Tseng (did not try on the 
ATI) when booting with the framebuffer kernel, but unless I match the 
resolution of Xvesa to that I selected when booting, X crashes on exit.
I set up an alias to load xfbdev with xinit:
alias xfb='xinit -- /usr/local/bin/xfbdev'

You need to make a /dev/fb0 to use xfbdev, but not to boot into text mode 
framebuffer.



I have one 350MHz computer which works fine except with my other Tseng 
card, which crashes on exit from Xvesa.  This card works fine in the 
computer where I was using the Matrox so I switched them.  The Tseng now 
works perfectly in the other computers and displays to 1280 on the monitor 
where the matrox would only display to 1024 (tho it is capable of 1280). 
Neither one displays at more than 1024 on a monitor that was doing 1600 
with S3 and now only does 1024 with S3 as well - a 15" HP.

Is it typical of monitors to lose higher modes as they age?

I know modems can lose higher speeds.

If I am going to do mail at 1280 resolution here at sdf with pine, I would 
want to adjust the line length to more than 80 columns (twice that).  I 
get lots of lines (60?) and very clear text (if I sit close enough).

We were given an Nvidia 4MB AGP card (128) without a fan which might do 
1600 and vesafb. But the ATI worked better with the DVD player (mplayer) 
last I checked (on three with fans).


I have not played a DVD with mplayer after booting with framebuffer kernel 
- is there anything that should be done different?


Thanks again David for the vesafb package and mplayer.

The Tseng displays cyan after exiting xfbdev.

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