old laptop -- X problems -- need vga16 ?

Forum: X and Fluxbox
Topic: old laptop -- X problems -- need vga16 ?
started by: smedboy

Posted by smedboy on Aug. 12 2005,00:37

Hello,
I am trying desperately to get X up and running on my 486 laptop. The provided vesa driver worked, but garbled the display with vertical stripes so I couldn't see anything, but it looked like the mouse was moving behind the zebra stripes.

I tried installing XFree86.dsl and was able to use the custom vesa file provided to get the "vga" driver to run at 300x200 (i am guessing), but it is not very useful. The vesa server would not run.

The screen I have is 640x480, 16 color (4-bit), and it works well with XFree86 3.3.6 "vga16" driver on other linux OS'es. I have a working XF86Config file for this server.

My question: has anyone had success running DSL's X server on a 16 color, 640x480 screen? Please let me know how I might get it to run. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Matt Smed

Gateway 2000 Handbook
486 dx40
20 mb ram

Posted by adssse on Aug. 12 2005,04:50

Just out of curiosity, did you try using Xfbdev from the Xsetup?

Posted by smedboy on Aug. 13 2005,00:30

I tried Xfbdev, but I received an error "module fb0 not found" -- fbdev did not let me select a resolution either...

Posted by smedboy on Aug. 15 2005,23:02

Good news!
After installing dpkg-dsl from command line, I installed debian's "xerver-vga16" package, and my 16 color 640x480 works great. I configured without debconf, and there were no problems.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to run dillo in 640x480.

Thanks,

Matt

Posted by new.observer on Aug. 16 2005,01:20

There is a setup file in $HOME/.dillo/ find where the width and height are set. There are similar config files for the other apps.

In future releases of DSL, might be best to assume a 640x480 display and set the app configs accordingly? Maybe there was a good reason this wasn't done.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Aug. 16 2005,01:31

Did you bootup DSL using the fb640x480 bootcode, ( NOT "dsl fb640x480" )
then try to use the xfbdev xserver in the xsetup script ?

Just curious if it works or not ..

Also, is the XF86Config-4 file you are trying to use made for
Xfree86 .ver 3 or 4 ??

73
ke4nt

Posted by cbagger01 on Aug. 18 2005,16:42

Yes,

it is possible to change the settings for the applications to make them more 640x480 friendly.

See this post:

< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....xpacman >

I also agree that it would be nice to have these be rolled into the distro.