ok, messed up VIDEO Drivers!?!?!?
 

S3 Savage4 16MB AGP...
with the savage driver, i can only get 320x240, 400x300, and 640x480 Resolutions, i've tried installing drivers, EVERYTHING, nothing is working, i'm now on VESA and it works PERFECTLY on 1024x768, so, i'd like to ask, how can i fix my video card? can someone give me real advice? and a WORKING driver?
oh, and with vesa on, what EXACTLY am i missing from having my real card's drivers?
thanks.

bump

So the last time we did this it didn't work?

The only driver there is is the "savage" driver unless s3 make their own linux drivers.

Have you made sure that the only selectable resolution is the one you want in the config file. Remove all the others. Then try starting it as 'startx' from the command line and if it bombs out on you then post the error message that is given.

Alex

i did that, but it starts X in 640x480 without it being written there....wierd...

What sort of monitor do you have? it sounds like XFree may be trying to save some part of the computer from being damaged. I take it you can reach the relevant resolution in windows or you know that the monitor can handle that resolution. What about the horizontal and vertical refresh rates? are they set up correctly.

it is a bit weird. when it starts in 640x400 mode can you then do a ctrl-alt-F1 and see any error messages there that may be saying why its doing this. At the same time check what file XFree is looking at. Make sure its the one that you've been editing.

If none of the above help then try and turn on debugging messages and look at the Xfreelog (should be in /var/log/ somewhere). see about posting it here.

we need to find some error messages so that we can find out the *exact* problem, and then find a solution. It may just be a case of buggy drivers for your hardware combination. In which case, you/we'll need to look into filing a bug report (checking that it hasn't been done yet).

At the moment, vesa will run just fine but it won't really utilise any of the nice bits of the hardware. All the graphical processing will take place on the cpu and the card will merely be used to send the right signals to the monitor. If all else fails, try looking at DRI support. They *may* have a driver for the savage card. Otherwise a frame buffer device could be used.

use www.google.co.uk/linux (or whatever the country code is for) to find more on these terms. DRI have their own page which is probably DRI.org

hth

Alex