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Re: Personal Workstation 500au problem with a cirrus board



On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 10:10:01AM +0100, Xavier Grave wrote:
> 
> I'm quite new to linux alpha (but not to x86 and ppc) and I've just get a 
> hand on a Personal Workstation 500au. I have problem with the configuration 
> of my board.
> 
> I have download and compiled the last Xfree86 CVS tree.
> With this x-server I'm able to run with a 800x600 mode in 8 bits depth color.
> 
> If I try to specify another mode I have a no screen found error.
> All of this is very confusing because if I have a look at the pci id
> of the board I get a 5430 ID chif but If I have a look at the
> hardware I can see a cirrus chip ID of 5440. And if I do a XFree86
> -configure I have the following description : BoardName "GD 5430/40
> [Alpine]"
> 
> Does anybody already run one of those boards under X11 ?

This is most likely one of the so-called TGA2 boards that DEC
manufactured.  It had a low-end Cirrus VGA chipset on it to provide
text mode console support only, ie the Cirrus was NOT intended to run
graphics, and has only a small amount of memory (512K?).

Look on the adapter's endplate for the model number, probably
something like PBXGB-AA (aka Powerstorm 3D30, 8-plane 2MB mem) or
PBXGB-CA (aka Popwerstorm 4D20, 24-plane 16MB mem). You MUST run the
TGA server from XFree86 on these boards.

Running X requires an appropriate "BusID" line the the Device Section
of the XF86Config file; using "lspci" to get the info, eg (something like)

	00:0b.0 DISPLAY controller: DEC TGA2

put the following in the XF86Config file:

	BusID	"PCI:0:11:0"	/* note the hex-to-decimal conversion */

Good luck.

 --Jay++

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jay A Estabrook                            HPTC - LINUX support
Hewlett-Packard Company - MRO1-2/K15       (508) 467-2080
200 Forest Street, Marlboro MA 01752       Jay.Estabrook@hp.com
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