Weird monitor color problem on my ASUS laptop

MasterOfTheWind · 12-01-2006, 05:51 PM

Hi!

Here is the story: I just received my laptop (ASUS A6U) back after it being repaired. From what I can see, they have actually replaced the whole mobo.

The problem is that when I booted up my Debian sid which is installed on the laptop (people that repaired my laptop left the OS intact it seems), I noticed that the color depth seemed not to be right, it was pretty much like it was 8-bit, not 24-bit as it should have been (and which is specified in the Xorg configuration file).

So after poking around abit (without any results), I decided to reinstall my distro - they replaced the mobo after all, I thought. This didn't solved the problem though. Here is a screenshot of me running Konsole: LINK

Now, X server reports bit depth of 24 bits(as the scrshot states), and it isn't KDE either, because the same thing happens if I use Gnome or Enlightenment.

So, any clues, anyone?

The graphics card is given (by lspci) to be:
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661FX / M661FX / M661MX / 741/ M741 / 760 / M760 PCI/AGP

Lenard · 12-01-2006, 06:27 PM

Did you check the BIOS and make sure you have enough video memory available if shared??

Maybe something was not connected right when they replaced the motherboard. The screen resolution seems a bit off (1280x782???)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter

Code:

$ xwininfo

xwininfo: Please select the window about which you
          would like information by clicking the
          mouse in that window.

xwininfo: Window id: 0x140000b "KDE Desktop"

  Absolute upper-left X:  0
  Absolute upper-left Y:  0
  Relative upper-left X:  0
  Relative upper-left Y:  0
  Width: 1280
  Height: 800
  Depth: 16
  Visual Class: TrueColor
  Border width: 0
  Class: InputOutput
  Colormap: 0x20 (installed)
  Bit Gravity State: NorthWestGravity
  Window Gravity State: NorthWestGravity
  Backing Store State: NotUseful
  Save Under State: no
  Map State: IsViewable
  Override Redirect State: no
  Corners:  +0+0  -0+0  -0-0  +0-0
  -geometry 1280x800+0+0

.

MasterOfTheWind · 12-01-2006, 06:39 PM

Yes, I think everything is as it should when it comes to BIOS, I have tried to change amount of shared memory (32, 64 or 128 mb), but it didn't seem to have any impact on the problem.

Hehe, yeah, the resolution stated in the screenshot is resolution of the Konsole window itself, not desktop (sorry I didn't say that before...) - and because of the top (kwin) decoration, window height is slightly less than the height of the root (desktop) window...

MasterOfTheWind · 12-01-2006, 07:14 PM

Here we go... Fixed it

I was looking at your xwininfo output and noticed you having depth at 16 bits. So, after trying everything I possibly could come up with, I switched depth to 16, and guess what

... So thank you for posting the output!

But could anyone think of why this might have happend? I mean, this config worked fine for me before mobo replacement. And: does it mean that I'm losing some image quality by using 16 bit color depth?

Lenard · 12-02-2006, 04:24 AM

Glad the output info help and you got it fixed. Still you might want to check if a possible BIOS update/switch may fix the color problem at 24-bit.

MasterOfTheWind · 12-02-2006, 06:35 AM

Thank you so much once again! I flashed BIOS and everything seems to be working fine now at 24 bit color depth!

But: Could you explain why it helped (I am just curious)? I mean, sure BIOS does some power management on the graphic controller, but why should it influence bit depth?

Lenard · 12-02-2006, 07:39 AM

Bug (bad code) in the old BIOS, I'm pretty sure if you read why the BIOS was upgraded (if available) the reason might be present. The BIOS also 'configures' the hardware devices IRQ, memory management, bus and a whole host of functions. Power management of the graphics controller is just one aspect of many.

MasterOfTheWind · 12-02-2006, 11:26 AM

Ah, ok, thank you very much...