Colour and Display ProblemsForum: User Feedback Topic: Colour and Display Problems started by: feledar Posted by feledar on Nov. 25 2004,19:22
Hello Gang!I received, a while back, a CD of DSL v. 0.7 from a friend. My computer is a Dell Dimension XPS P90 with a 90 MHz Pentium processor and 128 MB of RAM. The video card is an Imagine i128. I have a 14k hardware modem and a 56k Motorola Voicsurfr modem. The CD drive is not bootable and so I use a boot floppy. I have tried, many times, to have DSL run properly on my computer. It does boot, however, the display is poor. If I choose a resolution of 1024x*x*, a grey stipple pattern appears on the background. Changing style adds colours, but often text is unreadable. No icons appear on the desktop, nor even the disk with the penguin in the centre. I am able to get some applications to run, such as Ted and XTetris. When I boot setting the lowest resolution, the display is coloured, Dillo with an introduction to DSL appears, the central penguin disk is displayed, but there is a colour problem (the splotchy type that appears when two programmes running colours conflict with each other). XTetris does not run. Changing colour depth seems to make no difference. I removed the Voicesurfr modem, just in case a conflict with the sound card were, somehow, the problem. The result was the same. These are the error messages that appear when shutting down after booting with the 1024x*x* resolution: ********** insmod:\lib\modules\2.4.22.xfs\kernel\arch\i386\kernel\apm.o: init-module: No such device insmod:\lib\modules\2.4.22.xfs\kernel\arch\i386\kernel\apm.o: char-major-10-134 failed Failed to load groupfile BScreen::BScreen:manager screen0 using visual 0x21, depth 4 ImageControl::BImageControl: invalid colormapsize 125(5\5\5) - reducing Gdk-WARNING**: visual typ-static color depth=4, image bpp=4, lsbfirst is not supported by GdkRGB ********* With the lowest resolution, there is a series of error messages about failed colour display, upon shut down, that I will not reproduce. On my friend's machine (which happens to be a higher Pentium with more RAM) boot up with the floppy works fine and DSL seems to run with no problems. In its current state, I cannot use DSL. Could it be my video card? By any chance, has the newest version solved this problem? On the other hand, is the problem with Knoppix or even Debian, meaning that all distributions based on these, such as Feather Linux, will not work on my machine? Thank you for any help. Posted by skaos on Nov. 26 2004,10:26
Have you tried both Xvesa and fbdev, if not, try the other one. You could also add -swaprgb in .xserverrc in your home directory; you first have to kill X with crtl+alt+backspace, edit the file and finally run startx.Some info about the Xvesa server: < http://www.xfree86.org/current/Xvesa.1.html > < http://www.xfree86.org/current/Xkdrive.1.html > Posted by ico2 on Nov. 27 2004,12:50
try using 800x600
Posted by feledar on Nov. 29 2004,21:50
As recommended, I have tried xfbdev instead of xvesa. This does not work at all. It gives, as error:modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module fb0 XIO: fatal IO error 104 (connection reset by peer) on X server "0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining . I also tried xvesa with -swaprgb. This produced the same colour problems as before. I will soon try the 800x600 mode and other commands in xvesa. Thanks for the effort. Posted by feledar on Nov. 30 2004,20:13
I have tried 800x600 resolution and I get the same result as the lowest resolution.Since, during boot up, I always get the message "You passed an undefined mode number", and trying different modes does not seem to help, I added the -listmodes argument to the xvesa command. This always causes an error and the GUI does not initiate, leaving me with the command prompt. Adding and deleting various arguments to the xvesa command does not help. Posted by cbagger01 on Nov. 30 2004,23:24
No.Do not add "-listmodes" to the .xserverrc file. Instead, boot into text mode and on a command line, type: sudo -u dsl Xvesa -listmodes | more and you should get a list of supported video modes. Posted by ke4nt1 on Dec. 01 2004,00:04
I have a toshiba 110CS, p100 laptop with a similar situation.I can ONLY get 4 mode color out of it, so no icons or backgrounds. Many applications will not run at all, requiring at least 8 mode color. MC will run, as well at the shells... thats about it.. Both Xfbdev or Xvesa optons do not seem to help.. Perhaps that is the same trouble you are having with your Dell*.. But according to my specs, I *should* get at least 800x600x256. The video chipset .... VIDEO Video Memory: 4Mbit standard DRAM(5V) 1 MB 1 MB Speed (fast-page mode supported) 60ns 60ns Controller Chip C&T CT65548 C&T CT65548 Bus Type Vesa Local Bus Vesa Local Bus Graphics Accelerator BitBLT support BitBLT support Color Palette 262,144 colors 262,144 colors Internal Resolution 800 x 600 x 256 colors 800 x 600 x 64K colors Smaller Image 640 x 480 x 256 colors 640 x 480 x 64K colors Virtual Display Mode 1024 x 768 x 256 colors 1024 x 768 x 64K colors External Resolution1 Colors/Palette Colors/Palette 640 x 480 16.7M colors/16.7M colors 16.7M colors/16.7M colors 800x600 64K colors/64K colors 64K colors/64K colors 1024 x 768 256 colors/256 256 colors/256 Refresh Rate(Vert./Hor.)2 75Hz/60Hz 75Hz/60Hz Any thoughts? 73 ke4nt Posted by caulktel on Dec. 01 2004,00:58
Kent,My laptop uses the C&T 65554 chip and it will do 800X600 with 2 meg ram at 24 bit color, you would think that yours would at least do 256 colors. There may be enough differance between the two though. DSL has always worked well with mine so maybe it's a driver issue with yours, although I thought that there was only one C&T driver. Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 01 2004,03:12
ke4nt,You could try compiling the Xchips Tiny-X server, which similar to xvesa and xfbdev but for the chips & tech video boards. Or you could try out this guy's precompiled binary: < http://www.jonsharp.net/files/Xchips > and see if it works any better. Posted by feledar on Dec. 08 2004,19:09
In a further attempt to find a solution to my problem, I tried booting with low colour depth (4 and 8). This gave simliar problems as before with errors on boot-up as:"megaraid: no BIOS enabled WD700C.0 Failed initialization of WD-700.0 SCSI card line 706: xf86cfg: command not found" Upon shut-down I get: "Could not initialize any graphics driver. Tried the following drivers. x: no supported color depth found." The appearance of the screen is like before. When trying xvesa with the -listmodes arguments from the command prompt with sudo, as recommended by cbagger1, I get an error along the lines of "no password". Any ideas? Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 09 2004,02:34
OK, try it again without the "sudo -u dsl" part.
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