I was getting the same issue of a black display when nursing an old
laptop off Etch -> lenny -> squeeze with the same siliconmotion
LynxEM chipset.
reading this bug report 428711 gave me enough clues to do a work around.
First the bug reporter's last E-mail may not be relevant to the
original report and could be because the amount of graphic memory is
low, so that the X server errors out before doing the black screen...
which it will do after fixing only this.
(EE) SMI(0): Not enough video memory for the configured screen size
mine has 4MB video memory... seems that is not enough to run at
1024x786 in 32bit color depth
Changing to a color depth of 16 solved that...
I dropped the col
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen"
Device "Video Card"
Monitor "Monitor"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Virtual 1024 768
EndSubSection
EndSection
Next I went through and turned off anything the driver could do....all
optimizations etc, until it no longer black screened, but was not
usable (slow).
The winning option is
Option "UseBIOS" "off"
Depending on state of affairs (like if X has already run), you may
seem to have a working X-server with UseBIOS on, but when exiting the
X-server it black screens and you cannot see any of the consoles
either.
So as long as "UseBIOS" is "off", it behaves before, during and after X.
Section "Device"
Identifier "Video Card"
Driver "siliconmotion"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
# Option "HWCursor" "off"
##Essential Option, unless you like a black screen ##
Option "UseBIOS" "off"
# Option "CSCVideo" "off"
# Option "NoAccel"
# Option "PciBurset" "off"
EndSection
This is on a Shuttle 1000 (500 Mhz, 96MB memory) , not an IBM so while
I am sure they sourced the same broken pieces for the video BIOS, BIOS
versions would be pretty useless here.
I use it as PC-oscilloscope running off a CompactFlash 2 GB drive.
Hope this is useful to someone.
Sincerely
J.Currey
