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Having trouble installing a piece of hardware? Want to know if that peripheral is compatible with Linux?

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Old 10-28-2003, 10:02 PM   #16
wartstew
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Quote:
Originally posted by fuelinux
the problem is that, when i push 800x600 and 640x480 resolutions in XF86Setup, X server removes 800x600 automatically.
Yes, but at least set up like that, when you do get 800x600 fixed you'll know it because it will just start working at 800x600, instead of 640x480. So leave the "modes" line to include both.

Quote:
as for more than 60Hz of vertrefresh. when I played with it under windows and set it to 72Hz, monitor got crazy lol. I had to set it back to "optimal", that equals to 60Hz.
Yes, that tells you not to go up to 72Hz, but something like 62 would probably be okay especially since it is going something less than this anyway. Read the lines about which default 800x600 modes are being removed and why. Some of them are probably for higher refresh rates, and thus should be removed, but there should be one that is around 60 hz that shouldn't.

Quote:
[BI think my monitor handles 24 Depth as well.[/B]
Any Analog (AKA: VGA types) display can handle any sort of color depth (that is why they have analog inputs). The problem will be that with you will likely run out of memory on that video card if you try very high resolutions at that color depth. I can't remember if you can do 800x600@24 bits with 2 megs of video ram or not. Does Windows let you do it with that card?

Quote:
[BI you help me a lot [/B]
I'll believe that when you get the thing working! Don't give up, it should work, and you'll become an Xfree expert in the process and be able to fix all your friends attempts with Xfree later on. It is the kind of thing that Slackware users are famous for: knowing what is going on under the hood.

==============

Okay, I fired up my old OpenBSD machine that has an S3-Trio64 and Xfree 3.x on it as well as an antiquated 14 inch display that can only do 800x600 at 60hz (actually not even this very well, as you'll see I'm actually running at 56hz). Here are the important parts:

In the monitor section:

HorzSync 31.5,35.15,35.5
VertRefresh 50-70

#Modeline for 800x600 at 56 hz
Modeline "800x600" 36 800 824 826 1024 800 801 603 625

Then when I start X I get (according to xvidtune):

HorzSync rate of 36.16
VertSync(refresh) of 56.25

and of course 800x600 resolution at 16 bit color depth.

So hopefully these settings should at least work for you too.

I con't remember how I came up with all this, the file looks like it was probably generated from the text based xf86config program, which I probably just used and everything worked fine (well except probably the mouse, seems I always have trouble with that too).

Last edited by wartstew; 10-28-2003 at 10:04 PM.
 
Old 10-30-2003, 07:29 AM   #17
fuelinux
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actually I have both 800x600 and 640x480 modes included in my XF86Config file. But I guess X server can't use 800x600 mode because I didn't specified it's vertical and horizontal timing values (that Modeline "800x600" 36 800 824 826 1024 800 801 603 625 thing). I don't know the exact values that should be included there. I'll try your settings, hope this will help.
It doesn't specifies why it removes 800x600 mode. It just says it removes.
Win95 let me use monitor with 32bit and 800x600 mode
 
Old 10-30-2003, 10:07 AM   #18
wartstew
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I thought that if you didn't specify any modeline timmings that it would default to standardized "VESA" ones if any are compatible with your hardware "restrictions", but maybe that is only with the newer Xfree (Ver 4.x). There is a document somewhere that explains what all these numbers are so you can really become an expert with this stuff if you want. Odd that it didn't explain why the modes were deleted, on my copy of Ver 3.x it deleted a lot of them and each said things like "HorzSync out of range".

I guess I'll have to check and see what other reasons it would have for deleting "incompatible" modes. My thought is that perhaps your card can't get close enough to those timings. Is there a (can't remember what the exact name was) line in the "accel" screen settings that restricted something named something like a "dot clock" to certain freaquencies? This could certainly cause these problems. Your S3 card probably doesn't need any restrictions. I had to enter them on an old ATI Mach32 VLB card I had because certain modes it would try to do produced noisy video. This was another case where I was able to fine tune some bad hardware to work in Linux that wouldn't work well in Windows.
 
Old 11-10-2003, 02:01 AM   #19
fuelinux
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I finally made it!!!!!!!!!!!
Now I got 800x600 resolution. I played around with timing settings and it worked. here are my X -probeonly command's and XF86Config's content (respective sections of them):

X -probeonly

(**) S3: Graphics device ID: "Primary Card"
(**) S3: Monitor ID: "Primary Monitor"
Warning: The directory "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local" does not exist.
Entry deleted from font path.
(**) FontPath set to "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
(--) S3: PCI: Trio64V2 rev 16, Linear FB @ 0xe0000000
(--) S3: chipset: Trio64V2/DX rev. 16
(--) S3: chipset driver: newmmio
(--) S3: card type: PCI
(--) S3: videoram: 2048k
(--) S3: Ramdac type: s3_trio64v2
(--) S3: Ramdac speed: 170 MHz
(--) S3: Using Trio64V2 programmable clock (MCLK 50.114 MHz)
(--) S3: Maximum allowed dot-clock: 135.000 MHz
(**) S3: Mode "800x600": mode clock = 36.000
(**) S3: Mode "640x480": mode clock = 25.180
(**) S3: Using sparse 32 bpp. Color weight: 888
(--) S3: Virtual resolution set to 800x600


XF86Config

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Primary Monitor"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
HorizSync 31.5-36.1
VertRefresh 54-60
Modeline "800x600" 36 800 832 976 1016 600 604 606 634
Modeline "640x480" 25.18 640 664 760 800 480 491 493 525
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Primary Card"
VendorName "Unknown"
BoardName "S3 Trio64V2/DX (generic)"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Driver "Accel"
Device "Primary Card"
Monitor "Primary Monitor"
DefaultColorDepth 32
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 32
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection


I've modified a bit your settings of 800x600 mode and it worked. It flicks a little though. I'm still not sure if it's the optimal setting for my monitor, but it works so far.

My next question is regarding the KDE settings (I think it should be the subject of another thread): I set up the desktop under root (all the kdelinks, icons and so on). I want to know where does KDE store all those settings and is it possible to copy them somehow in order to use those settings under my other ID on my machine. I have two IDs: root and other username.
I'd like to thank you again for valuable help
 
Old 11-10-2003, 10:48 AM   #20
wartstew
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Great!

Now make sure you save your XF86Config file so that with future installs of Linux (of any variety), you can simply install the old XF86_S3 server and the config file and have everything work.

Looks like you got it working with 24-bit color as well (The 32 BPP isn't really 32 BPP). Not bad with only 2 megs of memory. However, you might get faster video performance with 16 bit color because there will be more memory available for caching "sprites" and stuff like that. You might check and see.

To deal with the "flicks a little", you might experiment with turning up the upper limit on the VertRefresh just to see if the display can handle it. Try upper limits of 70, 72 or 75.

You might want to start a new thread on the KDE stuff. You'll likely attract better expertise. Besides, this thread is getting kind of long.
 
  


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