[H-GEN] video card problem

James McPherson - Solution Centre Engineer James.McPherson at aus.sun.com
Thu Aug 3 20:22:11 EDT 2000


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> > 
> > On Thu, Aug 03, 2000 at 10:56:12PM +1000, Michael wrote:
> > > Hi everybody, I bought a SIS6326 8mb PCI video card tonight 
> > and am having
> > > problems getting it working.
> > > 
> > > It displays the colour blue as black, and solid bars under 
> > things like
> > > pine/pico/vi as brown. That and when running X i get small 
> > vertical lines
> > > appearing on the monitor.
> > > 
> > > The card detects okay on boot and can be found by Xconfigurator.
> > > 
> > > thoughts anybody? =)
> > > 
> > 
> > Freaky.
> > 
> > I used an sis6326 (4meg agp) back in '97 with great sucess under linux
> > (once I found the Suse X server because the driver hadn't yet 
> > been integrated 
> > into XFree86 proper), so I doubt its your X server, and if 
> > its having trouble
> > under straight console then I say its defiantely not X thats 
> > the trouble.
> > 
> > My guess would actually be video ram, faulty connections or a faulty
> > chip on the card. Try it in another machine.
> > 
> > (I assume you've ruled out the moniter as a problem)
> > 
> 
> I think it is fair to rule out the monitor being the problem because of the
> "little solid bars under things like pine" etc.
> The blue as black could have (if found on its own) been contributed to poor
> voltage in the blue channel circuit or some suh thing but i have never seen
> a CRT put "little solid bars" in predictable possitions on certain apps.
> 
> I don't know enough about the workings of a video card to be able to comment
> further but at least you can be sure that it is not a monitor problem.

I have one of these cards myself. The problem seems to lie in the XFree86 server 
support. Are you running at least 3.3.6 or 4.0 of the server? The card itself is 
not all that well supported anyway, but 3.3.6 and 4.0 are somewhat better than 
3.3.5. You might also want to check your display depth settings - try 8bit 
colour or 24bit rather than 16bit. Another thing is that your refresh rate might 
need to be tuned.

regards,
James C. McPherson
--
Solution Centre Engineer              828 Pacific Highway 
Sun Microsystems Australia Pty Ltd    Gordon NSW 2072
             Support Helpline: 1-800-555-786



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