Re: Thinkpad 770ED, Debian Sarge, new XFree 4.2.1

[Darin Strait <darin_strait@yahoo.com>]

> Is your kernel framebuffer-enabled? (when you boot do you see a little
> penguin in the top left corner?)
There is no penguin. I should be running a stock kernel. I've fiddled
with compiling kernels, but I've never actually taken the last step and 
installed one. I'm new.

> Mind you will want to get them all at the same time, and you can't use
> the menu-based helpers for this;  you'll be sitting there in 
> /var/cache/apt/archives messing with dpkg -i.
Ick. Let's put that idea aside for a while.
> [xserver-common]
Yes, I had noticed the speling problem.

> curious you're not seeing the same menus Jeremy is;  try reconfiguring 
> debconf itself, to show you the questions every time instead of hide the
> ones you answered already.
OK, I've reconfigured debconf and I will xserver-xfree86 a shot after
undocking. 

I've got the laptop docked right now, and I'm using my ancient 3dfx PCI
card instead of the built-in trident card. The 3dfx card seems happy
using it's old, unmodified 4.1 XF86Config-4 file. I don't dock much when
running linux and I've never bothered to fully debugg this
configuration, so the mouse is skips around sometimes and I need to pick
a different video mode since 1280x1024x32 is flickery at 60Hz. It would
also be keen if I could use one XF86Config file for docked and undocked
operations. That's for another day.

One quick aside: How does X figure out which refresh rate to use? I see
where I specify a range of refresh rates for the monitor. Does X lok at
the range that I give for the monitor, then figure out what the highest
refresh inside of that range is and use that?

> Do you still have a copy of the XF86COnfig file from before the upgrade
> got to it?  Maybe it says how much vidram you really do have.
I still have the old XF86Config file. I don't see any mention of "RAM"
or "memory" in it. If you tell me what section or option to look for, I
will spelunk some some. Windows 2000 insists the card has 4 MB.

Another observation is that the color insanity is the worst in 24 bit,
is slightly less insane in 16 bit and 8 bit seems almost OK (or maybe
that's just the way 8 bit looks, I haven't run such a system for a very
long time.)

thanks,
-d