Acer Travlemate 233LC monitor

[cadderly]

Hi!

I've recently installed RedHat 8.0 in my laptop Acer Travelmate 233LC, and the Xwindows enviroment does not work correctly. I've only managed to get a resolution of 800x600 pixels with 256 color depth. The OS doesn't recognize the monitor, but it does recognize the graphic card (though with 16Mb of RAM instead of 32).

Has anyone encountered this problem? How can it be solved? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Dolda2000]

What video chipset does it have? Check with "/sbin/lspci".

[cadderly]

Hi Dolda2000!

Here is the output of the lspci command:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL [Brookdale-G] Chipset Host Bridge (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL [Brookdale-G] Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #1) (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #2) (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #3) (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB PCI Bridge (rev 82)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DB ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DB ICH4 IDE (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB SMBus (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Audio (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Modem (rev 02)
02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:09.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller

I hope this helps.

[Dolda2000]

Oh, I see; that's an i845 chipset. Linux support is not yet complete for that chipset; Intel recommends that until a Linux driver has been written, you should use the generic vesa driver.

The driver settings are in /etc/X11/XF86Config. Do you need help changing it, or do you think that you can handle it?

[cadderly]

I've never edited the /etc/X11/XF86Config. Instead, in other machines that used Redhat 7.2 I used the Xconfigurator utility. However, the version of the Xfree86 enviroment that came with RH 7.2 did not include the Vesa driver as an option in the Xconfigurator utility.

I'll try to use this utility in my laptop, but in case it does not show the Vesa driver as an option, I'd appreciate it if you could give me some clues so as what to change in the /etc/X11/XF86Config file.

Thanks.

[Dolda2000]

Open the file with any text editor, and search for Section "Device". The look up the "Driver" line, and change the driver to "vesa". Note that you have to type "vesa" all lowercase.

[cadderly]

Hi!

I tried to edit the /etc/X11/XF86Config yesterday, but I typed Vesa instead of vesa. It didn't work. Then I tried to use the Xconfigurator utility, but it seems that it's not available in RH 8.0. Instead, I used the redhat-config-xfree86 command, and I selected the Vesa driver. It worked all right with a resolution of 800x600 pixels and 256 color depth. However, when I changed the color depth to 24 bit, the Xwindows session could not be opened, so I had to leave it all just as I had it in the begining.

How can I increase at least the color depth???

Thanks.

[Dolda2000]

Check what it says in the "Screen" Section in XF86Config.