Various - video, fonts, driv..
Zgedneil
From: mr1...@greenwich.ac.uk (Zgedneil)
Organization: The Internet
I've got so many questions, and I'd like to get through a lot of them, so
forgive me if I'm asking a lot.
Linux and X run generally ok on my machine, a 486 with 4 Meg ram, but my
video card seems to be giving Linux some problems. If I change from one VC
to another, I'll very often get random characters and funny colours
appearing on the VC I'm changing to. With both vgalib (version 1.2) and
XFree86 (also version 1.2), when they change back into text mode I get
similar problems.
Fairly frequently, in all three of these cases, when I return to text mode,
the machine will just hang. Unfortunately, it just seems to be random and
not related to what I've been doing etc. at all. And another problem with
all three is that I will invariably get the font really mangled up -
'losing' half the characters, characters getting shifted up or down, that
kind of thing. Doing 'reset' doesn't do anything to correct this. Any sort
of hack I can use to get round this? Resetting the font etc.?
The video card I'm using is a Cirrus accelerated card with 1 Meg ram, and I
think the chip is called a 5422 (lovely poetic name don't you think?). Is an
X-server available for any accelerated cards? Does Xega run as a 4-bit colour
server, or is it just 1-bit?
In case it makes a difference, I'm running kernel version 0.99.pl6-27
(that's what it says when I boot anyway), which I've recompiled once, and
most of my stuff was from the SLS distribution, also version 0.99 I think.
Also, why doesn't my copy of GNU Emacs run in its' own window under X? (and
I have RTFM - well, the man page anyway) The version info it gives when it
starts is: "GNU Emacs 18.59.1 of Thu Nov 12 1992 on lepton (linux)" If I
haven't got the X compatible version (looks like it to me) where can I get a
copy (binary only preferably)?
I know I'm asking a lot here, but just quickly - how can I access the
speaker (in the sense that you would with outp(0x61,n) from DOS) and the
keyboard lights under X (from any of my C programs)? And... is there any way
I can get it to stop saying 'Broken pipe' when I 'q' out of more, less etc
(I'm using bash, BTW)? I have a three-button mouse - but mousesystems mouse
doesn't work, so I use microsoft where I can only use two of the buttons.
I'm using the 3 button emulation as a temp. fix, but how can I get it to
work properly? (It's a generic, i.e. cheap and cheerful, Microsoft
compatible, it says "Z-Nix Inc." on it)
I've managed to get Xpilot (a game not dissimilar to Thrust) working as a
one-player game on Linux under X - can/should I upload it to anywhere?
(presuming I have access etc.) I currently have no way of testing it on a
TCP/IP-less machine - recompiling the kernel is not a pleasant experience -
but I think I've hacked all that junk out of it. I resized the 1024x768
window to 800x600ish. It works with X386mono fine, and is ok on the
256-colour Sparcs at Uni, so maybe some of you would care to help me with some
extensive, uh, beta testing :) Bear in mind I go on hols on Saturday, so I
won't be anywhere near any Internet access. So any replies will take a while.
Email is easier for me, at mr1...@gre.ac.uk .
Yours, a Linux and X neophyte,
- Russell Marks.
/* _ _ ---------- reality checkpoint : cut here ----------
| | | |_ (|_ ) Russell Marks : Zgedneil : mr1...@greenwich.ac.uk
| |_| _| (| |) "respond, vibrate, feed back, resonate" */