Inspiron 1100 on linux-video not full

Question

i am as new as it gets to Linux and have no idea what and how to run commands ect so please bare with me. i used a 1100 linux guide written by Damien and get everything going w/no trouble. even the NIC drivers. i did not do anything special for the video selection. just seleceted 845 with 64MB of ram. it looks good but on get a square in the middle of the screen and is a killer to look at when compared to the ful sixe of the scree. i tried adding the framebuffer line(vga=773) but didnt do it.

default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-8)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-8.img vga=773
title DOS
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

as you can see i added it but am not sure if that was right.
any pointers on this would greatly be appreciated. geesh, 8 years of learning all i needed on Windows and now back to scratch on Linux. gotta love it. i like to learn!

any drivers available for an Orinoco wireless B/G gold card? 8470 i think it is.
thanks again

victor

radar92 · Answer

howdy

are you refering to consol or Xwindows?

if its X you need 845patch run befor to increase your video ram. If its consol your refering to I have yet to see any fix for that, considering its bios version based (if you need the patch) Im hoping dell will fix that in the next bios so we dont have to run the patch. If I see something I'll let you know

peanstein · Answer

confirmed! im deffinitly a newbie to linux. im not sure what you mean by consol or Xwindows? im running redhat 9 and use the GUI interface. doe sthat help? thanks for the reply

radar92 · Answer

yes that helps alot

go here

http://www.geocities.com/randomnumbergenerator2001/#redhat_9_display

scroll down to the
"Instructions for BIOS versions A20, A21, A22 and A23:"

then download the patch.

follow the instructions after that

I my self run Slackware so what I did is a bit diffrent. basicly you just need to run the "patch" which will increase you video ram.

ShadoeMynX · Answer

Does anyone know of any similar patches for FreeBSD?

The linux patch is apparently not bsd compatible and im going blind looking at a little square in the middle of the screen. Since so far they have not seen fit to fix this bios issue Ill just send them my optician bill :p

radar92 · Answer

Well after a little goggling I haven't found a solution, but the issue has been brought up.

Its a simple enuff program itself, so maybe some one will make a port of the patch.

And of course dell could fix the bios to be kinder to us non-ms people, say letting us select more video ram instead of patching

anglete · Answer

Err, this isnt entirely related to bsd and the patch, but i should have mentioned earlier that i have the 845 gm memory patch on my website along with the 855 patch at:
http://projects.nudieman.com/500m/

If you find a bsd rpm package, you could just rpmbuild the source on my website and hope the script locations are correct of your brave =)

radar92 · Answer

Thank you, but BSD is a diffrent OS, the patch needs to be ported over first.

I read your site,yea its a shame Dell dosn't support Linux/BSD or atlest offer the option of no OS, course thats probly more MS fault then Dell, but hey thing can change :)

ShadoeMynX · Answer

Yes there are some linux specific includes in there, such as ioperm etc etc. A friend and I are working on making it *bsd friendly. So far it now makes, but upon running it says "did not find 845 chipset, found 0xfffffff instead' or something similar. So now we're trying to figure out why it isnt seeing the chipset. The dev versions of XFree86 (latest is 4.3.99.16) has the patch built in. BUT after installing that Xfree86.0.log tells me that extended bios function 0x5f11 (i think) is not supported, so it sees the videoram but still cant free any. *sigh*

its really ridiculous to me that they did this. I have read several things that have said hard coding the video mem in the bios goes totally against Intels specs/policies for the chipset. *nix isnt some weird hacker OS used by a handful of folks, Its gaining users every day. They NEED to make things friendly to more than just windows. if i dont get this resolved, im sending the laptop back. No sense having this thing if I cant run my preferred OS on it. (I dual boot) Why they would update to a bios you cant change is beyond me. I didnt have a choice in the matter, the thing came with A22.

Ok Ill stop griping. :p

Cheers

heath1444 · Answer

http://www.geocities.com/randomnumbergenerator2001/#redhat_9_display Whoever said to go here an follow the instructions is correct. It works, I just did it. Follow the instructions EXACTLY.

Linux General

Inspiron 1100 on linux-video not full

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