Re: X on a Dell Inspiron Laptop

1999-05-23 Thread Michael Neuffer
* Douglas Bates ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [990523 03:30]:
> A friend recently bought a high-end Dell laptop computer.  The model
> is the Inspiron 8000, if I recall correctly. 

>From the graphics hardware it is an Inspiron 7000, there is no 8000

> Another problem we encountered is in the configuration of the X
> server.  The version of SuperProbe and the xservers in Debian 2.1 were
> not able to recognize the chip.  We installed the 3.3.3.1 X11 packages
> compiled for Debian 2.1 from the www.netgod.net site.  That version of
> SuperProbe recognized the chip and describes it as
> 
>  First video: Super-VGA
>  Chipset: ATI 264LT Pro (Port Probed)
>  Memory: 8192 Kbytes
>  RAMDAC: ATI Mach64 integrated 15/16/24/32-bit DAC w/clock
>  (with 6-bit wide lookup tables (or in 6-bit mode))
>  (programmable for 6/8-bit wide lookup tables)
>  Attached graphics coprocessor:
>Chipset: ATI Mach64
>Memory: 8192 Kbytes
> 
> but neither the xserver-svga nor the xserver-mach64 packages seem to
> want to drive it.  Does anyone know if there are more recent drivers
> at xfree86.org or at SuSE that will drive this video system?


Unfortunately does the XFree86 Xserver still not completely support
the LT variant of the Rage Pro chipset.

What you need to do is to take the latest Debian Mach64 Xserver from 
unstable and add a few things that you can find here:

http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~steveh/inspiron/

It is quite possible that you need to downgrade the BIOS of the laptop 
tothe A06 revision, since newer revisions do not set up the Rage LT Pro 
chip properly

I've been running my I7k under X since October last year. First with the
dongle solution later then with the help of the vesa-fb driver in the 
kernel.

If you still have problems with your friends laptop after reading the 
above web site, I can mail you my detailed setup.

Mike



Re: X on a Dell Inspiron Laptop

1999-05-23 Thread Andreas Plesner Jacobsen
On Sat, May 22, 1999 at 08:14:32PM -0500, Douglas Bates wrote:

> A friend recently bought a high-end Dell laptop computer.  The model
> is the Inspiron 8000, if I recall correctly.

Check out http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~steveh/inspiron/ for notes on
the Inspiron 7000, I think much of the info there is usable.

-- 
Andreas



X on a Dell Inspiron Laptop

1999-05-23 Thread Douglas Bates
A friend recently bought a high-end Dell laptop computer.  The model
is the Inspiron 8000, if I recall correctly.  It has a hard drive that
is about 9.5 Gb (yes, nearly 10 Gb on a laptop) and fips20.exe seemed
to have some trouble creating a second partition.  We wanted to save
the Windows 98 partition so we used fips to create a second partition
then installed Debian 2.1.  The partition table doesn't appear to have
the correct geometry specs and the total amount of disk space
available now is about 7.5 Gb instead of 9.5.  Has anyone encountered
problems like this on large hard drives before?  Any suggestions for
repairing the partition table? Is it likely that a 2.2.x kernel will
be able to probe the apparent geometry of the drive more successfully?

Another problem we encountered is in the configuration of the X
server.  The version of SuperProbe and the xservers in Debian 2.1 were
not able to recognize the chip.  We installed the 3.3.3.1 X11 packages
compiled for Debian 2.1 from the www.netgod.net site.  That version of
SuperProbe recognized the chip and describes it as

 First video: Super-VGA
 Chipset: ATI 264LT Pro (Port Probed)
 Memory: 8192 Kbytes
 RAMDAC: ATI Mach64 integrated 15/16/24/32-bit DAC w/clock
 (with 6-bit wide lookup tables (or in 6-bit mode))
 (programmable for 6/8-bit wide lookup tables)
 Attached graphics coprocessor:
   Chipset: ATI Mach64
   Memory: 8192 Kbytes

but neither the xserver-svga nor the xserver-mach64 packages seem to
want to drive it.  Does anyone know if there are more recent drivers
at xfree86.org or at SuSE that will drive this video system?