[SOLVED] Trouble with supported 1280x1024 on old graphics card S3VirgeDX

mowestusa · 05-13-2010, 02:34 PM

First the Hardware:
- Celeron 500mhz with 256megs or RAM
- S3Virge DX Card with 4megs of RAM in a PCI slot
- Envision EN9410e LCD with native resolution of 1280x1024
- Sidux distro running (Debian Sid)

Things I have tried:

1. Without any post install configuration: GDM and XFCE booted up with an 800x600 screen size. Looks great, but size is too small would like the native resolution of 1280x1024.

2. Created a xorg.conf file with the command "Xorg -configure". First added the horizSync rates and the VertRefresh rates. File had "s3virge" as the driver listed for the card. Screen section I added under 16 depth and 24 depth the Modes "1280x1024".
- This results in GDM starting with colors all messed up in vertical lines and barely able to read the screen details. The resolution is correct, but the colors are completely messed up making it hard to read anything with vertical lines running through everything.

3. Changed the above xorg.conf file to use the "vesa" driver. GDM starts up in 1280x1024 and the colors look perfect, but when I log into XFCE it bombs out when the desktop appears and takes me back to the GDM log in page, never letting me run the XFCE desktop.

4. Ran an old Knoppix 5.1 CD and it configured a beautiful desktop with I believe a 1024x768 desktop and great colors. It looked like it was using the vesa driver when I looked at the XFree86 config file.

5. Ran ddcprobe and it identified the "vesa" driver with the S3virge DX card and showed the possible resolutions which included 1280x1024x32k and 1280x1024x64k. Once again leading me to believe that it should be possible to use this card with this monitor and use the monitor's native resolution of 1280x1024.

Any ideas what I could do to get this resolution or is it just impossible with this hardware? Do I have to settle with 800x600? #3 try boggles my mind because I can't figure out why GDM would look perfect but then it would bomb back to the GDM screen instead of starting XFCE.

Thanks for the help. I love keeping old hardware useful, so I hope you can help me sort this out.

jefro · 05-13-2010, 03:06 PM

A long time ago you used to have to edit every single part of the xconfigure. If you missed or set something wrong it would burn out your adapter. I think it still can. You might be able to find old posts on how to set that adapter.

I'd think though that 800x600 is the tops. S3's were always difficult to work with.

mowestusa · 05-15-2010, 03:08 PM

Here is what I did to fix the issue. On the same machine I had an onboard Intel Graphics Chip. I switched to that, and used the following xorg.conf file which has given me the desired 1280x1024 resolution. I still have the XFCE issue which I have started a different thread because it seems that the two issues were not related. I can log into Fluxbox from GDM without issue and get a 1280x1024 resolution the the hardware and xorg.conf file below:

Code:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "X.org Configured"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
	ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
	FontPath     "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
	FontPath     "built-ins"
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load  "dri"
	Load  "glx"
	Load  "dbe"
	Load  "record"
	Load  "dri2"
	Load  "extmod"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse0"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "Monitor0"
	VendorName   "Envision"
	ModelName    "EN9410e"
	HorizSync    31-83
	VertRefresh  56-75
EndSection

Section "Device"
        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "NoAccel"            	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "SWcursor"           	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "ColorKey"           	# <i>
        #Option     "CacheLines"         	# <i>
        #Option     "Dac6Bit"            	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "DRI"                	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "NoDDC"              	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "ShowCache"          	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "XvMCSurfaces"       	# <i>
        #Option     "PageFlip"           	# [<bool>]
	Identifier  "Card0"
	Driver      "intel"
	VendorName  "Intel Corporation"
	BoardName   "82810E DC-133 (CGC) Chipset Graphics Controller"
	BusID       "PCI:0:1:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     1
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     4
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     8
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     15
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     16
		Modes     "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
		Modes     "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Karl Godt · 05-15-2010, 03:08 PM

EON EONTRONICS S3 VIRGE/DX On Board PCI-Slot BIOS VER: LHV1.3E

could only make 800x600

and at debian5.04-xfce-live most terminal emulators crashed the Desktop back to login-screen (only simple xterm -sb worked). nVIDIA SPARKLE AGP-Slot fixed that.

mowestusa · 05-15-2010, 04:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karl Godt

EON EONTRONICS S3 VIRGE/DX On Board PCI-Slot BIOS VER: LHV1.3E

could only make 800x600

and at debian5.04-xfce-live most terminal emulators crashed the Desktop back to login-screen (only simple xterm -sb worked). nVIDIA SPARKLE AGP-Slot fixed that.

- This would explain why whenever I tried to use the "s3virge" driver and up the resolution to 1280x1024 I would get the messed up vertical lines of color through out the GDM screen. The vesa driver would give me the correct look at the right resolution though. Now with the Intel Graphics everything just looks and seems to work better.

- I wonder if that xfce issue is the one that I'm having. You can take a look at the other thread that I posted which gives the error output of the .xsession-error file. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...an-sid-808051/ I don't have a better graphics card that can go into this old machine that I could try to use to fix the XFCE issue.