Powerbook G3 Pismo - resolution change problem

[Wojciech Owczarek <owczi@owczi.net>]

Hello everyone!

I'm not a Debian user (PLD Linux user actually), still I subscribed to this 
list as I found it quite valuable for helping with my various PPC on Linux 
issues. Now my problem (hopefully the last one ;] ) with the laptop I own 
from some time (my first ppc machine and I love it!) is what follows:

I'm running a 2.6.11 kernel, compiled from Debian package sources (nicely 
patched, I like it). I went through various problems with my laptop - like 
the one when I could not use an external monitor - I found a patch that saved 
me here on this list. 

This machine, as you probably know, is packed with an Ati Rage Mobility 128 
M3, so I'm using the aty128fb driver. Now somewhere at Gentoo I found a patch 
for X.Org sources that finally allowed me to use DRI on it.

I now have this last issue - I cannot use any other resolution on the LCD 
screen than 1024x768 (on an external CRT it's all fine). An attempt to change 
it to anything else makes my LCD shows some fading garbage. The machine is 
still responding, I can switch back to 1024x768 and work with no problems, 
yet I cannot use any other res, which quite sucks cause the computer isn't 
enough powerfull to allow me watch DVDs or play games smoothly on the max 
resolution.

I tried lots of X modelines, being aware that they have nothing to do with 
this problem, cause I still get garbage on the screen when switching the 
console to any other res with the kernel parameters of video=aty128fb:blah 
blah, nothing helped. 

I found a little clue somewhere that aty128fb's mclk parameter could be what 
I'm looking for (I tried lots of settings, still nothing) and I cannot risk 
the damage of my hdd by doing 100s hard reboots.

When browsing through aty128fb's sources I found some TODO notes and the 
resolution definitions for the hardware. Should I modify these myself? (I'm 
not a kernel programmer, but generally an aware person).

- Is it a permanently unsolved issue or there is some way to fix it?


Thanks in advance,

owczi



-- 
Wojciech 'owczi' Owczarek WO-111 RIPE
mailto: owczi\at\owczi\dot\net