Re: Console problem

[Jeff Licquia <jeff@licquia.org>]

On Thu, 2003-08-14 at 14:47, Todd Davis wrote:
> Ok, now it sounds stranger.  Normally it would go to full screen 80x25. 
> It almost sounds like your monitor is staying in the higher resolution
> and only showing "a window" of 80x25 (kind of like opening an xterm). 
> Does that sound accurate?

That's not terribly surprising, actually.  Laptop screens typically
support only one resolution, and "emulate" the others; Linux doesn't
know about this, though, and often can't trigger the emulation, making
everything display in a 640x480 box in the middle of the screen.  My
laptop does the same thing, although it's not as bad since the screen
only does 800x600.

> On Thu, 2003-08-14 at 14:16, Joe Tosetti wrote:
> > It's not that I need a high resolution, I just want to be able to use to
> > full screen.  Maybe I'm explaining it wrong; the console fits in 4x3
> > inch area in the center of the display.   It's more of an annoyance than
> > an actual problem.  I thought if it was easy to fix I would, if not it's
> > usable.

>From the kernel documentation (Documentation/vesafb.txt):

-----
The graphic modes are NOT in the list which you get if you boot with
vga=ask and hit return. The mode you wish to use is derived from the
VESA mode number.
-----

Here's the table:

-----
    | 640x480  800x600  1024x768 1280x1024
----+-------------------------------------
256 |  0x301    0x303    0x305    0x307
32k |  0x310    0x313    0x316    0x319
64k |  0x311    0x314    0x317    0x31A
16M |  0x312    0x315    0x318    0x31B
                                                                                
To enable one of those modes you have to specify "vga=ask" in the
lilo.conf file and rerun LILO. Then you can type in the desired
mode at the "vga=ask" prompt. For example if you like to use
1024x768x256 colors you have to say "305" at this prompt.
-----

Try one of those, and you should see nicer results.  If the kernel
refuses to do any of the FB modes, it probably doesn't have the vesafb
driver compiled in.  Try loading the vesafb module and using fbset to
play with the settings.  

Once you have it working, you can see if the kernel has direct fb
support for your video card, and try using that instead.
-- 
Jeff Licquia <jeff@licquia.org>

-
To unsubscribe, send email to majordomo@luci.org with
"unsubscribe luci-discuss" in the body.