Linux graphics card drivers?

[fluffymark]

Some fiddling around with BIOS settings and reshuffling of the PCI cards to avoid PCI slot 1 (which apparently conflicts with the AGP socket) and jellyfish now has a happy shiny working graphics card. Yaaaaaaay!

A few teething problems remain - firstly my ethernet card appears to refuse to be reattached, but that's no big problem as I don't currently need the thing. I mysteriously lost audio for a while too, but that seems to have reappeared now. More importantly, I'm lacking graphics drivers in linux for the new card. X is reverting to a generic driver allowing an appalling 320x200 screen resolution, which is unworkable. The card is a Sis 305 AGP - I'm hoping the latest Xfree86 has drivers for it and am considering the download, but it may be unfeasible over my slow modem. Eeeep. Any advice on downloading and installing graphics card drivers for linux would be much appreciated.

Comments

[olithered.livejournal.com]

This (http://download.sis.com/sisdlc/index.jsp) page seems to lead to one where you can select by card and OS. Alas there is no linux driver from SIS for the 305. Hopefully there will be one in XF86 that will give you better than you are getting at the moment.

What version do you have at present?

[fluffymark]

Hi Oli! I never knew you read my LJ. Thanks for the help. Yes I had found that page, and was miffed to find the lack of driver.
Can't remember the version number offhand, but I know it dates from 1999.

[zotz]

I've never heard of the resolution being limited on the generic X server. The standard SVGA should do any resolution you want.

[fluffymark]

Yes, I thought it was being silly. I'll have a look at XF86Config and see if i can hit it with a few things.

[zotz]

Ctrl/Alt/+ and Ctrl/Alt/- jump tthe resolution up and down. Or should. The starting display resolution is the first valid one listed in XF86Config.

[fluffymark]

First thing I tried, but fails - it seems to think that the only resolution is 320x200, 256 colour, despite what XF86Config says. It also claims there is only 64KB of video memory, when there is in fact 64MB, and 320x200x8bits just fits into that.

This appears to be only a problem with how X is configured. SVGALIB is happy displaying 640x480 screens in a few C++ things i've written, although my apricots game, which uses multiple double buffered screens now fails.

So I should be able to get X to give me higher resolutions even unger generic SVGA. Trying to configure using Xconfigurator fails, it can't recognise the primary graphics card (it finds itis there, but doesn't know what to do with it), and instead finds my old graphics card and configures X for that, which obviously fails.

I'm tempted to use this as an excuse upgrade my linux distribution, Redhat 6.1 is looking dated. May solve all my problems at once.

[olithered.livejournal.com]

Hello again.

Did you ever get this sorted? Upgrading the distribution may be a good plan - I have RH8.0 and RH9 CDs that you can borrow if you like. The "Xconfigurator" has been replaced by the vastly superior "redhat-config-xfree86". It was able to get me 800x600 on an old 2MB VLB graphics card in my 486 at home...

[fluffymark]

No it' not sorted yet, i've put it on the backburner for now, although it means my current setup is far from ideal as it requires me to change the BIOS settings each time i flip between Windows and Linux to get the monitor that works.

Yes, i'd love to borrow a more up to date version of Redhat - 9.0 would be nice (assuming theres no bizarre reason to prefer 8.0?) - i'm assuming this included the desired version of XFree86 (version 4.3.0) i need to attempt to get my graphics card working.

I'll be in Cambridge on saturday for strawberry fair. If you can arrange to get the CDs to me then, that would be great.

Thanks! :)

[olithered.livejournal.com]

Bad luck. There is no accelerated driver according to this (http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/Status31.html#31) page. Still, as zotz says, the standard SVGA driver should do you more than 320x200.

[fluffymark]

Bother. No Sis 305. Although it does mention the Sis 300 is supported, and the driver I installed for Windows was a Sis 300/305, which would work for either - I wonder if that applies here too?

[zotz]

Worth a go.

[fluffymark]

Looking at the many MB involved, the problem is it'll take too long to download over the modem in full. It seems silly to download the whole of XFree86 again just to get one teensy weeeny driver.

[secret-vampire.livejournal.com]

least u seem to b gettin sumwhere :))

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the first time I tried to install Linux. Some version of Red Hat, that only let me run in 320x200.

Though that was due to it being a fucked up wrongly compiled version according to someone more knowledgable than me on these matters, so probably totally unrelated to your problem.

Yes, this post is completely unhelpful, but I just thought I would say:/

[fluffymark]

The biggest problem with Linux is finding drivers. Looking at Lemmings similar problem below, the 320x200 problem seems to appear if your new shiny video card is too recent, and therefore unsupported. But maybe occurs at other times too.

However Linux is nice in many other ways, and getting a lot better and much more friendly. Do try Linux again, but make sure you install from the most up to date distribution you can find - this is vital if you've got any new hardware.

[gnimmel.livejournal.com]

I had the 320x200 resolution thing when I was installing linux on dragonfly too, and there didn't seem to be any way of getting it to go away apart from getting a later version of XFree86. :(
This was a few years ago though and hence a bit hazy, so not very helpful :/

[fluffymark]

I've come to that conclusion. Although I've a few other issues to, and may just go the whole hog and find an entire up to date distribution, so i know everything works.