Re: Set widescreen resolution in console
On Wed, 09 Oct 2013 21:16:11 -0400 (EDT), Antonio Paiva wrote:
>
> I have recently acquired an old Sony Vaio PCG-C1VN (aka, a "PictureBook")
> and installed Debian wheezy. The problem is that I can only get the
> *console* to run at 640x480 resolution.
>
> The C1VN has a (very wide) native resolution of 1024x480, but using only
> 640x480 is a serious waste of screen real estate. It works fine in X but,
> the for uses I have in mind (playing some music and reading/writing text),
> all I need works on the console. Moreover, using X slows down the machine
> enough to have a noticeable drag (not unbearable, not very annoying). (Bear
> in mind all this has is a Transmeta Crusoe @600MHz ~= Pentium II @400Mhz,
> and 112MB of RAM.) I'm using kernel modesetting (KMS) with the radeon
> kernel module (graphics card is an ATI Rage Mobility / Mach64). I tried
> setting the mode in GRUB via the GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX option, creating my
> own framebuffer mode, but either made no difference or I ended up with an
> even smaller resolution?!
>
> If you have any ideas or pointers to potential solutions, I would greatly
> appreciate the help. Thank you.
>
> Best regards,
> Antonio
What driver is used in X? The MACH64 driver in X is a non-KMS-based driver.
(/var/log/Xorg.0.log should tell you what driver is being used.) There will
be a whole bunch of lines which start with that driver name. For example:
MACH64(0): VESA BIOS DETECTED
If you are using a non-KMS-based X driver, then your console should be
running in a hardware text mode, the default for which is 80 columns by
25 rows. (That's 640 pixels by 400 pixels with a character cell of 16 pixels
high by 8 pixels wide.) This can be changed by the VGA option. See my LILO
web page for more information about the VGA option
http://users.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/lilo.htm
When using the VGA option with grub2, you have to use the linux16 and initrd16
commands instead of linux and initrd, as described in this web page:
https://wiki.debian.org/GrubTransition
At least, that's what I've been told. I myself don't use grub2, I use lilo.
--
.''`. Stephen Powell
: :' :
`. `'`
`-
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