help with fb, please

[andrej hocevar <ah@siol.net>]

Hello,
recently I've switched to framebuffers in order to get good results
with my new Sony lcd monitor -- and almost everything is fine! I'm
using the vesa framebuffer with an ati all-in-wonder card. 
And here is the first problem: when booting a kernel with aty128fb,
I get a blank screen -- but no messages of inactivity from the
monitor. I can even wait until the boot process finishes and blindly
login to safely reboot. So I switched to vesa.

And here lies the more important problem: since it doesn't support
mode switching (on the fly), how can I use dvifb? It forces me to
boot in 256-colors mode, which is not good for use with fbi. 
I can, with limitations, use dvisvga and zgv, but with the rage
driver selected. If I select fbdev, nothing happens.

How do I solve this? I want to be able to use the console for
previewing .dvi's as well as as for viewing other images.
Ideas?

Thank you,

andrej


The outputs follow:

dvisvga:
----------------------------------
This is some kind of a DVIewer, V01.03
(C)opyright 1995 Thomas Moor

svgalib 1.4.3
warning: cant read startupfile /etc/dvisvga

reading startupfile /root/.dvisvga
initializing kpathsea, new style: ok

warning: display: mode not supported on this machine. Now try
-d640x480.
  Check your svgalib configuration.

  warning: display: mode -d640x480 not supported at 256 colors. Now
  try at
    16 colors. This will reduce display quality and speed. Check
    your
      svgalib configuration.


      warning: display: mode -d640x480 not even supported at 16
      colors.

      fatal error: display: Sorry.
-------------------------------------

And here zgv:
------------------------------
Vesafb does not support changing the video mode
svgalib: Signal 11: Segmentation fault received.
Segmentation fault
-------------------------------

This is dvifb:
-------------------------------
This is some kind of a DVIewer, V01.03
(C)opyright 1995 Thomas Moor

writefb: open: f(/dev/fb0)(VESA VGA)
fatal error: writefb: pseudocolor, packed-pixels, 8bpp required
     ... try fbset utility?

     writefb: restore console: f
---------------------------

-- 
echo ${girl_name} > /etc/dumpdates


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