(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I have a laptop which seems to have oddball Trident video hardware and the display is flickery, and the mouse movement is extremely jerky.

However, if I run Akita from a live CD and select VESA, the mouse operation is perfect and the video is clean. It is the only puppy that I have found that makes the mouse and video work properly on this laptop. My question is how do I identify which parameters are making this laptop work correctly, and where are those parameters found (for both mouse and video), and can I force those parameters permanently into another puppy?

The machine is a Toshiba 2670DVD PIII 448Mhz laptop with 192Mb RAM. It uses a Trident Cyber 9525 (Rev49) video adapter.

(I'm going to stick with Akita on this lappy because it just works, but it bugs me that I don't understand why the xorgs keep changing when I try to modify other puppies video, and I want to know how to get the exact setup correct). If I can figure out what Akita is doing right then I will have learned something valuable.

I tried Macpup 525 with VESA on this machine (because I found a forum entry somewhere that suggested success with this version) but still had the bad video and mouse. I've tried HEAPS of other puppies too.

I assume that the xorg.conf is involved, but have had very limited success with previous attempts to change xorg on other puppies.

Attached is a pic of the /etc/X11 xorg files when running Akita live. Where to start when there are so many xorg.confs??? Aaaargh!

One technique I use is to mount the pupsave when its not in use - to see what has changed.

For example -
copy pupsave.2fs -> pupsaveAA.2fs and
copy pup431.sfs -> pup431AA.sfs

then you can mount and compare the contents of
pupsaveAA.2fs and pup431AA.sfs

Thanks darkcity, that will be useful.

I’m experimenting and slowly discovering things about how xorg works. So far I have found the following:

1) The video behaviour is determined by the contents of the xorg.conf file in etc/x11. However, this file is not “constant

Hi greengeek,

[quote]There is also another issue here: I think that there must be two ways to properly use my video card, one is in a very “basic

Monsie wrote:I assume that after installing the pet, you would run: xorgwizard then choose and search for the best match for your Trident card.

Interesting, thanks. I downloaded those two pets and installed them, then removed all previous xorg.conf files and rebooted. The xorgwizard ran and I selected "choose" - expecting that I would now see at least a couple of Trident options (eg "TRIDENT old", "TRIDENT new" or something) but no. Only "Trident" just like before. (Of course I don't know what the pets actually did, or where I should look for the files they loaded so I'm probably doing something wrong here)

After selecting Trident, xwin would not run so I had to rerun the xorgwizard and select "probe" so that it built it's own xorg.conf and it is exactly the same format of xorg.conf as all the faulty ones. (but at least xwin runs).

.
I just found an interesting comment by MU, which sheds a little light on what occurs with xorg.conf

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 1&start=53

greengeek wrote:.
I just found an interesting comment by MU, which sheds a little light on what occurs with xorg.conf

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 1&start=53

Yes, that is an interesting post from Mark. As you pointed out earlier, it is rather confusing with so many versions of xorg.conf... which I think has to do with covering various hardware configurations when running Puppy live and/or when installing a video driver. In your case, I'm thinking that since you are using the Vesa driver, that you would want to tweak the xorg.conf-vesa file if possible. In the event that you are able to install the Trident driver, then of course you'll want to tweak that xorg.conf file.

A suggestion: why don't you analyse the driver.pet(s) so that you can identify the Trident driver files, find out where they are located, whether they should be moved or not, and, whether they are newer, older or the same as any versions you might already have, for example:
Then click on the tar.gz file to open it in Xarchive....
After analysing the package, and to reverse the process then do:
One other suggestion: have a look at your Xorg.0.log file as it will give you details as to which drivers and specs are being used, and possibly any problems or errors also.

HTH,
Monsie

Some very good extra info from npierce explaining xorg.conf non-persistence here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 718#661718
Just might help to structure an xorg.conf that is persistent and correctly configured.
(may need to borrow an xorg.conf from some other distro and reconfigure it in accordance with what Puppy is expecting). I need to come back to this later sometime.

Just adding a note for myself for the next time I get back to this machine:
Zenfunk mentions using the xvesa driver within xorg here:

"I have two sattelites myself. While the bios might be very forgiving, the graphics card gives me headaches each time I boot a fresh puppy. Xvesa doesn't work, trident driver in xorg doesn't too, so you have to use xvesa driver in xorg(!!!) to get it going. Wicked.
Nevertheless, nice machines."
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 6&start=37

He also says:
"OK- the xorg- toshiba issue:
not sure it works on your particular toshiba:
I selected xorg, because the xvesa only gave me a completely messed up screen (looked a bit like a tv with no antenna cable plugged in- weird).
The auto detection loaded the trident driver which I manually changed to vesa in teh xorg.config. (select 'Test' in xorgwizard, quit the test and select 'edit xorg.config manually')

So I actually run xorg with the vesa driver- don't ask me why I tried that out in the first place - but it worked for one of my toshibas.

The other toshiba I got worked with xvesa right away, so YMMV. "
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 6&start=50

I think this post might be quite relevant for my machine when I can get some more testing done:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=14058

Also this: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=14140
BarryK offers a method of locking out the hardware profile testing to help force a particular xorg.

Good tute for nvidia drivers compile:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 818#365818
Probably of no benefit with a Trident board, but I might learn something beneficial from the overall process.

Link to help with building xorg.conf from scratch:
http://foxyroxylinux.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=165

Just adding some links that offer some more info with setting up xorg and also turning off hardware profiling where it stops correct driver discovery(particularly with trident cyberblade):

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 4944#34944

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 739f4e3e95

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 7448#87448

Just adding another link to a thread (miriam finding xorg.conf overwritten during xwin) that might yield some techniques i can use:
http://ns1.murga-projects.com/puppy/vie ... ad6#800099

Also this one:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=661718

...And one more helpful link
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 944#799944

Good info from npierce about modifying xorg.conf:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 718#661718