Hi, I got Debian installed on my ThinkPad, but I'm having trouble with my install of xwindows. After I startx, it quits back to the commandline unless the default depth is 8.

If it boots w/ 8 bit depth, it will only do 320x200 which is ... small. heh.

Here's some parts of my XF86Config...

Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "vga"
VideoRam 16000
Option "UseFBDev" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
HorizSync 27-79
VertRefresh 55-90
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Generic Video Card"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
Default Depth 8
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
Virtual 800 600
EndSubSection

When I quit X, I can see that it says:
(==) VGA(0): Virtual size is 320x200 (pitch 320)
(**) VGA(0): Built-in mode "Generic 320x200 default mode": 12.6 MHz (scaled from 25.2 MHz), 31.5 kHz, 70.2Hz (VScan)
(++) VGA(0): DPI set to (100,100)

So is it not reading my config correctly? Because it seems that it is loading some default values and ignoring the XF86Config settings, although it won't load unless I set the depth to 8...

Help!

-matt

So, since none of you responded....

I d/l xserver-common-v3 and xserver-svga

Installed those. Some how I found xf86cfg -textmode... ran that, made me this big bloated file for the svga server. I edited it down to what was neccesary. Svga quit out. Modified some settings to match this guys page:
http://www.angelfire.com/nt/sucks/XF86Config.html

but the horizsync/vertrefresh were not correct for my lcd... but ;D svga printed out the rates it wanted after quiting, copied those into the config file, and now i have 640x480 res with 800x600 virtual. ;P

Now all I have to do is get the sound output working and LCDProc installed.

Whoa, you rolled back to a series 3 XFree? Whew... Hrmm, I'm kinda rusty on X 3.3.6, if you still have 4, The thinkpads were all pretty good on probe, especially since most were just stock ATI cards, Under X4, does the normal:

X -configure

create a usuable file?

Cheers,

Finegan

Is there an svga driver for 4? The vga driver won't get out of 320x200.

It's not a big deal actually, I'm probably going to end up selling this on ebay, and finding a better one for the job. Which is to serve as an mp3 jukebox.

I didn't know about the mwave sound driver voodoo that I was going to have to do to get sound. I installed the dos drivers for mwave, but I don't know how to setup /dev/dsp or /dev/audio... I'm thinking about a pcmcia sound card, but they look kinda expensive (even on ebay).

So I think I need a different cheap laptop w/ better sound support. Anyone have suggestions? (Or know a good way to setup sound on a ThinkPad 755 system?)

X 4 deals with drivers by chipset, so its really a matter of what do you have as a card, same for the soundcard as a Thinkpad 755 is actually a broad swath of possible sound cards. What's the output of:

/sbin/lspci

Cheers,

Finegan

pcilib: Cannot open /proc/bus/pci
lspci: Cannot find any working access method.

The video card chipset is western digital, WD90C31.

Unless Debian did something really weird that requires you to be root just to run lspci, that's not a good sign at all, its just a reading off of proc... Try the alternatives:

cat /proc/pci

I've never actually heard of a Western Digi vid card, that's a new one for me, how did using "X -configure" work out?

Cheers,

Finegan

cat: /proc/pci: No such file or directory

Heh. X -configure didn't work I don't think, it printed out the help /command list.

Hmmm... Is there anything in the /proc directory? Also, X -configure is the command for X 4, you probably still have 3 installed, although the best way to configure that is usually:

/usr/X11/bin/xf86setup

And then just hand sort through the options.

Cheers,

Finegan

Yes, the /proc directory has a bunch of things listed. Are these logs or something? There are a bunch with just numbers as names, then

bigphysarea,bus,cmdline,cpuinfo,devices,dma,fb,filesystems,fs,ide,interruppts,ioports,kcore,kmsg,ksy ms,loadavg,locks,meminfo,misc,modules,mounts,net,partitions,scsi,self,slabinfo,stat,swaps,sys,tty,up time,version


I found this page:
http://www.adamcon.org/~dmwick/thinkpad/
maybe it will make more sense to you than it does to me, but I think that the sound and modem hardware is proprietary ibm stuff, which according to the page, they have released open linux drivers for. I don't know if the drivers are unneccesary with newer kernels? because the code was released in 2001... but they don't compile on my system, apparently because

/usr/include/linux/modversions.h doesn't exist.
I read a mailing list archive that said modversions.h wasn't part of the kernal source it was a header (hence the .h heh..) and that I'd have to get it with:
apt-get install kernel-headers-(mykernel-version-here)
but I don't know what kernel I have, and I also don't have internet on the thinkpad yet either. Will I be able to apt-get this file from the debian CD? (3.0r1)

Thanks for the help on this! I really want to get the sound working, but I'm not 100% sure what to do.

-matt

I found some info out about the mwave hardware in dos. It lists 'Sound Blaster' as I/O: 220, IRQ:5, DMA:1

Not sure if that is of any use..

First, sound card... its ISA, not PCI, I made an idiot boo-boo, I never figured IBM would have shipped that but I keep forgetting the 75x series is older then the common as dirt 600s, try this line:

/sbin/modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=3 dma16=5 mpu_io=0x300

Might have to juggle the irq a bit, to see what's already taken:

cat /proc/interrupts

That'll list all of the used IRQs and what's using them. Usual suspects for free IRQs are 5,7,9 and 11.

How's video coming along?

Cheers,

Finegan

modprobe: Can't locate module sb



I feel as if something is missing. Although

modprobe -c | grep sb

returns:

options sb io=0x220 irq=7 dma=1 dma16=5 mpu_io=0x330

but the sb(sound blaster?) module isn't there.

Hmm... yeah, seems like something is missing, a default install of Debian? Kernel 2.4.18bk right? There should be an sb.o in /lib/modules/2.4.18/kernel/drivers/sound/ I couldn't imagine it having been compiled directly into the kernel...

Cheers,

Finegan

cat > /proc/interrupts gives me

0: timer
1: keyboard
2: cascade
13: fpu
14: ide0
15: ide1