RH7.2 does not like the on-board video on dell gx270
 

i was not able to get the on-board video card to work on RH7.2 on Dell GX270. if someone has been successful, please advise. thank you.

Bonnie78 - I owe you a virtual beer!

Many thanks - I just downgraded my BIOS as you suggested and my screen works sensibly again with Mandrake 9.2. You're a star!

A03 version of BIOS on Dell GX270 does not work on SuSE 9.0, but A01 works.

Cheers Bonnie78

I have a Dell GX270 and RedHat 9.0 I downgraded today to A01 but I still have problems. I can get 1280x1024 but only with color depth to 256. Whenever I try higher color depths, even if I reduce the resolution it either doesn't start X or it starts it all wrong. Any ideas?

I assume, you did'n't set the Video Memory to 8MB in the BIOS, did you?
When set to 1MB, it won't even work with a02 or a01 in higher Video modes.

The whole thing is that a03 still has this Video Memory option, but changing to 8MB does not change anything, thus my tip to downgrade to (a01) a02.

blitaer wondered, if 8MB is the highest limit for the GX270.
well, the XFree4.3 driver can use much more memory, when one specifies the "VideoRam" Option in XF86Config(-4), maybe to 32768. This is also the default value used by the XFree driver, when 3D (dri) is turned on - when dri turned off, 8MB is default.
(unless you set more with the "VideoRam" keyword above..)
so, video modes like 1600x1200 @ 24bit should all be possible...

I heard rumours, X4.4's i810 driver should workaround all those BIOS problem (at least some of them), as there are many mobo's and laptops with i845/855/865 out there, that don't offer the option to change the video (vesa) memory reserved by the bios (which is in 892k in most cases)

RH7.2 does not like the on-board video on dell gx270
 

what is your advise on RH7.2 with the Dell GX270 as far as the video and ethernet? it drive on intel site does not work both the RPM and the tar ball. any insights will be greatly appreciated. thanks in advance. oh yeah, thanks for the tibdit about the memory for higher resolution on RH9.

64 Mb in Dell GX270, but ugly video
 

Hi; I'm a real newbie. :newbie:

I've just tried RH9 on a GX270 with 64 Mb on the 865 board.
redhat-config-xfree86 only reports 16 Mbyte... any ideas why?
This possibility suggested the basis for the crappy low res X video.

I tried the downgrade to A02 - this doesn't seem to have fixed anything. So I restored the A03 BIOS - now 64 Mbyte is an option for the video card settings. But there is no change to the resolution/appearance after restarting X.

RIght now, I'm running 1600x1200 with ~100 dpi and 64 Mb with the i810 driver. The screen is filled, but it appears to be running in a low res mode. I can easily see the bits in the letters.

Looking over /var/log/XFree86.0.log, I find near the bottom of the file:

(II) I810(0): Not using mode "1600x1200" (no mode of this name)
(II) I810(0): Not using mode "1400x1050" (no mode of this name)
(II) I810(0): Not using mode "1280x1024" (no mode of this name)
(II) I810(0): Not using mode "1280x960" (no mode of this name)
(II) I810(0): Not using mode "1152x864" (no mode of this name)
(II) I810(0): Not using mode "1024x768" (no mode of this name)
(II) I810(0): Not using mode "800x600" (no mode of this name)
(II) I810(0): Increasing the scanline pitch to allow tiling mode (640 ->1024).
(--) I810(0): Virtual size is 640x480 (pitch 1024)
(**) I810(0): *Built-in mode "640x480"
(II) I810(0): Attempting to use 73Hz refresh for mode "640x480" (41)
(**) I810(0): Display dimensions: (360, 290) mm
(**) I810(0): DPI set to (45, 42)

I get these error messages with either the A02 or A03 BIOS.
It looks like the video problem may be due to a default video choice, perhaps resulting from nonregnition of the selected display mode. It looks like one of the drivers may not be recognizing the BIOS return call for the display. How do we find out what the BIOS is returning?

