radeon 8500, ydl2.3, XFree 4.2.0

[R Shapiro]

On Friday, August 2, 2002, at 11:19  PM, Bill Fink wrote:

> Have you tried putting the fbset in the /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit or 
> rc.local,
> possibly in a loop for each vt with a chvt before the fbset?  At least
> it would be better than typing blind if it works.

True, that helps a little.  Good suggestion.  I believe the -a options 
applies the fbset to all virtual terminals, so the loop isn't necessary.

Otoh it's not really the blind-typing of fbset that's the main problem.  
Blind-typing is an error-prone annoyance, but the real problem is that I 
can't run a reasonable X server (though see below).  If I can't run a 
reasonable X server I have no reason to run linux on this machine rather 
than osx.

In my X experiments so far, I was testing color depths 15, 16 and 24.  
Those were all badly broken, with both drivers (fbdev and radeon).  I 
couldn't possibly use them. Today I tried 8, and much to my amazement, 
it works: coarse colors, obviously, but at least sensible ones.  I'm not 
sure I could use an 8-bit X server for real work, but it's not 
completely out of the question.

This symptom of working properly at 8 but not at 15/16 or 24 rings a 
bell:  I have a vague memory of having read about this before.  Is it a 
known problem, maybe with a known solution?

I'm still wondering about video= kernel options for radeon cards (any 
model radeon, not just the 8500). What do users of older radeon cards 
specify here?  I've been asking on every forum I can think of -- either 
no one is running ppc-linux with a radeon card (unlikely),  or they use 
the same aty128fb setting I used to use with my Rage128 (seems odd), or 
somebody out there has an answer and hasn't posted it yet.   Please, if 
you know, end the suspense...




--
reshapiro@attbi.com