FreeBSD6, FSC Lifebook E8010, Xorg

[Oliver Fromme]

Rainer Duffner <rainer at ultra-secure.de> wrote:
 > Oliver Fromme wrote:
 > > That i855/i915 port didn't work for my new notebook either.
 > > _But_ the following did work for me:
 > > 
 > > Download the following file:
 > > http://people.tecnik93.com/~acpi_perf/915resolution.tar.gz
 > > It contains a linux binary (and source code, but you can
 > > ignore it).  Run the linux binary as root (linux compatibi-
 > > lity must be enabled, of course).
 > 
 > It doesn't work either.
 > It doesn't even change the resolution.
 > The output of 915resolution stays the same every time.

Does the output look reasonable (except that you cannot
change the resolution)?  If it displays weird numbers,
it didn't detect or locate the mode list in your video
BIOS correctly.  That's what happened for me with the
odler version ("855resolution").  The above-mentioned,
newer one worked for me.

If it displays reasonable numbers for you (i.e. those
standard resolutins like 1024x768 etc.), it located the
mode list correctly.  But if you still cannot change the
modes, maybe the video BIOS hasn't been shadowed to RAM
(i.e. it's running from ROM, so it cannot be modified).
You might check your BIOS setup and look for an option
to enable video BIOS shadowing.  Or maybe you don't have
sufficient permission to write to that area.  Maybe
tracing the process (strace, truss) might reveal something.

 > Grr.
 > Who programmed the 915resolution-utility actually?
 > It's not really clear from the sources.

The first code (for i855 only) was written by Alain Poirier.
Several other people (including Damien Bergamini and Steve
Tomljenovic) picked it up, improved on it and added support
for more intel chipsets.  Alan Hourihane integrated the
support directly into Xorg's i810 driver, which should show
up in the next release (dunno if it's in CVS yet).

I have a collection of links on this issue:

   http://perso.wanadoo.fr/apoirier/
   http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/i855vidctl/
   http://www.geocities.com/stomljen/
   http://www.fairlite.demon.co.uk/intel.html
   http://people.tecnik93.com/~acpi_perf/
   https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=643

The last link (freedesktop.org) is a fairly interesting
discussion of the whole story.

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author
and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.

"UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things,
because that would also stop you from doing clever things."
        -- Doug Gwyn