Re: [RULE] Slinky worked!

[Eugene Wong]

I should quit playing around with this, because it keeps sucking up so much 
of my time, yet I don't produce anything. So, to finish it off, I'll just 
make comments & share "insights", which everybody probably already knew.

> From: Michael Fratoni <address@hidden>
>
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> On Thursday 09 January 2003 02:42 pm, Eugene Wong wrote:
>
> > I tried enabling fb @ boot time with vga=788. If I understand
> > correctly, it is compiled in my kernel. What should I expect to see? I
> > noticed that as soon as the kernel appears to load, the screen blanks
> > out as if a screen saver is running. I tried to read
> > /usr/src/linux/Documents on the fb device, but I'm not sure that I
> > understood it.
>
> You mean the screen blanks and is unusable?

Yeah. The computer would continue to boot. I noticed that when I rebooted, 
it would run fsck because the hard drive wasn't unmounted properly. I assume 
that whatever problems I experienced was only on console. I don't know what 
I'm talking about, though.

> Is the hardware capable of that resolution and color depth?
> (800x600x64k)
> Try vga=787 (800x600x32k)
>
> If that fails as well, perhaps try:
> vga=784 (640x480x32k)

I don't think that it is capable of any of those depths. I believe that it 
is only capable of the next resolution up & @ color depth 24k. So I guess 
that would be 1024xfoox24k? Whatever. I would prefer to use 800x600x24k. In 
the long run, it would be good for someone to create a list of resolutions, 
& color depths. Right now it's not that important.

At your suggestion, which didn't work, I decided to try one number @ a time. 
In other words, vga=786, vga=785, vga=784...vga=780. 780 seems to be the 
magic number for my set up. After that it booted up as normal, except there 
appeared to be more text on the screen, & there was /dev/fb.

> You can boot with vga=ask, and at the prompt enter 'scan' to see valid 
> modes.

I tried that. Thanks. The screen flashed around, & blanked out, but it 
didn't show anything. I don't really know what to look for or expect. I 
still don't understand what this is about graphics mode & text mode. How 
does a person tell the difference? Is the graphics mode supposed to allow a 
boot up in graphics mode, while displaying text? In other words, is graphics 
mode when we have a console size of 80x50?


Sincerely, and with thanks,
Eugene T.S. Wong

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