Crazy windows running 16bit Xorg on eee 701SD
 

Here's a youtube video of my problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7gBnEYqLk
Hi all.
I'm having a very strange problem with my installation of Arch Linux on my Asus eee 701SD. I've installed LXDE as a desktop environment, and without an xorg.conf file it works perfectly. However, I recently wanted to change the color depth for a particular application, so I used Xorg -configure* to create a conf file, moved it to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and it still works perfectly.

I then added the line "DefaultColorDepth 16" under the "Screen" Section. Everything seems to work fine, though some of the colours don't look as nice (as expected). However, once I start Wine, when I move any windows up and down (not so much side to side), the screen goes a bit nuts. It's kinda hard to explain, but the screen seems to jumble around and go crazy until I stop moving the window. I also get the same distortion when I move the mouse over the window modifier buttons in the top right of the window, and also when I click or type within windows. Even after I close Wine, this still occurs with other windows, and doesn't stop until I close X.
I worked out later that by closing and opening the laptop screen/lid I trigger the same effects as if I'd opened Wine. I edited ~/.xinitrc to open xterm, and the same thing seemed to happen. I'd normally try to fix this myself, but I have no idea what the problem could be. Any ideas? It might be a hardware problem...

In case you're wondering why I needed 16bit color depth, I was trying to run an old windows game called Chaos Overlords on my laptop. It runs ok in 24 bit, but some of the graphics don't show up, and running it in 16bit solves this problem (the same problem occurs in Windows).

Let me ask a couple of obvious questions.
1 Please tell us about your video card, and driver
2. Does your driver support 16 bit? I suspect not
3. Any interesting messages on stdout, or in Xorg.0.log?

grep -e 'WW' -e 'EE' -e 'NI' /var/log/Xorg.0.log

1. lspci -v gives me:
Intel Corporation Mobile 916GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller.
The kernel driver it's using is: i915

2. Not sure how to check this unfortunately...

3. Nothing of interest. Something about AllowEmptyInput, referring to mice and keyboards i think. The only thing that might be relevant is (II) Loading extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER.

Thats the driver for the Intel chips. Check if it does 16 bit colour

How do I check this?

Indeed!!---I've been skimming here: http://intellinuxgraphics.org/ , but I can't find anything relevant.

Thanks for the link. I had a look around and found this page: http://alcor.concordia.ca/manpages/sys4/intel.4.html.

So yeah, seems like it does support 16 bit :)

Also, I've just tested it with 15 and 8 bit color depths. The same problem occurs on 15 bit, and 8 bit looks absolutely terrible. It's all black and white, and even then it's all messy. Kinda hard to explain.

This is what it looks like when I run the computer in 8-bit mode
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8syZ1rlGt78

A simple bodge occurs to me here. In xorg.conf, set up one 24 bit mode, and the same mode also in 16 bit. You can specify the default colour depth as 24. When you want to play Chaos Overlords, hit Ctrl_Alt_+ and you will change modes(16 bit). Then when you lose and quit, hit Ctrl_Alt_- and ypou're back in 24 bit :-D.