[ltp] Screen resolution and console fonts for T23 1400x1050 - solved

[John Shane]

On Wed, 3 May 2006 10:01:47 -0400
"Alex Deucher" <alexdeucher@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/3/06, John Shane <jslists@mtwafrica.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, 02 May 2006 21:57:47 -0400
> > "John Lumby" <johnlumby@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > >John Shane <jslists@mtwafrica.org> wrote:
> > > >I have a T23 (2647-9SU) with a 1400x1050 screen and am having a
> > > >difficult time getting a nice looking text console.
> > >
> > > I have T23 with the S3 supersavage graphics chip.    I woudl have assumed
> > > all T23's came with this except that I saw someone else talking about the
> > > radeonfb driver (?) in a reply to your  post.      For quite some time now,
> > > 2.6 kernels have had the option of a frambebuffer graphics driver for the
> > > console for the Savage chips (config option CONFIG_FB_SAVAGE=y).   Try this,
> > > and then choose one of the the various fonts - I use iso10.f14, giving 42
> > > very readable lines, but you can find fancier ones.    BTW, Originally I
> > > tried setting the driver as a module, thinking I would experiment, but, and
> > > this may be my ignorance, I could not get it to actually control the console
> > > when loaded as a module, only as built-in as I've shown.
> > >
> > > I have to say it is not perfect (I also have a T42 with an ATI firegl chip
> > > and the corresponding framebuffer driver is much superior) but it's far
> > > better than the standard VESA video settings to my eye.
> > >
> > > John
> > >
> >
> > Thanks very much.  I do have the SuperSavage chipset in my T23.  With
> > your note in hand I went poking about my kernel config file and found
> > the bit I've copied below.  The Savage frame buffer is not enabled.
> > So do I assume correctly that if I am going to enable the Savage
> > frame buffer I should comment out the references to VESA_FB,
> > VESA_TNG?  I'm also assuming that the console font reference compiled
> > in the kernel will be overridden with the console font in rc.conf.
> > Is there any advantage in leaving the default mode at 1024x768 on a
> > 1400x1050 display when the font size can be controlled by selection
> > in rc.conf?  John
> >
> 
> All T23's have supersavage chips.  All T2x thinkpads are savage based
> (0-2 being savage IX, 3 being supersavage).  Also, keep in mind that
> savagefb and the current xorg (6.9/7.0/cvs) savage driver do not play
> nice together.
> 
> Alex

Well, the problem has been solved, but not as I expected.  Shortly
after responding to John Lumby I ran an Arch system upgrade that
among other things upgraded the kernel from 2.6.16.11-1 to
2.6.16.13-1. All of a sudden the console fonts looked terrific.  They
are smooth and well-formed.

What I've noticed as I've poked around a bit in the output of dmesg
under both kernels is that with 11-1 I would get "you passed an
undefined mode number" when I tried to boot with vga=775. Now it just
sails on through. In dmesg under 11-1 I found "Console: switching to
colour frame buffer device 128x48"  Now with 13-1 I find "vesafb:
mode is 1280x1024x8" and "Console: switching to colour frame buffer
device 160x64"  The default fonts at 1280x1024 are tiny but I've set a
larger size of the "terminus" font, ter-v24n (Terminus Font 4.20,
Copyright (C) 2006 Dimitar Toshkov Zhekov) in my rc.conf that works
well for me (i.e. large font, high res). The change from 128x48 to
160x64 was what I was looking for in the beginning.

Thanks for all the responses.  Can anyone explain what's happened
between the two kernels?  John