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

[star@starshine.org (Heather Stern)]

On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 03:59:43PM -0500, Darin Strait wrote:
> > 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.

That's perfectly fine;  I just wanted to know what kernel I'm dealing
with.  You get to be my eyes and hands :) 

> > 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. 

cool 

> 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 

Possibly wrong mouse type declared in the pointer section?  Hmm.
Perhaps a gpm-vs.-X problem, or a gpm-vs.X solution.

Since you're new I'll explain;  gpm invokes mouse services for console
mode, and is *supposed* to give over and not touch anything when you're
on the GUI.  In practice its good behavior varies;  but sometimes, the
only way to get a mouse to settle down in X is to load up gpm, telling 
gpm.conf to repeat mouse signals into /dev/gpmdata.  Then tell X to get
its mouse at /dev/gpmdata, and make its mousetype whatever gpm is
repeating as, and voila.  Good behavior.

Mostly bonking-head-on-the-wall for tech support on mice troubles,
unless you know this trick.

> 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.

You can have as many Monitor sections as you want.  There's options to 
declare one as internal and another as external, which works for many 
people to get that result.

The hsync/vrefresh may not matter to your LCD panel, but they'll matter
to a desktop monitor... unless, perhaps, it's an LCD monitor.
 
> 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?
 
There's a package called read-edid that will ask the ittybitty little
"plug and pray" brain inside a monitor what it likes best;  I think the
normal X servers try to use similar logic, but since it's a different 
code base, sometimes the results are different.

I suspect X usually uses the VESA declared modes, and if those aren't a
terribly good match it cannot tell, as long as the monitor doesn't give 
an out-of-range complaint.

It will drop modelines that fall out of your declared hsync and vrefresh
ranges, though.

> > 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.

Then the old defaults probably worked okay ... which might have been
2MB.  Hmmm.

> If you tell me what section or option to look for, I
> will spelunk some some. Windows 2000 insists the card has 4 MB.

Good.  Then you should be able to declare in the "Devices" section

	VideoRam	4096

In theory this is supposed to be autoprobed for, but on older systems
it speeds things up to say it explicitly, so I think it can't hurt.
 
> 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.)
 
If the crappy gradient are actually grades of nearby colors (e.g. couple
of blues, some cyans and grays interspersed, then greens) then yeah, 8
bit is probably being normal.  If they're spectral rainbows for such
nearby color efforts, no, probably not.

I wonder, perhaps you can learn from Windows what it using for monitor 
characteristics?  Not that I expect it to say, mind you - they're
notorious for calling this a "monitor driver" when it's justa few
numbers somewhere - but it can't hurt to look at Control Panels/ System/
System Devices/ Monitor/ Properties.  (may also be accessible from
Control Panel/Display hidden among things)

> thanks,
> -d

Crossing my fingers for you :)


* Heather Stern * star@ many places...
                * Starshine Technical Services -*- 800 938 4078