Matrox Framebuffer (was: Lost lilo.conf vga setting on 2.6 upgrade)

[Bill Moseley <moseley@hank.org>]

Ok, the reason I didn't have my nice small fonts was simply that I
didn't enable framebuffer console support.

Since I have a Matrox G550 Dual-Head card I decided to try the Matrox fb
(Matrox Acceleration) instead of the vesafb.

That works fine for console mode (although I'm not sure what dual-head
features are available for console mode), but when I start the xwindow
system my secondary monitor reports "OUT OF RANGE" and doesn't display
anything.  Unfortunately, my monitor won't report what specifically is
out of range.

In XF86Config-4 file I can change the monitor's settings from:

    HorizSync       30-107
    VertRefresh     50-85

down to VertRefresh 50-80 and the secondary monitor will show, but the
monitor says it's running at H:60kHz/V:60Hz -- which flickers for my
eyes.

But if I boot a kernel with vesafb (instead of matroxfb) and use the
original 50-85 setting the secondary monitor reports H:85kHz/V:85Hz,
which is perfect.

So, I'm not clear why using matroxfb makes a difference.  I'm using the
mga driver in my XF86Config-4 file.  Why would using the matroxfb setup
drive my secondary monitor out of range -- even though the settings in
XF86Config-4 are within range?  Perhaps my HorizSync setting is too
high.

BTW -- I went back to vesafb for now, but I'm curious what cool features
I might be missing not using the matroxfb...  Probably not much since I
spend most time in X.




-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley@hank.org