Re: [linrad] svgalib works only in VESA mode

[W7AMI <w7ami@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Roger,

   Thanks for the note.  Yes, I have tried the Horizontal and Vertical 
frequency settings and they determine the modes available under 
svgalib.   Somehow svgalib is doubling the frequencies out.   If I tell 
it 60 Hz vertical is the max and select 1024x768 I get a vertical 
refresh rate of 120 Hz.   The horizontal frequecies also are doubled and 
I get 96 KHz instead of 48 KHz that I would expect.  
    So then I tried using the modelines but can't tell that the pixel 
clock setting is doing anything.   So for now I guess I'll have to stay 
with the forced VESA settings.  To bad because the video card has a fast 
GPU and it isn't being utilized.   Oh well.

Terry  W7AMI

 w3sz wrote:

> Hi, Terry,
>
> I am not a guru, but will tell you of my experience.
>
> In my experience svgalib has had a relatively limited set of 
> moderately  functional videocard drivers.  I got a Radeon card when 
> they first came  out several years ago, and had to toss it aside for 
> about 18 months until  an svgalib driver became available for it.  The 
> svgalib driver-set is  always well behind the curve of what's 
> available in video cards.  Some  cards that work fine with XWindows 
> don't work at all with svgalib, and I  have had several cards that 
> would ONLY workin svgalib when in VESA mode.   ALL of these cards 
> worked fine in Linux under XWindows.
>
> My most recent system uses Intel Extreme Graphics 2 for video, and 
> running  svgalib with it will not work AT ALL
> unless I force it to run in VESA mode.  As noted above, I have also 
> had  previous cards that only worked, or only worked properly, if I 
> forced VESA.
>
> I suspect that there are tricks or patches that a real expert can tell 
> you  about to make your card run.  You can set the limits on the 
> vertical and  horizontal deflection frequencies in libvga.config.  It 
> seems like you  could prevent it from going to 120 Hz by setting the 
> upper vertical limit  lower.  Did you try that?
>
> Not being a truly worthy Linux person, I have been forced to force 
> VESA to  solve the issues here.
>
> 73,
>
> Roger Rehr
> W3SZ
>
>> Gang,
>>
>>    I have been unable to get svgalib to run in anything but the VESA  
>> mode.   I
>> have to force VESA mode in libvga.config.  If I try to run in any 
>> other  mode it
>> sets the vertical refresh to twice the desired frequency.   My LCD  
>> monitor will
>> only work at 60 Hz refresh but svgalib tries to set it to 120 Hz.    
>> Nothing I
>> have tried has made any difference.   I would rather not run in the 
>> VESA  mode
>> since it slows down the CPU and doesn't take advantage of the 
>> graphics  processor
>> on the video card.   I recently upgraded my video card and despite 
>> my  best
>> attempt to buy something that was compatable with linux and svgalib 
>> I  seem to
>> have failed.   (The card works great in windows and solved some 
>> driver  conflicts
>> that I was having the caused the PC to crash.)
>>
>>    Here is my system...
>> SuSE Linux 9.0
>> Kernel - 2.6.5-7.111
>> CPU - Athlon XP2000
>> Motherboard - Gygabyte 7N600L
>> Video Card - NVidia geforce fx 5200 8x agp
>>
>>    svgalib identifies the video chip as an NV3 but it is a geforce 
>> fx  chipset.
>>
>>    If any of the Linux gurus in the group has an idea of what I can 
>> do  to get
>> this working to its full potential I would sure appreciate it.
>>
>> Terry W7AMI
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>

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