Thinkpad 765L

Forum: Laptops
Topic: Thinkpad 765L
started by: scifiguy84

Posted by scifiguy84 on Nov. 03 2004,05:48

i got a ibm thinkpad 765l laptop off of ebay w/ a orinoco silver wireless pcmia card with the intents to have a cheap laptop runnind dsl-i used it on my desktop and thought it would be cool-but the display adaptor won't work-i've tried framebuffer and such. I'm a linux newbie but i have some experience w/ some of the more common distros and basic commands-anyone have any idees-my laptophas a pentium 166mmx with 80mb of ram and a 6gb hd-so dsl will run nice if i can ever figure this out-any assistance would be appreciated

Posted by scifiguy84 on Nov. 03 2004,05:59

the system loads but x is having trouble-all i get is a small grean,blue,and yellow melty box - the screen is 1024x768 with 16bit color max-gain i tried the framebuffer but i got the same result no matter what

Posted by ke4nt1 on Nov. 03 2004,08:55

My IBM 770 has a similar video card to yours....
Your Trident Cyber 9385 vs my Trident Cyber 9397 ..

I need to use "dsl vga=normal" when starting my laptop,
but then the usual 1024x768 XVesa choices perform beautifully on mine.
I DO NOT use the framebuffer or XFbdev options..

let us know...

73
ke4nt

Posted by scifiguy84 on Nov. 03 2004,18:01

nope still not working-i tried 1024x768 at 16bit color w/o choosing my dpi-and still the same mushy little picture-and i did use xvesa w/o framebuffering.-i'm not sure if this is some other type of issue somewhere because i get roughly the same result no matter what the sidplay option is-still mushy but it changes-i know the display works becuase it has windoze 98 and i somehow got knoppix to barely run so xfree at least works-anybody know how to get xfree on dsl or have any ideas concerning anohter small distro w/ xfree?

Posted by ke4nt1 on Nov. 03 2004,18:58

That's surprising.. Hmmm...
Did your text roll off the bottom of the screen during bootup?

Do this..
Instead of using "dsl vga=normal" to bootup DSL,
Use "dsl 2 norestore" to get to a root shell prompt.
The run "Xvesa -listmodes"
Post up the output to this thread..

73
ke4nt

Posted by scifiguy84 on Nov. 03 2004,21:15

ok this is the output for Xvesa -listmodes

VBE version 1.2 (Cppyriight 1994 TRIDENT MICROSYSTEMS INC.)
DAC is switchable, controller is VGA compatible
Total memory: 2048 kilobytes
0x0006: 640x200x1 (monochrome) planar (1 planes)
0x000D: 320x200x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x000E: 640x200x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x0010: 640x350x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x0011: 640x480x1 (monochrome) Planar (1 planes)
0x0012: 640x480x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x0013: 320x200x8 PseudoColor
0x0116: 1024x768x15 TrueColor [5:5:5:11] (no linear framebuffer)
0x0117: 1024x768x16 TrueColor [5:6:5:0] (no linear framebuffer)
0x0113: 800x600x15 TrueColor [5:5:5:1} (no linear framebuffer)
0x0114: 800x600x16 TrueColor [5:6:5:0] (no linear framebuffer)
0x0110: 640x480x15 TrueColor [5:5:5:1] (no linear framebuffer)
0x0111: 640x480x16 TrueColor [5:6:5:0] (no linear framebuffer)
0x0105: 1024x768x8 PseudoColor (no linear framebuffer)
0x0100: 640x400x8 PseudoColor (no linear framebuffer)
0x0101: 640x480x8 PseudoColor (no linear framebuffer)
0x0103: 800x600x8 PseudoColor (no linear framebuffer)
0x0104: 1024x768x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x0102: 800x600x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x006A: 800x600x4 planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)

Posted by ke4nt1 on Nov. 03 2004,21:32

It certainly looks like 1024x768x16 is your best choice ..

And it seems to support it thru Xvesa .. ( no framebuffer )

Did adding the line "dsl vga=normal" at the boot: prompt
make ANY difference in how it looked or behaved?

It should bootup into 1024x768x16 by default .
You shouldn't have to touch a thing or run thru "xsetup.sh"

This is a version of DSL 0.8.2 or later, right?
Since you were mentioning framebuffer, I'm assuming your
booting off a liveCD, not another type of HDinstall, right?

73
ke4nt

Posted by scifiguy84 on Nov. 03 2004,21:44

yes this is dsl 0.8.3, and by default w/o vga=normal it says its booting into 1024x768x32 and i've booted it off of the cd and even copied the cd image to my hd and run it from there.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Nov. 03 2004,21:52

yepper.... my bad..
1024x768x32 IS the default.. oops..
That won't work....

I'll look into more notes here and online ...

and it looks like you've already tried to include the xsetup at boot
" dsl vga=normal xsetup "
and hand picked your choices...
or
"fb1024x768" - then selecting xfbdev at xsetup ?
( no dsl at boottime - ONLY "fb1024x768" )

Any luck at 800x600 - just to establish a baseline for
Xvesa vs Xfbdev ?

Perhaps we can start there, and work UP ..

73
ke4nt

Posted by gatekeeper on Nov. 07 2004,15:43

I have a IBM thinkpad 560 that I get a good display but around the outside edge of the screen there is about 1" of space that is not used and is just black. I tried going to xvesa - listmodes and it did not take the command at all.
I'm running version 8.3 and there is no cd rom drive on this laptop. what do you think I need to do to get the display to fill the screen properly? Thanks

Posted by twoflatfish on Dec. 05 2004,01:44

Quote (scifiguy84 @ Nov. 03 2004,13:01)

Try Knoppix lite GUI V 3.6. It is a bigger image and may have the driver that you need

< http://www.knoppix.net/ >