Framebuffer and high resolution

[tom-erik]

Hi! I've just installed Slackware on my laptop. It has the Nvidia Gforce 4 go 440 , and i was wondering about how i sat the resolution a bit higher than 1024x768. The lcd screen runs at 1600x1200, I would love to hear from one of you if you know how to make framebuffer start in that resolution. I've installed the latest driver from nvidia.com btw..

[buckyball]

I've tried in vain to find a solution to this as well. The best I've been able to achieve is 1024x768 (w/ "vga=792" in the boot string).

I suspect it's because most video cards' BIOSes lack VESA mode definitions for video modes greater than 1024x768.

I'd be VERY interested in hearing whether you find a way around this.

Thanks!

[r0gu3]

try booting with the string vga=ask

that should probe your video bios and then prompt you for a resolution...

- r0gu3

[bwkaz]

I dunno what pixel resolution it is, but on my machine, vga=794 comes up with a 160x64 text-character array (i.e. my console is 160 columns by 64 lines).

To find out the character size of your 1024x768 screen, run stty size -- the first number will be number of columns, and the second will be the number of rows. If it isn't 160x64, try vga=794.

Otherwise vga=ask will work as well.

[volt]

I wasn't able to do that on my slackware either.

Here is some info...I couldn't paste the table in appropriate form:
http://www.uno.edu/~adamico/banshee/files/vesafb.txt

[tom-erik]

Hepp, I've managed to achieve 1280x1024. None of the vesamodes ( above 1280x1024:32 ) that iv'e tried, did work.
I think it's not supported in the nvidia drivers. It's only supported in X.

But i'll keep you updated if i manage to get 1600x1280.

For those of you who don't know what framebuffer is, please do not reply about text modes.

[bwkaz]

I hope that comment wasn't directed at me...

:rolleyes: I said it was 160x64 text characters because that's what it is, not because I thought it was "text mode". :rolleyes:

I didn't know the pixel resolution for sure, so I didn't want to stick my foot in my mouth by saying it was 1600 when it was only 1280, or by saying it was 1280 when it was only 1024.

I know what the framebuffer is.

Regarding your comment about "I think it's not supported in the nvidia drivers. It's only supported in X", it's not that the nVidia drivers don't support it, it's that the nVidia drivers do not apply to anything other than X. Framebuffer support is not a function of your X drivers, it's a function of the VESA modes that your card says it'll support. Knowing the VESA standard, you can easily write a little DOS program to enumerate these modes -- you might want to try that. I don't know if a similar program would work in Linux; calling the BIOS interrupt 9 might give you trouble.

Or, you could do as suggested and boot with vga=ask, which will do the probing for you and ask you which mode to use.

[tom-erik]

My mistake, i did not see the "it" in your reply, so for me it loked like "I dont know what pixel resolution is".. I should get some glasses. :o ..

about the vga=ask, done that .. I've tried a million different modes, from tables that work on previous cards and so on.

But I have tried the 0x000 thing, iow: 031F to get 1600x1200.
But it wont even try to load the vesa mode.

[bwkaz]

Oh, OK. No harm done. ;)

Hmm...

Well, I don't really know... looking at linux/drivers/video/vesafb.c and linux/arch/i386/boot/video.S doesn't show anything immediately obvious... :-/

[rshortt]

For those looking for accelerated framebuffer support, rivafb not the crappy vesa drivers, check this out. I came accross it last night while searching the kernel mailing list archives. There is a link in that message for a kernel patch to 2.4.19. Give it a whirl!

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=103702012201441&w=2