Replying to my own post...

The fix is to set the BIOS setting 'Onboard video buffer' to 8Mb instead of the default 1Mb.

mwhidby,

Thank you for posting this data on the Dell Community Forum (DCF).

what driver do you use for this videocart?

 

thanks,

Vitaly.

Just the standard off-the-CD drive from the Redhat 9 installation set. The install detects it as an Intel 865G card and uses the i810 driver.

I am having the exact same problem mwhidby: I am using a Dell 4600c with an Intel 865G video chipset, and a Dell e771mm monitor. Under Suse, Redhat, and Mandrake, all detect it as an 865G but match the 810 driver to it. I'm stumped also. Do we need drivers for our monitors as well? I have a sneaky hunch that since the chipset is fairly new, we may be out of luck....I'll stay tuned. Good luck.

Message Edited by JEvangelho on 09-23-2003 01:04 PM

I set my BIOS to 8mb and it still will not get better than 640x480. I have tried the posted trick where you set it to 640x480 then kill X and set it to 1024x768 but that did not work either. Does anyone have a solution to make a GX260 with i845G video run Linux 2.4.20x at 1600x1200 @60Hz for a flat panel at 24bit color? The Intel site did not help as their drivers are for RH Linux 8.1 or earlier and I have 9.0. The Xig video driver Summit is too expensive for 3d graphics at $89.

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I'm having the exact same problem. I've found various fixes for it, none have worked. Currently I'm working on ftp://download.intel.com/support/graphics/release_linux.pdf. Well, I'll be going through that, and trying it after I update the linux kernel (happening now)

We have a similar problem with our new GX270's, and I've tried the solution of changing the memory in the BIOS to 8 meg, and even reinstalling RH 9 after doing so. Under these conditions it will support 1024 X 768 with 256 colors, but no higher color depth without going back to 800 x 600.

We tried installing the newest RH 9 kernel and even the newest drivers from intel for linux with no success.

This is very disappointing, so much so that we will have to cancel our plans for replacing our existing fleet of older optiplexes (which work fine except for being slow) unless we can find a workable solution which can be easily replicated. We may have to look for another vender's product who is using a chipset more amenable to Linux.

I am hoping that someone smarter than I can figure out a working solution.

After doing everything, it is now working flawlessly.

I tried each correction, without checking in between I'm afraid. The only addition was I also upgraded the kernal, but that probably had nothing to do with it.

I have tried to get this to work with SUSE 9.0, but it does not. X only recognized 872KB of memory on the card even though I set the BIOS to 8MB. According to Intel's site, this indicates a problem with the BIOS. (The XFree86 site indicates this as a BIOS problem too, but they indicate it is usually seen on laptops.) I have BIOS version A03.

To those who got this to work: What version of the BIOS are you running?

I can confirm that there is a BIOS problem. According to this document: ftp://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/25251404.pdf, when the BIOS is set to 8MB the GC device register should have bits 4-6 set to 011. (See page 65) However, when Xfree86 reads this register, it is returning 001. This happens to correspond to 1MB. When xfree86 prints out "stolen memory detected", it takes the amount of memory specified by the BIOS and subracts 132KB (1024KB - 132KB = 892KB) This is why hires is not working under xfree86.

How do we request a fix to the BIOS? Some people got this to work, so they must be using an older version of the BIOS. Can we get that older BIOS?

I'm the original poster - I've got BIOS version A01 on the machines that I've got it to work on. I haven't tried it on any version of the BIOS but it certainly sounds plausible that it is down to the BIOS version. I'm going to give it a try on the next GX270 that passes through my hands if it's got A03 on it.

 

I got the downgrade to A01 from: ftp://ftp.dell.com/bios/GX270A01.EXE

After doing the downgrade and changing the video buffer size to 8 MB with an AGP aperture of 128 MB the Xfree86 that comes with RedHat 9 is working great.  The one on RedHat 8 works to, if you have all the errata installed.

The real question is how do we get Dell to issue an new BIOS that actually works properly.

 

I got Linux 9 to work on GX270 on Bios A02 at 1024x768, "thousands of colors" and at 1280x1024 millions of colors by changing the video buffer in the bios from 1MB to 8MB.  Prior to the change I could not go beyond 256.  I powered off the machine every time I changed something to make sure that all is properly reset.  IE, cold boot it just in case.  The Linux 9 is right out of the box.  Flat screen monitor too.

Be sure you set the monitor to something that allows the resolution and you are selecting.  I chose Generic Laptop Display Panel 1280x1024 and set the DPI (physical resolution) setting to 1530x1300.  May not be right... but it's working at the following resolutions and color depths.  Some resolution/color combinations will simply return you to the previous setting, tricking you into thinking that it's not working.  Try this:

- Set the bios video setting to 8mb

- turn off the computer

- boot up

- change the display settings to allow 1280x1024 and tell it you have a Generic flat panel display.  Be sure you change the DPI as well

- Set the mode to 1280x1024 and millions of colors

- Reboot

It worked for me.  When I tried something like 1152x864 or another non standard mode, it seemed to simply load the previous config.

Hi mwhidby

I had the same problem...

Check the Bios Version if it is A02 or A03 downgrade it to A01 and it will work. Also ensure the Bios setting for Video Memory is set to 8 MB.

It took me quite a while to find this out...who would think about downgrading...

You can get the Bios at dell.com searching for BIOS A01...