I hope this is all not too confusing - I'm a bit baffled and hoping someone solves this problem.

symbiont, I doubt that there's a chance to get video working with RH7.2. Well, in general, I'm not familiar with RH - I'm a long time debian user. RH did some patch work, to get the i845/855/865 working with their xfree 4.2 packages, but - IMHO - this started with RH8 or later... maybe there are unofficial Xfree4.3 rpm's out for RH7.2, but I don't know.

e1000: either check latest errrata kernels for RH7.2, maybe they contain drivers for the e1000. Or just start with a new kernel from kernel.org; another possibilty would be trying to compile the e1000 driver packages - available on intel's website - against your RH7.2 kernel headers...

hairydan, would it be possible to make your whole xfree.0.log available somewhere on the web?
I doubt, you can achieve anything with bios a03...

bonnie78, you're going to get virtually drunk with all our beers! Thanks a lot, I did have the video memory in the BIOS to 1M, changed it to 8M and voilá, everything works.

hehe - I'll better stay with real bavarian beer...

bonnie78, you can access the entire XFree86 log at http://storage.pace.edu/DStrahs/XFree86.0.log. If you spot something weird, please clue me in - I'm quite unfamiliar with XFree86, as I've only been using Linux since July - although I have nearly 2 decades with other UNIX flavors.

Interestingly, the indv'l who wrote the XFree86 man pages for RH9 also seems quite uncertain of what function various requred files have.

It's funny you say that the the A03 BIOS won't work...Right now, I'm using the A03 BIOS with 8 Mb (the BIOS maximum) dedicated to the video. With the A02 BIOS, I can only use 1 Mb; when I tried 8 Mb, the system froze and XFree86 never even got a chance to boot.
of course, A02 @ 1 Mb or A03 @ 8 Mb look the same - I still get a crappy 640x480 video screen.

I wish I understood what costasm was saying when he upgraded the memory to 16 Mb - is he talking about XFree86, or the total RAM memory of his system, or something else...

(II) I810(0): detected 892 kB stolen memory.
(II) I810(0): I830CheckAvailableMemory: 441340 kB available
(II) I810(0): Will attempt to tell the BIOS that there is 12288 kB VideoRAM
(WW) I810(0): Extended BIOS function 0x5f11 not supported.
(II) I810(0): BIOS view of memory size can't be changed (this is not an error).
(--) I810(0): Pre-allocated VideoRAM: 892 kByte

that's the crucial part here. The driver can only use 892 kB to set up video modes...
well, that's the typical a03 problem: remember a03@1MB== a03@8MB = 1MB
with a01(a02)@8 MB one would find a log entry similar to ' detected 8060 kB stolen memory'

thus, you really need to go back to a02@8MB. We just need a way not to freeze your system. A good starting point would be disbling DRI in your XF86Config.

btw, costasm meant ' inserting a cheap video card with 16 MB', maybe like a matrox or a ati r128...

oops, sorry hairydan. I've overlooked the point, that your system crashes with a02 somewhere before X11. Could you provide some details about where your box crashes?

I have a similar problem to the one discussed in this thread. I have two Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic W600 with an onboard i865 graphics card. I am running Debian / unstable with XFree86 4.3 from the experimental section. On one computer, everything works more or less, although my X-Server sometimes logs me out in an unmotivated fashion. I copied the installation to the second computer by booting Knoppix and doing an rsync -ax ...... with the filesystem of the first computer. On the second computer, everything works except X. I have posted my XF86Config-4 and the two XFree86 logs under:

http://tell.physnet.uni-hamburg.de/XF86Config-4.txt
http://tell.physnet.uni-hamburg.de/X...og.working.txt
http://tell.physnet.uni-hamburg.de/X...og.failure.txt

Hope anybody can explain this strange behaviour...

BTW: I am running a custom kernel 2.4.23 with freeswan patches. The agpgart module is loaded, the i810 module is not. Loading the i810 module doesn't make things any better ... I am trying to run 1280 x 1024 @ 32bpp on a Fujitsu-Siemens 17 inch TFT panel...