On Thu, 28 Nov 2002, Mike Wangu wrote: >This may be slightly off topic for this forum, but I >am hoping someone amy be able to lend a hand. > >I am currently building an LTSP environment to replace >MS Windows for a charity organisation. They have had >some old equipment donated to them for use in a >community oriented training scheme they are putting >together. It is important to emphasise that the budget >for this implementation is nil, so I have to do what I >can with what is there - upgrade is not an option! [SNIP] >The problem here is the monitor (mainly). Under >Windows 98 (the original OS), the max monitor >resolution appears to be 640x480 16bit. > >I have had to set this ltsp client up with XF86_VGA16 as >XF86_S3, XF86_S3V and XF86_SVGA (version 3.3.6) nor XFree86 >(version 4.2.0) would drive the monitor properly - I tried >numerous modelines using >http://www.dkfz-heidelberg.de/spec/linux/modeline/ as I do not >have the monitor documentation (requested from vendor 2 weeks >ago, still no luck). XF86_VGA16 should be totally unnecessary. That is an XFree86 3.3.6 X server, and unneeded. XFree86 4.x has a "vga" driver which provides standard VGA legacy video support. Users should first attempt to use the "vesa" driver if possible however. Note that VGA, by definition is limited to 320x200@256 colors and 640x480@16 colors. That's *16* colors, and not 16bit color (which is 65536 colors). If you want 16 bit color, that is not possible with VGA. >The problem is that the graphics appear VERY grainy (including >the standard RH8.0 background). Well yeah.. VGA is only 16 colors. You can count them on your fingers and toes and have toes to spare. ;o) Any graphics are going to look pretty much like crap in 16 color VGA. ;o) >Does anyone have any suggestion as to how I could possibly >improve this? I am thinking that if Windows can display clearly >on this monitor, then (hopefully) Linux should be able to as >well. Yes, definitely ditch XFree86 3.3.6. There is really no useful need for it anymore. Any video hardware out there should run with XFree86 4.2.0 either with a native driver for the card, or by using the "vesa" driver, "fbdev" or with the "vga" driver as a last resort. In the case of S3 hardware, it is much advised to use the "vesa" driver as the native drivers aren't working to well, and are unlikely to ever get much maintenance. I dropped 3.3.6 in RHL 8.0 because it was a huge maintenance problem and caused a lot of user confusion and distribution integration confusion, as well as major problem whenever secuirty issues were found - since nobody upstream is interested in 3.3.6 anymore. I've not received any bug reports or problem reports really from users yet after making this decision, so I assume that all hardware either works well out of the box, or that users are able to get things up and running successfully with "vesa" or "vga" or even "fbdev" drivers. I encourage users to submit via bugzilla any information needed to get a given card to work in 4.x, so I can change the defaults in future releases and erratum. Hope this helps. Take care, TTYL -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer XFree86 maintainer Red Hat Inc. _______________________________________________ xfree86-list mailing list xfree86-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/xfree86-list IRC: #xfree86 on irc.redhat.com
