Re: Trident Video Card on X
On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Alexander Gieg wrote:
> I've an old Trident 8900D SVGA Video Card, which works
> well with X Windows, svgalib and SVGATextMode.
> Problem #1:
> -----------
> The problem is that this card works only with 8 bpp in X.
> The file /usr/doc/X11/README.trident say that the model
> 8900D can work with 16 bpp, sometimes with the lines
> Option "linear"
> and
> DefaultColorDeep 16
> (or something like those, I don't remember now) in the
> proper locations. When I try on of that, or both, there
> are error messages about my chipset don't supporting
> the 16 bpp mode. In Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 I can
> use 16 bpp.
Is your card an ISA card? How much system memory do you have?
If it is an ISA card and you have 16MB or more of system memory,
then you can't get to 16bpp because an ISA bus can only address 16MB of
memory at one time, and XFree86 currently requires linear addressing with
that chipset.
I'm no expert in this field, but I've experienced much pain in
trying to get higher than 8bpp with XFree86 myself. I purchased a Cirrus
Logic based ISA card with 2MB of DRAM. I have 24MB of system RAM. This
chipset also requires linear addressing. So I couldn't get to > 8bpp
either. But, using the bundled Windows drivers, I was able to exploit the
full potential of this card (24bpp at 800x600 I believe) from Windows.
Kind of annoying, really.
You can always try out the commerical X servers (MetroX is one ...
I recently read somewhere that it's being included on InfoMagic's LDR,
which is only $50!!). What I'm gonna do is give my system a major
overhaul ... I'm gonna yank out the motherboard and stick in a Pentium one
with PCI slots (ISA video sucks anyways). There's no linear addressing
problem with PCI cards, I believe.
==============================================================================
Arcadio Alivio Sincero, Jr.
Undergraduate Computer Science Major/Linux Enthusiast/Competitive Bodybuilder
email: S566@aacci.aacc.cc.md.us
WWW: Not available yet -- still looking for free webspace!
"Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward from the floor,
especially in the dark."
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