There is a known bug in the H/W cursor, that sometimes causes
the cursor to be redrawn as a white box, when the mode is changed.
This can be fixed by moving the cursor to a different region,
switching to the console and back again, or if it is too annoying
the H/W cursor can be disabled with the "sw_cursor
" option.
Many DSTN screens use the top of video ram to implement a frame accelerator. This reduces the amount of video ram available to the modes. The server doesn't prevent the user from specifying a mode that will use this memory, it prints a warning on the console. The effect of this problem will be that the lower part of the screen will reside in the same memory as the frame accelerator and will therefore be corrupt. Try reducing the amount of memory consumed by the mode.
You are using a mode that your screen cannot handle. If it is a
non-standard mode, maybe you need to tweak the timings a bit. If
it is a standard mode and frequency that your screen should be
able to handle, try to find different timings for a similar mode
and frequency combination. For LCD modes, it is possible that your
LCD panel requires different panel timings at the text console than
with a graphics mode. In this case you will need the
"use_modeline
" and perhaps also the "fix_panel_size
"
options to reprogram the LCD panel timings to sensible values.
Horizontal waving or jittering of the whole screen, continuously (independent from drawing operations). You are probably using a dot clock that is too high (or too low); it is also possible that there is interference with a close MCLK. Try a lower dot clock. You can also try to tweak the mode timings; try increasing the second horizontal value somewhat.
Try the "noaccel
" or "no_bitblt
" options. Check
that the BIOS settings are OK; in particular, disable caching of
0xa0000-0xaffff. Disabling hidden DRAM refresh may also help.
This may be related to a bug in one of the accelerated
functions, or a problem with the BitBLT engine. Try the
"noaccel
" or "no_bitblt
" options. Also check the
BIOS settings. It is also possible that with a high dot clock and
depth on a large screen there is very little bandwidth left for using
the BitBLT engine. Try reducing the clock.
Try forcing the chipset to a type that is most similar to what you have.
This has been reported on some configurations. Many laptops
use the programmable clock of the 6554x chips at the console.
It is not always possible to find out the setting that is
used for this clock if BIOS has written the MClk after the
VClk. Hence the server assumes a 25.175MHz clock at the
console. This is correct for most modes, but can cause some
problems. Usually this is fixed by switching between the LCD
and CRT. Alternatively the user can use the "TextClockFreq
"
option described above to select a different clock for the
text console.
The problem here is that the flat panel needs timings that
are related to the panel size, and not the mode size. There is
no facility in the current Xservers to specify these values,
and so the server attempts to read the panel size from the
chip. If the user has used the "use_modeline
" or
"fix_panel_size
" options the panel timings are derived
from the mode, which can be different than the panel size. Try
deleting theses options from XF86Config or using an LCD/CRT switch.
During a suspend/resume, the BIOS controls what is read and written back to the registers. If the screen is using a mode that BIOS doesn't know about, then there is no guarantee that it will be resumed correctly. For this reason a mode that is as close to VESA like as possible should be selected. It is also possible that the VGA palette can be affected by a suspend/resume. Using an 8bpp, the colour will then be displayed incorrectly. This shouldn't affect higher depths, and is fixable with a switch to the virtual console and back.
This is usually due to a problem with the "lcd-center
"
option. If this option is removed form XF86Config, then the problem
might go away. Alternatively the manufacturer could have incorrectly
programmed the panel size in the EGA console mode. The
"fix_panel_size
" can be used to force the modeline values into
the panel size registers. Two machines that are known to have this
problem are the "HP OmniBook 5000
" and the "NEC Versa
4080
".
The server assumes that the TFT bus width is 24bits. If this is not
true then the screen will appear to have a reddish tint. This can
be fixed by using the "use_18bit_bus
" option. Note that
the reverse is also true. If the "use_18bit_bus
" is used
at the TFT bus width is 24bpp, the the screen will appear reddish.
Note that this option only has an effect on TFT screens.
Firstly, is your machine capable of 16/24bpp with the mode specified. Many LCD displays are incapable of using a 24bpp mode. Also you need at least a 65540 to use 16/24bpp, and the amount of memory used by the mode will be doubled/tripled. The correct options to start the server with these modes are
startx -- -bpp 16 5-6-5 RGB ('64K color', XGA) startx -- -bpp 16 -weight 555 5-5-5 RGB ('Hicolor') startx -- -bpp 24 8-8-8 RGB truecolorNote that there is currently no "
-bpp 32
" mode in the Xserver,
although the 65550 is capable of this.
For other screen drawing related problems, try the "noaccel
" or
"no_bitblt
" options. A useful trick for all laptop computers is to
switch between LCD/CRT (usually with something like Fn-F5), if the
screen is having problems.
If you are having driver-related problems that are not addressed by this document, or if you have found bugs in accelerated functions, you can try contacting the XFree86 team (the current driver maintainer can be reached at dbateman@ee.uts.edu.au or Egbert.Eich@Physik.TH-Darmstadt.DE), or post in the Usenet newsgroup "comp.windows.x.i386unix".
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