Max Screen Resolution 800x600 in Slitaz 4.0 ?

SliTaz Forum » Community Groups » Support

Max Screen Resolution 800x600 in Slitaz 4.0 ?

(6 posts) (2 voices)

Started 10 years ago by stinco
Latest reply from stinco
This topic is resolved

Tags:

No tags yet.

stinco

offline
Member

Hello Slitaz Gang,

I think I have found out what has been happening to some Slitaz 4.0 users, who are stuck at maximum 800x600 screen resolution. I have had the same problem with an IBM Aptiva, yet using the same PC, I'm able to get higher screen resolution with Slitaz 3.0. Without going into a long winded explanation as to how I found out, in Slitaz 4.0, THE XORG.CONF DefaultDepth STATEMENT IS BEING IGNORED. It is being handled correctly in Slitaz 3.0. I used the X server log (/var/log/Xorg.0.log) to see what was going on. For those who may be wondering why I'm talking about DefaultDepth, maximum screen resolution is determined using color depth (DefaultDepth) and the amount of video RAM. By specifying a lower color depth, like 16 instead of 24, more screen pixels can be contained by the available video RAM. In the posts that I saw complaining about the 800x600 problem, the posters didn't say anything about the hardware that they were using. I'll guess that they were using old low spec PCs with 2Mb of video RAM (like my Aptiva).

------------------------

IBM Aptiva, 266MHz AMD K6-2, 256Mb memory, ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage Pro AGP 1X with 2Mb video RAM (On motherboard)

Posted 10 years ago #
Trixar_za

offline
Key Master

The default driver tends to ignore xorg.conf changes, so it's better to install the right video driver using tazx from the terminal while online. Then just restart and Xorg should reconfigure itself automatically.

Posted 10 years ago #
stinco

offline
Member

Hello Trixar_za,

Thanks for the reply. Yep, before my original post I had already used tazx to install the correct driver (MACH64), and gotten basically the same result. The big difference was that the maximum screen resolution is 832x624 with MACH64. The color depth remained the default 24, instead of the 16 that I had specified in xorg.conf. Using Slitaz 3.0, I'm able to get 1024x768 with the default driver (VESA) and 1152x864 with MACH64 by just adding the "DefaultDepth 16" statement to the "Screen" section of xorg.conf. I'm doing a certain amount of guessing here, but I'm guessing that the problem isn't the driver.

I'll have flakey (or no) internet access from 5/15-5/19, so will probably be out of touch until 5/20..

Posted 10 years ago #
Trixar_za

offline
Key Master

Probably because configuring xorg is a little different in this version of it. You have to modify the conf files in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ which are in themselves just split up sections of the old xorg.conf file from before. You probably should put the stuff you used in the Screen section in the 70-Screen.conf file instead.

Posted 10 years ago #
stinco

offline
Member

Hello Trixar_za,

OK, back from internet isolation. Did what you said and changed the Screen section file "70-Screen.conf" from:

>
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
>

To:

>
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
EndSection
>

Notice that I also removed the Display subsection for "Depth 24".

The change did in fact set the color depth to 16 just like you said, and the default screen resolution was raised from 832x624 to 1024x768, but I want to get 1152x864 as is available in Slitaz 3.0 and other distros. Looking at the log file, I noticed that 1152x864 is rejected because of "height too large for virtual size" as seen in the following lines from the log file:

>
[ 47.439] (WW) MACH64(0): Shrinking virtual size estimate from 2048x1536 to 1024x768
[ 47.439] (II) MACH64(0): Not using default mode "1152x864" (height too large for virtual size)
[ 47.441] (--) MACH64(0): Virtual size is 1024x768 (pitch 1024)
>

In Slitaz 3.0 and using MACH64 driver, the "virtual size" gets set to 1152x864, so it isn't an issue of insufficient memory. Sorry about uploader removing tabs from the Screen section portions.

Posted 10 years ago #
stinco

offline
Member

Eureka!!! I've got 1152x864 resolution!

Wrap-up:

To get to the desired 1152x864 screen resolution, there were 2 problems that had to be solved.

1. Change the default color depth from 24 to 16 to allow the available video RAM (2Mb) to accomodate a maximum resolution of 1152x864 instead of 832x624.

2. With default color depth changed to 16, change the virtual screen size from 1024x768 to 1152x864.

The first problem was solved by adding the statement "DefaultDepth 16" to the xorg configuration file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-Screen.conf, as shown below:

>
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
EndSection
>

Note: The Display SubSection for Depth 24 was removed.

After reboot, the default color depth had indeed changed from 24 to 16 giving an immediate increase in screen resolution from 832x624 to 1024x768.

The second problem was solved by the following 2 steps:

1. Creating a 1152x864 Modeline in a terminal session with "gtf 1152 864 75". The Modeline statement was then copied into the configuration file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-Monitor.conf as shown below:

>
Section "Monitor"
#DisplaySize 320 240 # mm
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "VPR"
ModelName "vpr Matrix"
HorizSync 30.0 - 96.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 160.0
Modeline "1152x864_75.00" 104.99 1152 1224 1352 1552 864 865 868 902 -HSync +Vsync
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
>

2. Adding 'Modes "1152x864"' statement to the configuration file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-Screen.conf. Note that this is the 2nd change to this file. Shown below:

>
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "1152x864"
EndSubSection
EndSection
>

That's it!

Many thanks to Trixar_za for getting me on the right track.

Posted 10 years ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.