Hello Rolf,

some of my patches to xorg-savage were recently added by Tormod Volden. 
The path direction for s3switch is directly linked to that X server, as 
they are interoperating closely (and need to do this, which will be one 
of the targets of my work).

On my systems (HP XE3), I am testing all my patches in all-day use and 
have not stumbled over any problems yet, but it seems that we need 
someone with that special kind of Thinkpad mentioned in the bug report 
to verify.

There are several ways how to deal with PAL/NTSC switching, as well as 
TV swichting, in the future.

I think for the rest of the year, time will be a limit on my work, too, 
as my "regular" work is quite exhaustive at least up to the end of November.

In the following, I have an excerpt of ideas on this topic which I sent 
to Tormod some weeks ago.

It would be great if we could either make a common decision OR just 
allow a solution to be established which is achieved first. Tormod 
suggested to get into XRandR to migrate the s3switch features to this 
logic, but that would result in a solution not really quick to implement 
as it is a completely new topic.


-------------------------------

What I did in the meantime you can see in the attached patches. It was 
all about inconsistencies related to output selection, s3switch 
accomodation and video playback. The following goals are reached:

- before playing a video, the driver reads in the output config which 
could have been modified due to Fn+Output key or s3switch. If TV or CRT 
is on, the LCD expansion is avoided. Before this, video image on TV was 
cropped due to false expansion.

- when the LCD is off, DPMS for the LCD is blocked. Before this, the 
display would get corrupted on external (esp. TV) screen and the LCD got 
into an undesired state of turning white. This was especially annoying 
as e.g. the VLC player makes calls to DPMS before playing a video! I 
think this was well-meant, but was destructive in case of our savage 
driver. Now the driver is protected.

- at each mode switch, the driver reads in its current output 
configuration and updates its list and flags. Up to now, a resolution 
switch after changing output by key or s3switch caused the outputs to be 
changed back to their previous state.

- when switching to text mode, the driver updates its config also and 
restores the initial setting as intended.

HERE I HAVE AN IDEA FOR THE FUTURE: a new xorg.conf option which allows 
enforcing to stay in the new output configuration also in text mode.

- the expansion code has now a condition for adding the famous "+7" 
offset in case of a thinkpad 1400x1050 display. WE NEED A TESTER WITH A 
THINKPAD T22 OR T23 EQUIPPED WITH THIS DISPLAY, not just because of this...

- the driver now prefers the BIOS configuration for selecting the TV 
format, as most savage machines allow this.

IDEA: we should add an xorg.conf option allowing to prefer BIOS or
xorg.conf

IDEA: we should decouple setting the TV format (option "PAL") from 
enabling TV out. Up to now it is a silly mix that PAL also enables TV.

- the driver does not overwrite the TV format setting unnecessarily 
anymore. On my system this seems to cause the system BIOS to be reset to 
defaults after reboot - the exact conditions I still have to analyse.

- also the output device settings are only written if necessary in most 
places.

- I added flags and masks to do more of this stuff the symbolic way.

- I corrected the meaning of "TvOn" to be "on", not "only".

- In contrast, the CrtOnly is always applied exclusively to be "only", 
not "on".

- I added a function to calculate the need for the DuoView flag. Up to 
now this was used rather uncoordinated - the logic has to be transferred 
to the s3switch which currently throws this flag in always.

That should be all, more or less

For remaining uncertainties, see my "IDEA" marks. Additionally I 
detected that my HP XE3's BIOS is a little over-correct: it clears the 
DuoView flag whenever it is not necessary, and keeps it cleared when 
attempting a mode switch back from text to graphics, even if we try to 
activate it here again. This is one of the reasons why I'd like to 
integrate a new xorg.conf option for keeping the active outputs also in 
text mode.

Also my BIOS tends to reset itself to defaults if something happens 
which it doesn't like. Currently it looks as if this reason mainly was 
the writing of TV mode when the TV output was already active, so with 
the current code I have not experienced it again.


-------------------------------


Best regards,

Hans-Juergen


Rolf Leggewie schrieb:
> Hans-Jürgen, any news on this?
>

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/41355

Title:
  s3switch segfaults on the thinkpad [patch]

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