Am Fr, den 02.01.2004 schrieb WA9ALS - John um 23:42: > Problem: I can't get any screen resolution other than 640x480 on my Dell > laptop D500 with Intel 852/855 chipset. It is an XGA display whose max is > 1024x786 in true color in Windows. > > I've downloaded the correct Linux driver (dripkg-1.0-4.i386.rpm) from Intel > and > installed it with the package manager, no errors. However, despite > restarting X and finally rebooting, nothing seems different. If I choose > the display with the GUI, it says 1024x768 with thousands of colors, but I > really have 640x480. > > I don't completely understand the X config file, but I can edit it if I need > to and can > get some help. Any other ideas greatly appreciated. I have saved pertinent > posts from this list and Googled for hours, but I'm still stuck. Perhaps you didn't google enough ;-) (SCNR) See http://www.xfree86.org/~dawes/845driver.html and there: --- [...] 8 October 2003: A patch based on Christian Zietz's code to tell the video BIOS about extra video memory that has been allocated was committed to the XFree86 CVS trunk. This should help with many 825GM/855GM laptops that were previously limited to video modes requiring less than 1MB of video memory. [...] Why can't I get high resolution/depth modes? This driver relies exclusively on the video BIOS to set video modes. The video BIOS will only program video modes for which it believes there is sufficient video memory for. The Intel integrated video hardware uses a "unified memory architecture", which means that video memory is allocated from normal system memory. Most BIOSes have an option in one of the configuration screens to set the amount of system memory that is set aside for use as video memory at boot time. If you are having problems using high resolution or high colour depth modes, this is the first thing to check. If your BIOS configuration has such option, change the video memory amount to 8MB or higher, and the problem should be solved. Unfortunately not all machines have such a BIOS configuration option. It if often the case with laptops that the amount of memory that gets allocated at boot time is fixed at 1MB (actually 832KB). Although the XFree86 driver can and will allocate more (if the correct agpgart kernel support is present), the mechanism used to inform the video BIOS of the additional allocation doesn't seem to be implemented on these laptops. This results in the video BIOS refusing to program video modes that require more than 832KB. A patch based on a utility that Christian Zietz wrote to workaround this problem for 852GM/855GM/865G systems was committed to the XFree86 CVS trunk on 8 October 2003, is included in recent XFree86 snapshots, and will be in the XFree86 4.4 release due out late in 2003. This method directly edits the video memory parameter in the BIOS (actually an in-RAM copy thereof). The main limitation of this method is that it may not work with a BIOS that has a different layout. It appears to work for most current laptops that need it. [...] --- But you don't need XFree86 4.4, there is a program that you can run before X start to resolve the problem. http://www.chzsoft.com.ar/855patch.tar.gz CU thl
