[ILUG] Shared Memory driver...

[Andy Ferguson]

On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, Tom O' Connor wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I am new to linux. I installed the OS last night but have run into  a 
> problem with my graphics card.
> 
> I have  an AMD system, with a silicon grapics AGP chip on the motherboard. 
> It uses Ram for its memory - 8MB. The driver under Windows is SIS530. When I 
> try various configuations with the graphics I am unable to get the X windows 
> started at any resolution.
> 
> Can someone tell me if they know of a generic driver or way in which I can 
> get x windows running on a shared memory AGP chip.

I doubt its anything to do with the shared memory business; I have a
system running with an older SIS chipset at a decent resolution. It
depends then on
        what distribution you have installed
		what version of the distribution you have
		what version of X you have
the distribution you use may include some additional tools to help
you configure X; suse have their own auto-config system - this will
make sure you have installed the correct X server or have it linked
correctly to /usr/X11/bin/X

the version you use will determine what version of X you have and
possibly alterntive setup options. RedHat v5 came with a commercial
MetroX server which can be much easier to configure and supports a
wider range of graphics cards than the then current XFree servers

the version of XFree you have may not support this graphics card. In
some cases you will only sacrifice performance; for more modern
cards (especially 3D ones) older X servers simply will not work -
this was the case for newer cheapo S3Trio3D cards. The only solution
here is to get hold of the latest version of XFree

I suspect your problem will be the final one; an old version of
XFree - check the XFree website at (I think) xfree86.org for update
info on current cards supported; the documentation with your
existing setup may give you a clue as well - its in
/usr/X11/lib/X11/doc. According to my docs, older SiS cards did not
work in Generic VGA and the developers suggested using xf86config
which is a good deal tackier than other tools. It looks to me like
SiS cards are normally covered by the SVGA server; make sure you
have it installed, linked and defined in your X configuration

Andy Ferguson
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