# intel i810 framebuffer? [solved]

## F-0_ICE

good day. i have a probably dumb question but is framebuffer at all possible with my i810 graphic chipset?

my system is qutie old but when i install gentoo i want to really max out all the power my system can muster.  :Wink: 

so if anyone could answer this question please.

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## Zardam

I don't have tried but you sould look at this : http://i810fb.sourceforge.net/howto/x450.html

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## F-0_ICE

thanks for the reply. will give it atry

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## F-0_ICE

i have been messing around with the kernel and i just got the resoultion to change but it didn't change for the better . instead of 1024x768 it displays in 640x480 i have 1024x768@85 set in my kernel and i have tried using the video ststement in grub but none works. so could anyone offer ideas?

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## pilla

Moved from OTG.

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## F-0_ICE

hello again i made some sort of a breakthrough with gentoo-sources-2.6.12-gentoo-r6. the resoulution is set during bootup without any video/vga statements in my grub.conf but it stays at 640x480 res even when the vesa default mode is set to 1152x864@75 in the kernel.

would someone please help me with this.

NOTE: during bootup i see some text concerning vesafb but it scrolls by too fast to catch it. is there any way to pause/slow the boot screen in order to copy the info? and me pause button don't work

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## Archangel1

Yes it is, my ex-laptop had an i810 or so and it mostly worked.

I never had any luck with vesafb-tng (as opposed to classic vesafb) - regardless of what I did to it, it would result in the screen blanking, then slowly fading up through green to white. Was a very odd effect, but nobody else seems to have seen anything similar, so I'll guess it was just that laptop.

I remember reading about an issue with the i810, that it would only steal itself some inadequate amount of memory. A quick bit of math indicates that you're going to need roughly 1MB per bit of colour depth at 1152x864; ie 16MB for 1152x864 at 16bpp. What it's got may not be adequate.

Anyway that may be something to look into; sorry I can't be of more help.

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## F-0_ICE

thanks for the reply. i tried vesafb instead of vesafb-tng  but that gives me the  old undefined mode number and lets me try scan for video modes. methinks i will have to get a actual video card instead of this old onboard chipset.

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## F-0_ICE

upon some investigating i discovered that the i810 only has 4MB of memory  :Exclamation:   "and i thought cirrus logic cards were bad... " thanks for helping. may be able to go at 256 colors. guess we will see....

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## pilla

 *F-0_ICE wrote:*   

> upon some investigating i discovered that the i810 only has 4MB of memory   "and i thought cirrus logic cards were bad... " thanks for helping. may be able to go at 256 colors. guess we will see....

 

i810 shares the memory with your regular RAM, AFAIK you can setup more than 4 MB.

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## F-0_ICE

really?! now how can i do that?

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## pilla

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2458891.html

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## F-0_ICE

thanks for the link pilla. but it mostly speaks about i810 and xorg the little i see about framebuffer didn't help. but i managed to get a hold of this info from vesa

```

agpgart: Detected an Intel i810 Chipset.

agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xf8000000

vesafb: Intel Corporation, i810 Graphics Controller, Hardware Version 0.0 (OEM:

Intel810(TM) Graphics Chip Accelerated VGA BIOS)

vesafb: VBE version: 2.0

vesafb: protected mode interface info at c000:7a50

vesafb: pmi: set display start = c00c7a96, set palette = c00c7aba

vesafb: pmi: ports = 3c0 3c4 3c5 3c7 3c8 3c9 3ce 3cf 3d4 3d5 3d6 3d7 3d8 3d9 3da

vesafb: monitor limits: vf = 0 Hz, hf = 0 kHz, clk = 0 MHz

vesafb: scrolling: redraw

vesafb: cannot reserve video memory at 0x0

vesafb: abort, cannot ioremap video memory 0x100000 @ 0x0

Trying to free nonexistent resource <00000000-000fffff>

vesafb: probe of vesafb.0 failed with error -5

```

 this occours during bootup does it help at all?

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## Archangel1

You can play about a bit with the memory available using /proc/mtrr, by deleting and recreating entries. However I can't remember the exact commands involved; and since that laptop is no longer with me, I can't look up what they were. Sorry  :Smile: 

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## F-0_ICE

i have no idea what do to with /proc/mtrr as well. also just to clarify this my only interest is to set up a bigger screen resoulution(1152x864@75) or at the very least (1024x768@85)

at the rate of my posts i willl end up a guru and still be a linux n00b.

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## F-0_ICE

i finally did it  :Exclamation:  i read the fb file on the i810 and from its settings i made it work!

my kernel config:

```

<*> Support for frame buffer devices

<*>   VESA VGA graphics support

 VESA driver type (vesafb)  --->

<*> Intel 810/815 support (EXPERIMENTAL)            

 [*]   use VESA Generalized Timing Formula 

Console display driver support  --->   

<*> Framebuffer Console support

Logo configuration  --->

[*] Bootup logo                                         

[*]   Standard black and white Linux logo               

[*]   Standard 16-color Linux logo                      

[*]   Standard 224-color Linux logo

[*] Support for the framebuffer splash 

```

and the settings for me grub.conf

```

video=i810fb:vram:4,xres:1024,yres:768,bpp:8,hsync1:30,hsync2:55,vsync1:50,vsync2:85,accel,mtrr

```

thanks to everyone 4 helping  :Smile: 

NOTE: the i810 file on fb can be found in "/usr/src/linux/Documentation/fb/"

just wanted to state this 4 those that don't know  :Wink: 

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