[ltp] [Fwd: Debian Sarge, XFree86 4.2, Thinkpad 770ED, 2.4.19-686 (unpatched)]

[Darin Strait]

I let my machine upgrade to the new XFree debian packages the other
night, and my X is hosed. Has anyone else had trouble running X 4.2.1 on
their 770?
 
X does run (it might even be a little bit faster :-/), but it seems as
if it's picked an improper color depth for the hardware -- the display
looks solarized, sort of. The colors are wrong, but I can manipulate
windows and my familiarity with my WindowMaker menu lets me remember
where my stuff is. Clearly, this needs to be fixed, though. Things seem
less insane at 8 bit (maybe I just don't remember what 8 bit is like and
it's actually correct) than 16 bit or 24 bit. When I dock and switch
XF86Config files, my 3dfx card runs normally.

The card still runs fine in Windows 2000. (I dual-boot.)

XFree doesn't seem to care what color depth I run at -- at each depth I
tried I find that my colors are slightly differently wrong. For example,
my xload, which is usually a black graph on a white background is now a
grey graph on a black background. At a different color depth, the colors
would be different, but still wrong.

One thing I notice is that what should be gradual fades from one color
to another, through many subtle shades, (like title bars, or the
splashscreen from KDE) have been reduced to repeating patterns of
unsubtle shades.

What to do? I'm only moderately clued-in as far as X goes, but I've
dpkg-reconfigured and apt-get remove/apt-get updated a few things with
absolutely no progress.


tia,
-darin