On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Dondalah wrote: >> Would be nice to see the VGA driver use more memory. >> There are lots of programs that use more than 800x600 >> screen size. Therefore we need a larger virtual screen >> than what the VGA driver gives us with 4 bit depth. >> We have lots of memory that isn't being used, both >> on our video card and and in our motherboard RAM. >> Even with 8 bit depth, we can use a larger virtual >> screen than what the driver gives us. On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 08:04:01 -0700 (MST), Marc Aurele La France wrote: > The VGA standard, if it can be called that, simply > doesn't support this. You should instead use the > vesa driver (if your video BIOS supports it), or, > preferably, a driver more specific to your adapter. FYI, my video card is a SiS 6215C with 8 MB of onboard memory. Version 4.03.00.2118 SiS Corp. 1997. xfree86 doesn't have a driver for this card, and the generic sis driver doesn't initialize it. In the past I used the SF86_SVGA driver, but that isn't available in xfree86 any more. The policy at SiS Corp. is not to talk to end users. Therefore it is up to xfree86 to talk directly to SiS on behalf of your end users. They have a Linux FAQ on the SiS web site, but the 6215C card is not mentioned in their FAQ. Since Microsoft had drivers for the 6215C back in 1997, it should be possible for the Linux community to get the necessary information for those drivers 8 years later. On Microsoft Windows, these are the drivers for the SiS 6215C card: D:\windows\system\sis6215c.drv D:\windows\system\sismini.vxd D:\windows\system\sissh215.dll D:\windows\system\sissheet.hlp D:\windows\system\ddsis32.dll D:\windows\system\ddsis.dll The bus is PCI standard host CPU bridge. D:\windows\system\pci.vxd Microsoft version 4.00.950, 1988-1995. The BIOS on Microsoft Windows is: D:\windows\system\VMM32\bios.vxd I hope that gives you enough background to understand my concerns for xfree86. What are my options? Vesa runs okay in 640x480, but there isn't any virtual screen. Why doesn't the memory for the virtual screen come from RAM? It seems that the xfree86 drivers are basing their virtual screen size on the video card memory and not on the motherboard RAM. As a user, I don't see how we are compromising the VGA standard by asking for a large virtual screen at any depth. xfree86 should have a "look and feel" standard that goes across all drivers and video cards. That would make the user community very happy. Cheers, dondalah@xxxxxxxxx _______________________________________________ XFree86 mailing list XFree86@xxxxxxxxxxx http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xfree86
