TiBook(2002) and MOL

[Stefan Bruda]

At 16:35 +0200 on 2002-9-9 francesco wrote:
 >
 > anyone got a TiBook 2002? 

Yep.  Got one, and MOL works fine on it.

 > MOL starts but in the window i got a blank screen, might the
 > unsupported mobility radeon 7500 video card be the fault?

Run (as root) 

    molvconfig

This offers you the possibility to test various video modes.  Answer
`y' to video modes you want to test and for each such a mode you will
be presented with three screens (corresponding to the three bit
depths).  As soon as you see a stable picture press `y'. If you don't
see a thing, or see a shaky picture, press `n' (if you don't see
anything then repeatedly press `n' until you do, which is at most
three times).  At least one resolution works, namely 1280 * 854, 60.00
Hz (this is the native resolution for the tibook display).

You should have this resolution available, at least under the fb.modes
heading (otherwise you would not be able to run your X server), just
patiently answer `y'-es and `n'-s until it appears (and be careful not
to skip it!).

Edit then /etc/mol/molrc.video and below the heading ``Startup
Resolution'' change whatever is there to

    # New TiBook does 1280 * 854,  60.00 Hz,
    resolution:  1280/854/60      # width/height/Hz
    depth:       32		 

This works perfectly in console mode.  Feel free to change those lines
to some other resolution/bit depth to your liking, but if you change
the resolution be prepared to see the blank screen you refer to (any
depth should be OK though).  Some other resolutions that you would
expect to work don't (e.g., the tibook rev2 one), and some others that
are not necessarily supposed to work actually do.  Plenty of other
resolutions work under X though (as they have nothing to do with the
actual video driver, being simulated by the X server on top of the
current X resolution).

I tend to test resolutions by launching MOL from under X, then switch
to VT8 and change resolutions from the Monitor panel under Mac OS
(exactly all the resolutions for which you answer `y' at least one
time in molvconfig are available in this pannel).  This way, if the
display dies or comes up garbage, I can switch back to VT7 and change
back the resolution from the MOL in the X window (where I still have a
usable Monitor pannel opened).  This might screw things up (the
funniest thing happened to me when suddenly the wallpaper, blue doggie
suddenly became red, with no other apparent change), but it is less
likely.

Anyway, the point is, keep playing with the resolutions until you find
one that both you and your tibook like. :-)

Hope this helps,
Stefan

P.S. All of these happen with a more recent MOL than the stock YDL 2.2
one (don't know what is in YDL 2.3), namely 0.9.64 and with a fairly
recent kernel (2.19 or 2.20, I strongly recommend the benh kernel
though the stock YDL 2.3 works fine too; YDL 2.2's is completely
useless on tibooks rev 3).  I will try MOL 0.9.96 pretty soon, as I am
curious to see both Mac OS X and Linux running side by side.

-- 
If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as
it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
    --Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass