Re: Xorg 7 fixed on alpha
On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 09:33:38AM -0600, Bob Tracy wrote:
> Michael Cree wrote:
> > I've finally got around to trying it out. A PWS600AU with its
> > original DEC supplied video card that uses the tga2 driver.
> > (...)
> > 1) Are there known issues with the tga2 driver/cards and xorg 7.1 ?
>
> None seen here. I've got a 433au that only recently saw its tga2
> replaced with a Radeon 7500, and Xorg 7.1 was key to making that
> happen after more than half a year of Xorg-7.X+ati being broken.
> You may safely assume I made sure everything was working correctly
> with my old tga2 standby before I spent more time beating my head
> against the wall with the Radeon :-).
Hi, Bob,
Glad you finally got your Radeon going.
And thanks for filling me in re: the existence of the TGA driver in
Xorg 7.x; I made a bad assumption just because I'd not seen an RPM for
it... ;-}
> As far as tga2 setup in the xorg.conf file, my card "Device" section
> looked like this:
>
> Section "Device"
> Identifier "Digital PBXGB-AA"
> Driver "tga"
> BusID "PCI:0:12:0"
> EndSection
>
> Specifying the BusID was absolutely necessary, and make sure you use
> the correct value for your particular setup.
Remember, the values in the BusID are in decimal, and what you get
from /sbin/lspci are in hexadecimal.
> Other "gotchas" I seem
> to remember:
>
> (1) Make sure the rotary switch on the tga2 is set to the video mode
> you intend to run.
Really? This makes a difference with Xorg? Or with TGA2?
I only remember it being needed with the original TGA, since that was
done as a framebuffer, and the SRM consoles' FB driver wanted some
idea as to resolution/refresh rate to use, since the prevalent
monitors in those days were fixed rates (not like today's
multi-syncs).
TGA2 has a VGA on it (Cirrus CL-GD5429 or similar, for text-mode
console), and I believe SRM console always runs the BIOS for it, so
that it comes up 720x400 at 70Hz, regardless of how the switch is set
on the card (verified on both DS10 and LX164 with the latest SRM
console versions for the respective platform).
It's possible that the Xserver under Tru64 would/could utilize the
switch to set its resolution/refresh, but I don't think XFree86/Xorg
TGA support has ever had that capbility.
Identify the 8-plane cards thusly:
1. original TGA has large DEC chip and large BT485 RAMDAC, DIP switch
2. TGA2 has large silver IBM chip, BT485 RAMDAC, and Cirrus CL-GD5429, rotary switch
Identify the 24-plane cards thusly:
1. original TGA has large DEC chip and large BT463 RAMDAC, DIP switch
2. TGA2 has large silver IBM chip, huge IBM RAMDAC, and Cirrus CL-GD5429, rotary switch
> (3) You've only got 8 bits of depth at 1024x768, so how well
> applications share colors becomes a serious issue. For me, Gnome
> worked well, but KDE was ugly as sin.
I've heard of folks able to use 1600x1200 at 8 bits (though at 60Hz),
since there's 2MB of video memory on an 8-plane card (TGA or TGA2);
I've always been able to use 1280x1024 without problems, although,
as you say, it does depend on the capabilities of the monitor.
--Jay++
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Jay A Estabrook HPTC - XC I & B
Hewlett-Packard Company - ZKO1-3/D-B.8 (603) 884-0301
110 Spit Brook Road, Nashua NH 03062 Jay.Estabrook@hp.com
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