[9fans] vgadb woes
I've got a laptop that I (for shits and giggles) decided to put Plan 9 on. Lo and behold, it worked fine (Compal EL80, Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, nVidia video). So, I'm running at 1280x1024x32 right now in VESA, which is reasonable, but I'd like to run at my maximum native resolution, which is 1680x1050 (I believe). After tooling around with Xorg configs, I've found a horiz/vert refresh rate that should work for me... ...except that I have no idea how to convert that into vgadb lingo. I've read all the comments in vgadb, and the manpage, which helpfully suggests that I purchase a rather dated book. I suppose it's at least available, but in the interest of ``I want it now,'' are there any hints on translating eg. Option DPMS HorizSync 28-84 VertRefresh 43-60 into vgadb(6) lingo? Only other bit of potentially relevant information I have is that Xorg reports the monitor as having a ``330.0 MHz pixel clock''. Thanks, --dho
Re: [9fans] vgadb woes
I've got a laptop that I (for shits and giggles) decided to put Plan 9 on. Lo and behold, it worked fine (Compal EL80, Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, nVidia video). So, I'm running at 1280x1024x32 right now in VESA, which is reasonable, but I'd like to run at my maximum native resolution, which is 1680x1050 (I believe). After tooling around with Xorg configs, I've found a horiz/vert refresh rate that should work for me... ...except that I have no idea how to convert that into vgadb lingo. I've read all the comments in vgadb, and the manpage, which helpfully suggests that I purchase a rather dated book. I suppose it's at least available, but in the interest of ``I want it now,'' are there any hints on translating eg. Option DPMS HorizSync 28-84 VertRefresh 43-60 into vgadb(6) lingo? Only other bit of potentially relevant information I have is that Xorg reports the monitor as having a ``330.0 MHz pixel clock''. Thanks, --dho I got something working for me, so I wrote a wiki page: http://www.plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Adding_a_monitor_to_vgadb/index.html Hope that helps; I've tried something similar with a different monitor and managed to get a setup that causes the screen to jiggle and hurt my eyes, so your mileage may vary. John
Re: [9fans] vgadb woes
I've got a laptop that I (for shits and giggles) decided to put Plan 9 on. Lo and behold, it worked fine (Compal EL80, Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, nVidia video). So, I'm running at 1280x1024x32 right now in VESA, which is reasonable, but I'd like to run at my maximum native resolution, which is 1680x1050 (I believe). After tooling around with Xorg configs, I've found a horiz/vert refresh rate that should work for me... In some of the little I've played with such things, it has appeared that the VESA report of available modes does not always include resolutions that are out of the ordinary, and without that, I doubt the VESA driver will be able to put it into that mode. Not to discourage you, but just be aware that your issue might go deeper than vgadb. BLS
Re: [9fans] vgadb woes
In some of the little I've played with such things, it has appeared that the VESA report of available modes does not always include resolutions that are out of the ordinary, and without that, I doubt the VESA driver will be able to put it into that mode. Not to discourage you, but just be aware that your issue might go deeper than vgadb. BLS to my suprise, vesa seemed to work well in 1600x1200x32 mode when i last tried it on integrated ati graphics a few weeks ago. however, the hw cursor didn't. since i had other plans for the machine, i didn't investigate further. the cursor worked in some other lower vesa modes. i get the feeling that some of the high bits in the vga registers might not be set correctly, especially register 13. i used this in the nvidia driver to get my obstreperous card (different machine) working + vga-crt[0x13] = (vga-virtx/8)*(mode-z/8);// magic to get cursor to work. that would set it to 0x20, not 0x00. as vga.c currently does. please don't ask me how i arrived at this magic. ☺ - erik
Re: [9fans] vgadb woes
