Re: Dell C400 fix applied to 855GM?
Thanks a bunch for the update Hope! In the mean time, I've resorted to using debian as the guest OS in VMWare, works out pretty nicely in fact. (I get to use the 802.11g card, and XP's suspend/hibernate/power management! =) -Oliver Hope Merritt wrote: All, The patches will not work do to a limitation in the Dell system BIOS and Intel VBIOS. Dell locks their pre-allocated (once called stolen) memory at 1MB and therefore you will be limited in modes on Linux since the VBIOS limits its modes to the amount of pre-allocated memory. Intel has implemented a workaround, but it would require Dell to implement one of Intel's latest VBIOS drops in there systems BIOS and then update the system BIOS. I would expect any 855 release of system BIOS from Dell in the next 2 months to have the VBIOS that allows the Xserver to report memory it allocated to the VBIOS and the modes could be adjusted. Best regards, Hope Merritt, III Intel Corporation Software Applications Engineer Desk: 916-356-0936 Text: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Dell C400 fix applied to 855GM?
The fix was unsuccessful coming from one person on the Dell forums who tried it (I think some others are going to try it though - I posted it on the Gentoo forums). Thanks for your efforts... if another possible workaround surfaces, I'd be glad to give it a try (or find someone who will =). Another idea... if no software/driver workaround is possible and Dell refuses to update/fix their BIOS, is there any feasible way of modifying the BIOS independant of Dell? ie. grabbing the image file and finding where it specifies 832KB (or whatever it sets it to... 896 or something?) and changing that to around 8MB? I'm not sure if the BIOS could be interpretted or not though (seen in assembly - or just a bunch of bits). Is this possible?... legal? Definately risky, I know. -Oliver David Dawes wrote: On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 09:35:52AM -0500, Oliver Wong wrote: Hello all, I recently purchased a Dell D400, which suffers from a BIOS only allocating 1MB of legacy video memory (stolen memory) to the integrated graphics... I believe the Dell 500m and other 855GM laptops suffer from this as well. The BIOS also does not provide the appropriate mechanisms for the current drivers to change that. Researching, I found that the Dell C400 and other similar laptops had this problem too (with an older chipset), but a work around was written (by Abraham vd Merwe?). Does anyone know if a similar work around could be applied to the 855GM's? Or is the chipset radically different so that that fix will not work? That method didn't work on the test hardware I had access to when adding the 855GM support. The driver does implement a new method for informing the video BIOS about additional memory allocations, but I haven't seen any evidence of production hardware implementing it yet. You could try the attached patch, which should enable the old 830M method for all platforms, and let me know if it works. It's possible that Dell has the old method implemented in their video BIOS. If it doesn't work, you'll need to follow it up with Dell. David -- David Dawes Founder/committer/developer The XFree86 Project www.XFree86.org/~dawes biosmem.diffName: biosmem.diff Type: Plain Text (text/plain) ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Dell C400 fix applied to 855GM?
Hello all, I recently purchased a Dell D400, which suffers from a BIOS only allocating 1MB of legacy video memory (stolen memory) to the integrated graphics... I believe the Dell 500m and other 855GM laptops suffer from this as well. The BIOS also does not provide the appropriate mechanisms for the current drivers to change that. Researching, I found that the Dell C400 and other similar laptops had this problem too (with an older chipset), but a work around was written (by Abraham vd Merwe?). Does anyone know if a similar work around could be applied to the 855GM's? Or is the chipset radically different so that that fix will not work? More info on the C400 is here: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/linux/c400.html Thanks! -Oliver Wong ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Dell C400 fix applied to 855GM?
David Dawes wrote: On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 09:35:52AM -0500, Oliver Wong wrote: Hello all, I recently purchased a Dell D400, which suffers from a BIOS only allocating 1MB of legacy video memory (stolen memory) to the integrated graphics... I believe the Dell 500m and other 855GM laptops suffer from this as well. The BIOS also does not provide the appropriate mechanisms for the current drivers to change that. Researching, I found that the Dell C400 and other similar laptops had this problem too (with an older chipset), but a work around was written (by Abraham vd Merwe?). Does anyone know if a similar work around could be applied to the 855GM's? Or is the chipset radically different so that that fix will not work? That method didn't work on the test hardware I had access to when adding the 855GM support. The driver does implement a new method for informing the video BIOS about additional memory allocations, but I haven't seen any evidence of production hardware implementing it yet. You could try the attached patch, which should enable the old 830M method for all platforms, and let me know if it works. It's possible that Dell has the old method implemented in their video BIOS. If it doesn't work, you'll need to follow it up with Dell. Alright, thanks David. I haven't gotten my D400 in yet, but it should be arriving soon (expected delivery is tomorrow). Does anyone else have a D400 out there that could give this a try? Since I won't even have a linux distro on mine for a little while. -Oliver David -- David Dawes Founder/committer/developer The XFree86 Project www.XFree86.org/~dawes biosmem.diffName: biosmem.diff Type: Plain Text (text/plain) ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
