> On Tue, 4 Mar 1997, mBird wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> > I have been trying to get my Mach32 Video card to work with X.
>
> > When it comes up, the screen is flickering horribly making me think that I
> > am down to 60Hz or less refresh. The card is EEPROM programmed at 72Hz
> > and does not flicker at all when using the ATI tests on their floppy
> > disk??
>
> It would be most helpful if you indicated what version and vendor of X
> you are using. I can assume you are using XFree86, but I do not know what
> version you are working with.
>
> You ought to use the accelerated Mach32 server for best performance. That
> includes refresh rate. Please elucidate what you mean by "haywire." Do not
Apart from this: You'll probably need to setup / calculate a proper mode
timing. Recent X releases contain tables where you can select one for your
card/monitor combo. Some tool should allow you to select on from a table :
read the docs of your distribution.
I didn't use any of these recently, because I found these timing to be
lousy. Generally you have unnessecary huge black borders. There is nothing
better than an optimised time setup. Also, if you monitor is not listed,
you are lost, although you could setup a mode timing yourself easily in
5-10 minutes.
I can mail you my Mach32 timings, however, they will very probably not
work for you because you have a different monitor.
Yes, the Mach32 has an EEPROM where you can setup timings. Alas, X does
not read these, probably because a) ATI did not document how to access
these from protected mode, b) cheapo Mach32 (AST & friends) clones lack an
EEPROM. For svgalib I spent some time to figure out how to write some code
which CAN read this info from the card. I offered it to the Xfree Mach32
people. They had no interest in it.
Finally, I saw that many distributions include some louse 640x480 timing
first s.t. you are very likely to get a picture at all.
Try pressing ctrl-alt-keypad + (or -) to cycle through the configure
timings of the Xserver. If this helps, change your X configuration to use
this as the new default timing.
Michael.
(eowmob@exp-math.uni-essen.de or eowmob@pollux.exp-math.uni-essen.de
Please do not use my vm or de0hrz1a accounts anymore. In case of real
problems reaching me try mat42b@spi.power.uni-essen.de instead.)