Try generating a working modeline for your X.Org and then just put the numbers from modeline into vgadb. xvidtune should help with generating the modeline. A modeline looks like: Modeline mode_name_here 106.47 1440 1520 1672 1904 900 901 904 932 -HSync +Vsync Numbers are from left to right, http://howto-pages.org/ModeLines/: 01. Clock (= pixel clock frequency, 'include' section 'clock') 02. HDisplay (= horizontal resolution) 03. HSyncStart (= 'include' section 'shb') 04. HSyncEnd (= 'include' section 'ehb') 05. HTotal (= 'include' section 'ht') 06. VDisplay (= vertical resolution) 07. VSyncStart (= 'include' section 'vrs') 08. VSyncEnd (= 'include' section 'vre') 09. VTotal (= 'include' section 'vt') 10. HSync (= 'include' section 'hsync', either '+' or '-') 11. VSync (= 'include' section 'vsync', either '+' or '-') There's almost one-to-one correspondence between these numbers and the cryptic numbers referred to in vgadb(6). Translations in parentheses :-) --On Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:11 PM -0400 Devon H. O'Dell devon.od...@gmail.com wrote: I've got a laptop that I (for shits and giggles) decided to put Plan 9 on. Lo and behold, it worked fine (Compal EL80, Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, nVidia video). So, I'm running at 1280x1024x32 right now in VESA, which is reasonable, but I'd like to run at my maximum native resolution, which is 1680x1050 (I believe). After tooling around with Xorg configs, I've found a horiz/vert refresh rate that should work for me... ...except that I have no idea how to convert that into vgadb lingo. I've read all the comments in vgadb, and the manpage, which helpfully suggests that I purchase a rather dated book. I suppose it's at least available, but in the interest of ``I want it now,'' are there any hints on translating eg. Option DPMS HorizSync 28-84 VertRefresh 43-60 into vgadb(6) lingo? Only other bit of potentially relevant information I have is that Xorg reports the monitor as having a ``330.0 MHz pixel clock''. Thanks, --dho
Re: [9fans] vgadb woes
I thought russ posted a program that runs under X11 (on unix) and prints the video config for the current mode in vgadb form. I had a search but couldn't find it so perhaps it was wishful thinking, alternatively perhaps this wil jog somones elses memory. -Steve
Re: [9fans] vgadb woes
Thanks for all the tips, I'll see what I can get working (and perhaps flesh out the wiki once it's working well, if it ends up being different from what's already there). --dho
Re: [9fans] vgadb woes
Well, that ends up getting my screen to have a bunch of lines through it, staggered -- so I'm not much better off than I was before. I'm guessing that's an nVidia driver issue or something. If I had any idea about video devices, I'd try to fix it, but I don't. I'll just live with a bit low-res VESA for now (all of the VESA modes don't seem to work), unless someone has ideas. Thanks! --dho
Re: [9fans] vgadb woes
On Wed Apr 15 19:32:57 EDT 2009, devon.od...@gmail.com wrote: Well, that ends up getting my screen to have a bunch of lines through it, staggered -- so I'm not much better off than I was before. I'm guessing that's an nVidia driver issue or something. If I had any idea about video devices, I'd try to fix it, but I don't. I'll just live with a bit low-res VESA for now (all of the VESA modes don't seem to work), unless someone has ideas. Thanks! --dho i'll put my terrible, awful, reprehensible, reprobate, disgusting nvidia driver that sort-of works if you squint and set the mode incorrectly up on sources (/n/sources/contrib/quanstro/src/vga). you may need to have a monitor fairly resistant to misset frequencies. i had to hack my vgadb. the commented-out line is correct for my montior. clearly i don't have the frequency calculations right at all. 213t=1600x1200 # 60 Hz clock=150 # shb=1664 ehb=1856 ht=2160 shb=1664 ehb=1856 ht=2058 vrs=1201 vre=1204 vt=1250 hsync=+ vsync=+ i really need to write a driver for integratede modern intel or ati graphics. - erik
Re: [9fans] vgadb woes
i really need to write a driver for integratede modern intel or ati graphics. There is an ati radeon driver for the r100-r300 (at least) by Philippe Anel, iirc. It also builds against the Inferno native kernel, but there is no user program to drive it (set modes, etc) yet. -- vs
