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#1 2009-01-20 04:28:00

g_SG
Member
From: São Carlos/SP, Brazil
Registered: 2009-01-20
Posts: 11
Website

SiS video problems

Hail, archers!

My laptop has a SiS video chipset and, I know, it sucks. Since I don't care too much about graphics and stuff, I tried to use the vesa driver, as recommended by a `hwd -s` [1], but I was getting some strange horizontal lines. When I tried the sis driver from pacman, X wouldn't start, saying that no screens were found.
After some research, I found several people with the same problem, and a video driver for Ubuntu [2]. I simply deb2targz'ed it [3] and copied the resulting files to their directories. At first, it worked. I managed to get a 1280x800 resolution with no annoying horizontal lines. But sometimes, when I kill X and restart it, the screen gets somehow divided, as if it moved to the right. A screen that would look like [L R] gets something near [R| |L]. Screenshots can't show the problem, and when I kill X once again, all the consoles have just the same problem (I use uvesafb). A "solution" generally is starting mplayer on console to redraw the screen correctly and then trying to run startx several times, or rebooting.
Does anyone have the same problem/know the solution for it?

[0]: hwd -e: http://www.eletromag.net/g/hwde
[1]: hwd -s: http://www.eletromag.net/g/hwds
[2]: Ubuntu package driver: http://www.eletromag.net/g/xserver-vide … 1_i386.deb
[3]: .tar.gz driver: http://www.eletromag.net/g/xserver-vide … 386.tar.gz
[4]: xorg.conf: http://www.eletromag.net/g/xorg.conf

Thanks!

PS: I don't know if the problem was clearly described, I'm no native speaker. If you don't get the picture, I can try to do some artwork on GIMP to describe it.

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#2 2009-01-20 13:33:03

zenlord
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-05-24
Posts: 1,221
Website

Re: SiS video problems

My laptop also has a Sis-chipset. I don't know which version it is, but I guess it is ca. 5 years old (first Amd64-cpu's).

I only encounter horzontal lines with mplayer, and that can be fixed by changing the output to X11 instead of teh default xv (or was it the other way around?).

I am not using uvesafb though, so I don't even know if my experience is helpful or not...

HTH

Zl.

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#3 2009-01-20 21:52:07

g_SG
Member
From: São Carlos/SP, Brazil
Registered: 2009-01-20
Posts: 11
Website

Re: SiS video problems

@zenlord: these horizontal lines on mplayer appear using vesa? Does the xf86-video-sis driver package work for you?

After Syu'ing yesterday, I got some news:
When the kernel was updated, without parsing the modules responsible for uvesafb yet, I rebooted and got a console without framebuffer. Then, when I killed and restarted X, there were no problems.
The reason why I used uvesafb instead of the "vga" option on GRUB on the first place was that the usual framebuffer was getting me bigger trouble whenever I killed X: the console wouldn't appear, and the image would go weird, as in a television with bad transmission. At that time, I was still using the VESA driver.

Any hints?

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#4 2009-01-21 08:22:52

zenlord
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-05-24
Posts: 1,221
Website

Re: SiS video problems

Yes, I'm using the -sis driver without a hitch (except for the problems with the xv-output in mplayer).

I don't think I can help you out: my 'linuxskillz' are very limited and I haven't gotten into any real problems with graphics (yet).

Via google, I came across this one:
http://barroslee.blogspot.com/2008/02/s … orted.html

It seems that there are a lot of problems with this chip. A 3D-driver is even out of the question...

Zl.

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#5 2009-01-21 13:52:34

g_SG
Member
From: São Carlos/SP, Brazil
Registered: 2009-01-20
Posts: 11
Website

Re: SiS video problems

Actually, the sis driver works okay on my former desktop. I guess the only problem is with this model (671/771).
Found out that the real problem was with uvesafb. I re-replaced it with the "vga=" option in GRUB and the problem's gone. But now I get this ugly 1024x768x256 framebuffer. sad

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#6 2009-01-22 00:34:50

g_SG
Member
From: São Carlos/SP, Brazil
Registered: 2009-01-20
Posts: 11
Website

Re: SiS video problems

More strange news here:
I'm still using uvesafb and I found out that, after killing X, the problem doesn't happen if I cd to any other directory. A simple cd /any/where && startx prevents the screen from going crazy.

Some help, please!

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