I've been struggling with this issue myself for some time now. What I've learned is that
the problem with Puppy and the Intel i810 graphics chipset family appears to stem from
Xvesa (X links to /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvesa)
mistakenly reporting too little graphics memory with certain BIOSes.
The i810 chipset doesn't have any video memory of its own but dynamically 'borrows' from main memory as needed (from 832 bytes up to 32MB I believe).
When I run Puppy on two different laptops , a ThinkPad R51 and a Dell Inspiron 510m, both with 1024x768 screens, 512MB RAM and 855GME graphics chips (the i810 chipset family), it runs fine on the R51 in
1024x768x16, but on the 510m it only comes up in
640x480x16 although I can choose a number of PseudoColor modes with higher resolution. But Puppy in PseudoColor is truely awful
That limits the resolution to VGA(!) and most applications in Puppy expect a larger desktop in order to work properly.
Running '
Xvesa -listmodes' on the laptops reveals Xvesa as the source of the problem. Note the figures for '
Total memory':
On the ThinkPad R51
# /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvesa -listmodes
VBE version 3.0 (Intel(r)852GM/852GME/855GM/855GME Graphics Chip Accelerated VGA BIOS)
DAC is fixed, controller is VGA compatible, RAMDAC causes snow
Total memory: 8000 kilobytes
0x0006: 640x200x1 (monochrome) Planar (1 planes)
0x000D: 320x200x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x000E: 640x200x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x0010: 640x350x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x0011: 640x480x1 (monochrome) Planar (1 planes)
0x0012: 640x480x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x0013: 320x200x8 PseudoColor
0x0105: 1024x768x8 PseudoColor
0x0117: 1024x768x16 TrueColor [5:6:5:0]
0x0118: 1024x768x24 TrueColor [8:8:8:8]
0x0112: 640x480x24 TrueColor [8:8:8:8]
0x0114: 800x600x16 TrueColor [5:6:5:0]
0x0115: 800x600x24 TrueColor [8:8:8:8]
0x0101: 640x480x8 PseudoColor
0x0103: 800x600x8 PseudoColor
0x0111: 640x480x16 TrueColor [5:6:5:0]
#
On the Dell Inspiron 510m
# /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvesa -listmodes
VBE version 3.0 (Intel(r)852GM/852GME/855GM/855GME Graphics Chip Accelerated VGA BIOS)
DAC is fixed, controller is VGA compatible, RAMDAC causes snow
Total memory: 832 kilobytes
0x0006: 640x200x1 (monochrome) Planar (1 planes)
0x000D: 320x200x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x000E: 640x200x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x0010: 640x350x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x0011: 640x480x1 (monochrome) Planar (1 planes)
0x0012: 640x480x4 Planar (4 planes) (no linear framebuffer)
0x0013: 320x200x8 PseudoColor
0x0105: 1024x768x8 PseudoColor
0x0101: 640x480x8 PseudoColor
0x0103: 800x600x8 PseudoColor
0x0111: 640x480x16 TrueColor [5:6:5:0]
#
From what I can find on the internet, Xvesa seems to be part of project RULE: the kdrive resource (
http://www.rule-project.org/en/sw/kdrive.php) which also lists an Xi810 binary. I tried running Xi810 in Puppy, but it just complained about a missing library libpam.so.0.
Unfortunately, I haven't the faintest idea how to get this to work with Puppy.
Does anyone have this Xi810 driver for Puppy?
/Paul