[Novalug] Changing video card in Suse 10.2

[Mike Shade]

Jay,

That S3 Unichrome has an open source driver that's in the latest Xorg at
least -- unichrome.  You can edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf directly or you can
run xorgcfg at the command line.

Another option is 'X -configure' at the command line.

It's odd that YaST doesn't allow you to change the card... Using the
framebuffer for X is a bit of a last resort; that lacks any acceleration
at all and is usually used only when the "vesa" driver won't work (don't
get confused, these are two separate drivers.. vesa framebuffer and vesa).

If you want to give it a go hacking the file manually, open up
/etc/X11/xorg.conf in an editor you are familiar with (nano, joe, vim if
you know it).  There will be a section which looks similar to this:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Vesa Framebuffer"
        Driver          "vesafb"
        BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Change the Driver parameter to "unichrome" and give it a whirl again.
Switch between runmodes with init 3 and init 5 (3 for CLI, 5 for X).

Hope this helps:)

-- Shade

On Sat, January 13, 2007 7:35 pm, Jay Hart wrote:
> Greg,
>
> I bought a new mini-tix box which seems to have a built-in VESA
> framebuffer card.
>
> The board itself uses a VIA CN700 chipset, and supposedly has a VIA/S3
> Graphics Unichrome Pro IGP chip/?
>
> When I login as root, opne Yast, go to hardware, and select graphics card
> and
> monitor, I get a message saying that "The configuration is framebuffer
> based
> and your system does not support changes for resolution and/or color
> changes".
>
> Hey, this is ok with me, because what I want to do is try to see about
> selecting a different card type, but I can't, as in I don't have any
> options
> in this window to select another card.
>
> So, I'm thinking that I need to boot into run level 3, and then run some
> "app"
> to try and select another card for X.
>
> Any ideas on what I would use?
>
> TIA,
>
> Jay Hart
>
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