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

We have several computers with onboard i810 video and no AGP slot, which 
we replaced with PCI video.  I also like to put in both MGA and VGA cards 
in my computers (and the MGA coexists with PCI but not AGP).

Most of our PCI video cards either are VESA 1.2 (the S3 Virge, Trio64, 
Trident, Cirrus, older ATI) and/or have only 2MB video RAM (not good for 
1280 res with Xvesa).  Exceptions are one Nvidia Riva TNT with 16MB (which 
does not work with mplayer with -vo cvidix - it is transparently visible 
over the console screen and loses sound, or at all with svgalib, or with 
fbdev - it comes out mono, or with rivafb and xfbdev - all blue), and an 
8MB ATI (need to bypass himem.sys with F5 for Xvesa or use SVGA server ) 
and one Matrox with 4MB that works well.

David Moberg compiled a vesafb kernel that was supposed to be patched to 
work with S3 cards in framebuffer mode but did not.  Framebuffer console 
mode gives you more text on the screen (and nicer looking than vga=ask, 
and far more stable).  It requires support of higher number video modes. 
Framebuffer is also required for xfbdev (which like Xvesa won't work in 
8-bit color).

While reading the online mplayer documentation about video (in case I 
could get cvidix or fbdev configured to work), I ran across mention of 
using Scitech Display Doctor in DOS before booting linux.  From floppy 
boot disk would even work.

sdd653-d.exe  Shareware.  I used to use the older univesa to upgrade ISA 
cards so they would display 1024 at 256 colors in DOS programs.

On the 200MHz SOYO with Virge card I typed the file name and it extracted 
itself, then I typed install and it installed to default directory c:\SDD.
I then typed univbe (with monitor turned of as instructed) and it beeped 
once.  Turned on the monitor and my VESA 1.2 card with 23 modes was now 
VESA 3.0 with 69 modes. (Until I reboot, so the batch file for starting 
linux should include univbe before loadlin.)

Booted with a vesafb kernel (not patched for S3) and vga=788 and it 
produced framebuffer console (more rows and columns of text).  xfbdev also 
worked perfectly.  S3 cards are very well behaved.

So I tried fixing the Riva card with it.  First, the file would not 
self-extract, even with mo'slo.  Divide error.  This is a 1.2GHz computer. 
pkunzip extracted it. Install extracted the other files.  univbe told me 
my card was not supported.  Too new?  It is already VESA 3.0 but not fully 
compliant.

I don't NEED xfbdev or cvidix.  This card works with Xvesa and -vo vesa.

Virge cards come with (or can take) 4MB RAM and are pretty common.
There is no s3 vidix library in the mplayer package from David.

I have not tried running display doctor on the i810 video to see if it 
would work better with Xvesa, or even if it would work at all.  It may be 
too new to be supported by this 1998 program.

Sindi

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