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baslinux - [BL] ATI RAGE 264GT PCI video card now usable with fb and xfbdev for X

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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [BL] ATI RAGE 264GT PCI video card now usable with fb and xfbdev for X
  • Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 20:21:24 +0000 (UTC)

We have two computers with onboard video that does not do vesafb framebuffer despite being VESA 3.0, and have only 1MB video ram, so we need to replace the video. There are no AGP slots. Most PCI cards don't do framebuffer. (Tseng and Matrox do but are somewhat screwy and we don't have extras).

We have several ATI RAGE PCI cards that do framebuffer but not Xvesa, or Xvesa but not framebuffer. An Emachine with ATI Rage IIc where Xvesa (or X SVGA) only works if you boot with lilo. A Compaq with Rage LT Pro that works with X SVGA server and loadlin, but not Xvesa. ATIs are all different and most are not very standard or vesa-compatible. But they made lots of PCI cards and onboard video chips.

The neighbor gave us something that does framebuffer (vesafb, with any of my or David's framebuffer-capable kernels, on the loadlin line or in lilo.conf, where adding vga=791 gives you 1024 res text mode). We have one other similar card.

They also do Xvesa but you cannot then switch to any text console or exit Xvesa without the text getting badly scrambled (large colored letters strewn across the screen).

So I took the xfbdev from a package David Moberg compiled, noted that it needs libm.so.5, copied both files to BL2 and xfbdev to BL3, and these both work at the resolution selected at boot time, and they also work instantly (they load much faster than Xvesa). They don't crash on exit. Only drawback is I don't know how to switch resolutions after booting.

in /etc/profile or /root/.profile:

alias x='xinit -- /usr/local/bin/xfbdev'

I am running vesafb at 1024 resolution.

This brings up icewm if you have an .xinitrc file and xinit. You need the full path to xfbdev, otherwise you get something with 4 colors at 640 res that crashes on exit just like Xvesa does. (Similarly, you would need
xinit -- /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvesa to run Xvesa with icewm).

I set up an alias x12 for Xvesa at 1280 resolution so we can view photos with Xvesa before rebooting to use CLI mode again.

There is also an XFBDEV X server which is much larger than xfbdev. I have not tried the SVGA X server with these cards.

I recommend xfbdev for a quick solution to ATI cards that work with vesafb and crash exiting Xvesa or don't do Xvesa at all. They need to be at least VESA 2.0 to support fb and not all 2.0 cards support fb.

How does one properly use aty128fb.o? I can load it but the resolution does not change. I tried loading it with video=aty128fb:800x600 on the insmod line or the loadlin line, ditto with vga=

Matrox works insmodding with vesa=791 but that was not in the documentation for aty128fb. video= was.

vesafb uses vga=791 on loadlin line


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




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