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Topic: All the colors are off!, Incorrect color rendering with Xvesa

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cbagger01

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Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: July 28 2004,03:43

If you wanted the full Xfree86 system on your CD, you could remaster DSL using the how-to guides and apt-get the x window system. Then re-create the ISO and give it a burn.

Another option is on a system with GCC and XFree86 you could download the KDrive source code and compile it yourself.

I did this for XVesa a long time ago in a failed attempt to make my old 2-button Microsoft PS2 mouse work correctly with the built-in mouse driver. It took a bit of fooling around before I could get it to compile, but it is possible.

Normally when you 'make' kdrive you build all of the servers so if John still has his 'compilable' source code for the DSL Xvesa/xfbdev servers he should be able to whip up a copy of Xi810 without too much work. That's a big 'if', of course.

RobF

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Posts: 22
Joined: July 2004

Posted: July 28 2004,04:41

Compiling the Kdrive X servers from source isn't really an option for me. 1. I don't have a clue where I would find it. The Kdrive team appears to be an elusive entity. 2. I've compiled C source code under Linux only once or twice. It didn't go so well. I'm struggling to cope with a very steep learning curve with Linux, and that would be yet another thing I have to learn. I'll see if the compiled Xi810 can be obtained from John.

I will investigate the next option, i.e. to run DSL in Xfree86 X windows. There is actually a "small" Linux distro that uses Xfree86 and looks good on my system: mini-Knoppix (about 200 MB), a skinned down Knoppix 3.3. But I find the parsimony of DSL and Feather rather attractive, and these distros are being developed very actively.

Or I could throw in the towel and get myself a separate PCI video card. But I don't even know if I can disable the onboard Intel "Extreme Graphics", and who knows how many incompatibilities I may run into with a new video card with Windows XP and five different Linux installations. Right now, all of that runs without a hitch on that Intel i845 chipset.

Robert

RobF

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Posts: 22
Joined: July 2004

Posted: Aug. 01 2004,19:14

UPDATE

As to compiling the Xi810 for DSL, John Andrews from DSL tells me that he compiled the Kdrive Xi810 from source several times under DSL and never got it to work.

One interesting new development: Using Feather Linux, I did finally manage to find two (and only these two) video modes that work with my Intel i845 hardware using the framebuffer device. These are 800x600x8 (i.e. 256 colors) and 1024x768x8, and I can access them with Feather by booting into framebuffer with "knoppix vga=771" and "knoppix vga=773", respectively. The resolution is good, the text looks acceptable, and the colors are correct but images have a rather grainy appearance. I can use Xfbdev in Feather by selecting these modes but I still would like to find better graphics support.

But here comes the hitch: these modes don't work in DSL. In DSL, with "dsl vga=771" and "dsl vga=773", and then selecting Xfbdev, I get the proper high res X windows but a paucity of colors, again mostly dark blue and black, as I described before and as cbagger also experienced first hand. Feather and DSL both use the same X servers - does anyone have any idea what might account for this difference? One thing I noticed was that in Feather, in the .xserverrc file, the "-nolisten tcp" option that one finds with DSL is omitted.

It would be nice if I could get these two VGA modes to work in DSL too because then DSL would become usable for me. If I need to go further, the next step might be to replace the Kdrive servers with Xfree86 or Xorg but that would be a lot more involved.

Robert

roberts

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Posted: Aug. 01 2004,20:26

The "nolisten tcp" is so that you don't run with unnecessary open ports We prefer not to have any open ports than absoutely necessary. By removing that phrase from .xserverrc you have an open port. The open port is used to allow the distro to supprt remote X apps. This is something that is not normally used. Do you really need your tiny disto to support remote TCP/IP connections to its X server? One can always edit this .xserverrc if one truly needs such an environment.

RobF

Group: Members
Posts: 22
Joined: July 2004

Posted: Aug. 01 2004,22:08

I didn't say that the inclusion of the option "-nolisten tcp" in the .xserverrc file in DSL was the cause of DSL failing to work with the framebuffer modes VGA 771 & 773. I only mentioned this as the only difference in default X configuration that I had noticed between Feather and DSL. This difference may well be irrelevant in this connection but then what do I know about video framebuffers? Perhaps a framebuffer is considered a remote device and requires a remote tcp/ip connection to be set up properly.

The question still remains, in what way does DSL differ in its setup of X windows from Feather so that Feather can set up framebuffers for VGA 771 & 773 that function properly with the Intel i845 chipset and DSL cannot?

43 replies since July 17 2004,06:05

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