[Linux-fbdev-devel] ATI Rage Mobility external monitor problem.

[Stelian P. <ste...@fr...>]

Hi everybody.

I have a Vaio Picturebook C1VE running Linux, and I have a
problem when using an external monitor with the CVS version
of XFree86.

I'm running the 2.4.10-ac12 version of the Linux kernel 
(which contains Marcel's patch for wide framebuffer console:
CONFIG_FB_ATY_CT_VAIO_LCD).

The ATI card is:
	00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility P/M (rev 64)

When the framebuffer code is compiled into the kernel, external
monitor picture is blurred. Since is rather hard to explain,
here is a picture of the monitor taken with an digital camera:
	http://spop.free.fr/xfree/xfree-monitor.jpg

If the framebuffer code is _not_ compiled into the kernel,
external monitor works fine (note that this was not the case with
XFree 4.1.0, only the CVS version contains the fixes to make it
happen).

I've also noted that even without launching X, when using the
framebuffer, the external display picture is blurred too. However,
in text mode this is hardly noticable.

It is clear that the framebuffer code has a bug which causes the
blur. But it isn't clear for me why XFree is not able to 
reinitialize the hardware correctly after the framebuffer code has
touched it.

I would really want to be able to use both features (framebuffer
for wide console and X external monitor output)...

A somewhat related question for linux framebuffer guys: is it
possible to disable the framebuffer on boot (without having to
compile two kernels, a framebuffer based one and one without) 
with some parameter ? I tried leaving out the vga=0x301 
parameter, or put a vga= something else (80x25 text mode) etc,
but the framebuffer code seems to initialize itself whatever
option I put on the kernel boot line.

Thanks,

Stelian.
-- 
Stelian Pop <ste...@fr...>
|---------------- Free Software Engineer -----------------|
| Alcôve - http://www.alcove.com - Tel: +33 1 49 22 68 00 |
|------------- Alcôve, liberating software ---------------|