[H-GEN] Aid and Assistance Sought

Frank Brand fbrand at uq.net.au
Mon Apr 3 01:14:16 EDT 2000


[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and ]
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On Mon, 03 Apr 2000, you wrote:

Sorry if this is getting off topic for General...I will not further respond but
there is stuff in here that is just plain WRONG.


> On Sun, 02 Apr 2000, Frank Brand wrote:
> > > it is not a true vga chip, but a piece of shit.
> >> 
> > Rather harshly and a tad inaccurately described. 
> 
> It is neither harsh, nor innacurate. Problems with sis are well recognised in
> the industry, to the extent that quotations for equipment supply specifically
> exclude them. The sis are not true vga cards, they do not have the standard 16
> ibm modes and cannot be used as is, with Xfree vga16 server. 


How is it then that I have been running an AOPEN PA 50 with X for months in one
installation. However, they never worked other than at 640 x 480 with anything
before X 3.3.6


It is for this
> reason they almost inevitably are unable to be used in the general installs of
> most distros. They also require on board memory support. 

Absolutely WRONG I have never used an on-board SIS chip or any other (except an
ATI) so I can not comment about the on-board chips. I will not use shared
memory and the majority of on-board chips do use shared memory. There are a
number of free standing SIS 6236 chips that do not need on board memory. I have
been using them for more than 12 months in both Windows and Linux installations
without any problem at all but in Linux you must use a late version of X!


Most, not all, but
> most of the Sis chipset does not have memory of its own. They are a nightmare,
> and, if you read the fine print, they are only garanteed to work at 640x480
> resolution. YMMV. As far as being entry level. Certainly, nothing wrong with
> that. The S3 (trio) series does a proper job for the same price.


Maybe the on-board chips are a problem, I dont use them. No problem with the S3
comment but again to my knowledge they no longer produce the PCI version and
the AGP version will not work with X before 3.3.6 !! 3.3.5 was supposed to
support them but I dont think it really did.


> The series is incompatible with the BX and A4-Alux series of Intel
> chipsets because they hold the bus for too long and lock the clock. There is
> very little in their technical specs which any designer would consider
> 'standard' They abuse the resources of the motherboard in general.


I think you might be talking about on-board chips again and I suspect it might
be the motherboard design (maybe you see to many PC Chips boards). I have used
these video cards on ACER  AX6BC/ AX6BC Pro and Gigabyte motherboards ( all
Intel BX chipsets note) with no trouble.

In fact I have one client who actually requests the SiS 8Mb video cards.

I know of one supplier who has been making large quantities of systems
using the SiS video card without any problems...NOTE card not on-board.


> None of which helps the person with a 6326 glued on their laptop motherboard.
> The only clean way of installing is to use a distro which has 3.3.5 where sis
> is supported sufficiently that it doesn't display the infamous black screen, or
> 3.3.6 where it now displays the infamous striped bands instead.


That is exactly what I have been saying since the start of this thread. Use
3.3.6 or later. You can't expect any video card to work properly if it does not
have the correct driver. I dont even get black stripes...maybe you do on a
laptop, dont know!!

Sorry everyone I may have offended but ...... I have noted that ACER and AOpen
seem to be trying harder than most to support Linux and also the AMD athlon and
I think it is important not to falsely knock those manufacturers really trying.

Anyone who doubts a single word I have said is welcome to see the proof in an
operating computer.

-- 
Frank Brand
E-mail: fbrand at uq.net.au
Home Page: http://www.uq.net.au/~zzfbrand

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