VGA Driver For Fedora 5

linuxnewbie1972 · 09-13-2006, 01:46 AM

I have just set up a Fedora box. It, however, does not recognize the onboard vga card, so I am only running on 800X600 under GNOME.

I have a MSI PM8M3-V mother board, with VIA P4M800CE + VT8237R Pro Chip Set. I have tried to get the Linux driver for the VGA card, I ended up completely flubbing the box. Can anyone help?

Thanks a million in advance

JrLz · 09-14-2006, 07:00 PM

try to find the driver in the motherboard CD
find the drivers for VGA,Sound,LAN,etc for Linux...
once you'll get it....find on the net the more recent version if you'd like to.

BogusTrumper · 09-14-2006, 07:48 PM

800x600 is sort of a default "safe" mode. It doesn't mean that it doesn't recognize your video card, it means that Xorg didn't specify a configuration for your video chipset.

Try adding to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (you'll probably need to be root to do this). At some point in the file, probably near the bottom, you'll see a set of lines like this:

Code:

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     16
                Modes    "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
                Modes    "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Change that to add the resolution you want under modes. For example, if I want 1280x1024 under 24 bit color (which is essentially what Windows thinks of as 32-bit mode), I would make it look like this:

Code:

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     16
                Modes    "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
                Modes    "1280x1024" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

If you do this while in Gnome or KDE, you can restart X by pressing CTL+ALT+Backspace (this will be much faster than rebooting).

sycamorex · 09-15-2006, 04:57 AM

I had a similar problem, I have a 17 inch TFT monitor but I don't have drivers for my on-board graphic card and could run X only in 800x600 resolution. Even when I did what Bugus Trumper suggest
I couldn't view the screen in the desired resolution (1024x768)

What I did was I modified the following two entries in xorg.conf / XF86conf (Fedora / Debian):

HorizSync 31.5 - 50.0
VertRefresh 40-90

I wrote the following values and everything started working

HTH

Wim Sturkenboom · 09-15-2006, 06:02 AM

Sycamorex is right. If the montor is not correctly recognized, X does not know the max frequencies that it can use and will use conservative settings. This will not allow high resolutions as they will require high frequencies.

You can find the specs in your monitor manual (often refered to as horizontal refresh or horyzontal sync (fH) and vertical refresh or vertical sync (fV)).

linuxnewbie1972 · 09-16-2006, 12:02 AM

Thanks for the help! I switched to a Dell monitor and now everything is working. Of course, I still had to had the option for the display resolution.

Again, thanks a lot for everyone's help.

supix · 09-24-2006, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BogusTrumper

If you do this while in Gnome or KDE, you can restart X by pressing CTL+ALT+Backspace (this will be much faster than rebooting).

I have exactly the same motherboard with the same chipset (PM8M3-V with VIA P4M800CE + VT8237R). I succeded in setting the 1280x1024 resolution, but now windows refresh is clearly slow, windows leave a trace during drag. It is likely a problem of driver, since under WinXP everything works fine.

I'am running Ubuntu Dapper. It has a via driver, but it does not work. I'm currently using the vesa driver.

Any hints?

Thanx a lot in advance,
Marcello.

supix · 10-31-2006, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by supix

I have exactly the same motherboard with the same chipset (PM8M3-V with VIA P4M800CE + VT8237R). I succeded in setting the 1280x1024 resolution, but now windows refresh is clearly slow, windows leave a trace during drag. It is likely a problem of driver, since under WinXP everything works fine.

I'am running Ubuntu Dapper. It has a via driver, but it does not work. I'm currently using the vesa driver.

Finally I found the solution: openchrome project (www openchrome org).
And it does work for my hardware in the P4M800 (VT3344).
On this site there is also a link to a Ubuntu wiki which shows the (easy) steps specifically tailored for Ubuntu users.

Marcello.