XFree, E, and refresh rates...

XFree, E, and refresh rates...

[Matt Haffner]

Tom Rini wrote (in the user list):

> ftp://devel.linuxppc.org/users/trini/XFree86-3.3.5, but they're quite old
> & out of date again.  Something new & improved <g> RSN.

Tom, Anthony, et al.,

I was curious if any of you had seen my posting on the users list a bit
ago about problems that cropped up with Enlightenment 0.16 related to
monitor refresh rates (B&W/400). There are two minor issues on this
topic.

(1)

There seems to be a general problem (at least on my system... I haven't
seen corroboration yet) that XFree chooses the _lowest_ vertical refresh
modeline instead of the highest one supported by the monitor. I have
lines like

    HorizSync   30.0-95.0
    VertRefresh 50.0-152.0

correctly put there by Xconfigurator for my monitor (& double checked by
me). Nonetheless, a default XFConfig file results in an X session at
60Hz. To force higher refresh rates, I need to comment out modelines for
the lower ones explicitly. 

(2)

Recently I installed Enlightenment 0.16 on top of Tom's 3.3.5 XFree and
Anthony's aty128fb (unaccelerated at that time). I had been using the
stock Enlightenment 0.15 with X running in 24-bit depth and a modeline
that gave me a refresh rate of something like 85 Hz. With the new
Enlightenment, X wouldn't even start dying with

  Fatal server error:
  Caught signal 11. Server aborting

Finding it worked at home on my PowerBase, I played around with the
XConfig file the next day. Strangely enough, E 0.16 only wanted to work
at lower refresh rates! I was forced to use 75 Hz at my current
resolution (1280x1024). Odd, but I could deal with it... 

Then I installed Anthony's newest Rage128 accelerated fbdev last week.
The same error cropped up again. Fortunately, switching to a new
modeline fixed the problem, but now I'm forced to run at 60-70Hz. Oddly
enough, a session run from gdm works at 70Hz, but one started in a
console via startx only works at 60Hz.

Any ideas? The odd thing for me is that a _window manager_ (or how it's
driving X) cares about my refresh rate. Think there is anything I can do
on this end to probe this more? I'd love to dive in with my hack 'n
slash debugging skills, but X is a bit too scary of a beast for me right
now :) Thanks for getting us this far!

mh
--
Matt Haffner                      /|------|\    University of Wisconsin
Dept. of Astronomy               /|--------|\            Madison
haffner@astro.wisc.edu          /|----------|\  
           WHAM project -- http://www.astro.wisc.edu/wham

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: XFree, E, and refresh rates...

[Tom Rini]

On Tue, 16 Nov 1999, Matt Haffner wrote:

> I was curious if any of you had seen my posting on the users list a bit
> ago about problems that cropped up with Enlightenment 0.16 related to
> monitor refresh rates (B&W/400). There are two minor issues on this
> topic.

E 0.16.2 & anthonys FBDev seem happy here..

> There seems to be a general problem (at least on my system... I haven't
> seen corroboration yet) that XFree chooses the _lowest_ vertical refresh
> modeline instead of the highest one supported by the monitor. I have
> lines like

It takes the 1st one that fits, iirc.

---
Tom Rini (TR1265)
http://gate.crashing.org/~trini/


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: XFree, E, and refresh rates...

[Matt Haffner]

Tom Rini wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 16 Nov 1999, Matt Haffner wrote:
> 
> > I was curious if any of you had seen my posting on the users list a bit
> > ago about problems that cropped up with Enlightenment 0.16 related to
> > monitor refresh rates (B&W/400). There are two minor issues on this
> > topic.
> 
> E 0.16.2 & anthonys FBDev seem happy here..

OK... I'll have to try out 16.2. I've got 16.1 installed right now.
Odd...

> > There seems to be a general problem (at least on my system... I haven't
> > seen corroboration yet) that XFree chooses the _lowest_ vertical refresh
> > modeline instead of the highest one supported by the monitor. I have
> > lines like
> 
> It takes the 1st one that fits, iirc.

Ahhhh... Thanks. I see my misunderstanding with this now. In the
XF86Config file, there's a statement: 
                                  vvvv
# monitor). With these modes, the best standard mode that your monitor
# and video card can support for a given resolution is automatically
# used.

I had interpreted that to mean best refresh rate (and thought I read
that elsewhere too). But checking the man page it says it takes the
first valid one. 

Is it possible then for XConfigurator spit out the modelines in reverse
order from what it does now? It looks like it's in order of increasing
hsync right now, but maybe decreasing hsync or vrefresh would be better?
That way we get the highest refresh rate right out of the box. Totally
trival though :)

Thanks again...

mh
--
Matt Haffner                      /|------|\    University of Wisconsin
Dept. of Astronomy               /|--------|\            Madison
haffner@astro.wisc.edu          /|----------|\  
           WHAM project -- http://www.astro.wisc.edu/wham

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: XFree, E, and refresh rates...

[Tom Rini]

On Tue, 16 Nov 1999, Matt Haffner wrote:

> Is it possible then for XConfigurator spit out the modelines in reverse
> order from what it does now? It looks like it's in order of increasing
> hsync right now, but maybe decreasing hsync or vrefresh would be better?
> That way we get the highest refresh rate right out of the box. Totally
> trival though :)

I'll be beating up Xconfigurator soon, so we shall see.

---
Tom Rini (TR1265)
http://gate.crashing.org/~trini/


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/