Toshiba Satellite 4030cds screen

Problems and successes with specific brands/models of computer video hardware
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momist
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue 14 Jul 2009, 22:50
Location: Lancashire, U.K.

Toshiba Satellite 4030cds screen

#1 Post by momist »

Hi everyone, I'm new here. I use Ubuntu on my desktop, but I've just been given a free laptop - Toshiba Satellite 4030CDS dating from 1999. The machine has 64MB RAM and 4GB HD, currently partitioned as two 2GB segments in VFAT. Windows 95 is about to be blown away, and I'll re-partition in EXT3.

I've installed Puppy Linux version 4.2.1 successfully, and love it. It's so easy to use! However, the screen resolution of 800 x 600 x 16 seems to have a problem. About the 4th fifth of the screen, (towards the bottom) is a mess of zig-zag lines and unusable. Searching on the forum, I see a discussion that mentioned this from 2007, but never any resolution. The poster then seemed happy to put up with it.

Can anyone suggest a fix?

Also, does anyone have suggestions for the partitioning regime for Puppy Linux? I was thinking 2GB for root etc. and 1.8GB home and 200MB swap. How does that sound?

TIA

momist
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue 14 Jul 2009, 22:50
Location: Lancashire, U.K.

Generic Driver?

#2 Post by momist »

Well, I've been fiddling about with this, but I'm no further on.

Back in May 2008 bert56 said:
"Today I decided to install Puppy on my old Toshiba 4030CDS Laptop. Had some problems with horizontal lines on the screen but resolved that by choosing the Generic driver."
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 71&t=29639

Can anyone tell me how I go about loading the "generic driver"? The install options only give me Vesa and XOrg, and in 4.2.1 Vesa is not actually available.

Thanks

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Patriot
Posts: 733
Joined: Thu 15 Jan 2009, 19:04

#3 Post by Patriot »

Hmmm .....

Take a peek at xorg's trident doc page here. You may need to disable the CyberShadow register in your xorg.conf file.

Rgds

momist
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue 14 Jul 2009, 22:50
Location: Lancashire, U.K.

#4 Post by momist »

Patriot wrote:Hmmm .....

Take a peek at xorg's trident doc page here. You may need to disable the CyberShadow register in your xorg.conf file.

Rgds
Thanks Patriot,

I don't seem to be using Trident, BootManager tells me its blacklisted.
The video driver loaded is Videodev.ko

More information: Text based boxes are displayed clearly throughout the screen, only the coloured pictures and the desktop are scrambled in the next to bottom fifth.

I'm rather nervous of trying the Trident driver - as if it fails I may not be able to see the screen to set it back?

Cheers.

EDIT: Sincere apologies, :oops: I was misled. My Xorg.conf does indeed have the Trident device listed, however, adding
CyberShadow "Off"
has locked me out of X. Now looking for where the file is kept . . .

Thanks for the pointer - still fiddling.

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Patriot
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#5 Post by Patriot »

Hmmm .....

I suggest that you create a new and small 32MB/64MB save file just for experimentation purpose. Those save files are brilliant don't you think ? Or just start puppy with a pfix=ram and nothing gets saved (also sufficient for quick & simple experimentation) ...

The videodev.ko you mentioned is a video4linux kernel module, not a trident xorg driver. For the record, based on your satellite 4030cds specs, the vga card is a Trident CyberBlade 9525 with 2.5MB RAM (sufficient for 800x600x16bit and even 24bit).

The xorg's trident driver is flagged for override since they seem to cause hanging discomfort on some hardware, but, you can still proceed to use trident drivers. Experiment with xorg trident, vesa and Xvesa to see which works best. You may also want to experiment with a lower resolution 640x480 just to see if it works alright ...

I'm unable to suggest any further than this. I couldn't find my old trident 9680 to make any useful tests ...

Update: Seems that you updated your entry as I was posting mine. Well, since you do have trident driver configured in /etc/X11/xorg.conf then some tinkering with the options may get you somewhere ...

Rgds

momist
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue 14 Jul 2009, 22:50
Location: Lancashire, U.K.

Screen corruption

#6 Post by momist »

I'm still here. To be more precise, I suppose I'm back. I've been looking for another light Linux to run on this laptop, but without a lot of success. Several Ubuntu derivatives will not load at all - segmentation errors or too memory hungry. The most success I had with eLive, but the stable version will not let me configure the USB wireless adapter, and the unstable version has too many instabilities (and missing bits). Fluxbuntu worked very well - but again I had trouble with the wireless. My Belkin USB wireless adapter is known to be fussy.

The point of all this rambling is that the screen driver in these other distro's worked acceptably well. This is not to say they were perfect, there was still a little bit of corruption at times, but usually just a small patch within a dialogue box or similar, and could be worked around. In Puppy Linux, the corruption is much worse, and causes difficulty in using the system. Frequently instructions can't be read, or button cannot be seen.

I have tried copying some of the entries across from xorg.conf into Puppy, but the Xorg stops working each time I do that, and I end up with only a CLI to recover from.

I *think* that the answer to all this lies in the framebuffer setting up. but so far don't know a great deal about it. If anyone can advise me what to try, I would be very grateful.

Puppy is so good, I intend to keep trying.

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mmmrr
Posts: 184
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Location: vancouver island, canada

generic driver

#7 Post by mmmrr »

hello momist

jf you're still checking this thread...
the generic driver was an option i saw offered
several generations of puppy back, sorry i can't
be more specific, on the window which appeared
after one had tried the tweak option following the
xorg choice in the video setup section of live cd boot.

i was never sure whether it was another way of referring
to the xvesa driver, in any case, neither xvesa nor generic
worked on my toshiba 4010cds but xorg did, so i've never
explored down that option path again, maybe the generic
driver is still there--good luck--mm

momist
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue 14 Jul 2009, 22:50
Location: Lancashire, U.K.

Toshiba Satellite 4030CDS screen FIXED!

#8 Post by momist »

It's been a while! Last October, I was still trying to get some use from this old laptop, but in the end it got put away and for a long time I considered getting a cheap Netbook to serve my mobile needs. I looked, but many of the sub £100 netbooks are actually less powerful than this (now 12 year old) laptop! Albeit with built in camera and wireless and USB II etc.

A couple of days ago, I fell off my bike and broke my foot. Since then, I've had time to sit with my leg up (not in front of my PC!) and fiddle with it again. I've discovered Puppy 511 and BINGO the video driver works as it should and I no longer have screen corruption (except when I scroll too fast).

Thank you. Thank You. Thankyou! Many, many thanks to all involved in making this amazing Linux distro. Your work is very much appreciated here, and my old Tosh is working again!

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mmmrr
Posts: 184
Joined: Tue 03 Mar 2009, 05:26
Location: vancouver island, canada

congratulations, momist

#9 Post by mmmrr »

glad to read, albeit after the fact, of yr finding
a pup to run on yr old tosh,,,i have two 4010 cds's

great machines and still easy/cheap to buy the bigger
ram chip to give 160 megs, max amount

also i've found a pcmcia card to fit in one of the
expansion slots, this card offers four usb2slots.
makes a huge upgrade.

cheers, mm

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