s3virge driver does not work correctly on Toshiba 490XCDT

Bug #300767 reported by Graham Knap
4
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
xserver-xorg-video-s3virge (Ubuntu)
Expired
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

The Toshiba 490XCDT is a rather old laptop, featuring a Pentium II processor, i440BX chipset, and a 1024x768 LCD display driven by a 2MB S3 Virge MX. I have just installed Xubuntu 8.10 on one.

On this hardware, the s3virge driver has the following serious issues:

* It causes the LCD to flicker, much like a CRT would do at 50Hz.

* When switching to a console, the entire screen slowly turns white. Flipping back to X doesn't work.

The vesa driver works MUCH better, and doesn't even seem noticeably slower. Neither driver seems to correctly detect the LCD's native resolution; both default to 800x600, but that's easily fixed by adding the following to the "Screen" section of xorg.conf:

    DefaultDepth 16

    SubSection "Display"
        Depth 16
        Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection

The display's refresh rate is also not detected, so X assumes a Vsync range of something like 28-33KHz, and this has to be corrected to enable 1024x768 resolution. I'm not sure of what the actual correct Vsync range is for this hardware, but "30-50" worked for me (resulting in a 60Hz refresh rate at 1024x768).

(I could be mistaken, but I don't think 2MB is enough memory to do 24bpp at 1024x768 resolution.)

Revision history for this message
Bryce Harrington (bryce) wrote :

[This is an automated message]

Hi graham-knap,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file from after reproducing this issue. If you've made any customizations to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

Changed in xserver-xorg-video-s3virge:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Graham Knap (graham-knap) wrote :

Sorry, I no longer have access to this machine.

Revision history for this message
YitzchokL (yitzchok+launchpad) wrote :

Ha! I have been struggling today with this issue on exactly this type of machine, although I'm using Hardy because I'm trying to setup UbuntuLite (it's U-Lite now but I think the version I'm installing was called that)

I couldn't shut down X either - it would crash with the white issue described above.

The VESA driver fixes my problem. I can quit X easily.

I hadn't thought of looking at Xorg.0.log - I did so and found the refresh rate settings in it. Updating xorg.conf to use those allowed me to get 1024x768 with the s3virge driver, but it had a shaky look to it - perhaps it's an interlaced mode? The Vesa setup looked better. And again with the s3virge driver I couldn't shut down X.

So I'm going back to the Vesa driver.

I'm attaching a zip file with files from the different scenarios, and the results of lspci as requested. The "low-res" files were copied after succeeding the first time with vesa so it could be that the DefaultDepth setting is not how it was, but I hope that won't matter at this point.

I hope this helps, and will be happy if you can suggest any changes which succeed in improving display quality on my machine.

Revision history for this message
YitzchokL (yitzchok+launchpad) wrote :

Might any of the options mentioned on the following page help?

http://linux.die.net/man/4/s3virge

Bryce Harrington (bryce)
tags: added: intrepid
Bryce Harrington (bryce)
tags: added: xubuntu
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

[Expired for xserver-xorg-video-s3virge (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

Changed in xserver-xorg-video-s3virge (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Expired
To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.