# matroxfb - MATROX framebuffer driver help needed

## Bob P

I've just finished a Stage 1/NPTL install and I've finally got just about everything working with the 2.6.9-gentoo-r4 kernel.  I do have some questions about Matrox framebuffer support, if anyone can help:

My PC is a Dell Optiplex GX110 that uses the Intel i810 onboard video chipset.  This chipset has some issues with the current release of Xorg-X11 -- it is prone to random lockups where the video becomes scrambled as an array of colored vertical lines.  To avoid this problem, I've stuffed a Matrox Milennium II board into one of the PC's PCI slots.  I realize that using an older PCI type board instead of an on-board AGP chipset is a giant step backwards, but hey... its stable!

Right now I'm using the generic vesafb-tng video driver.  Its taken me an entire week to get gensplash screens to work at bootup, because I've just been st00pid -- I had made the mistake of making the following selection:

Device Drivers -> Graphics Support -> 

<*> Matrox Acceleration

<*> Milennium I/II support 

along with the specification of the vesafb-tng framebuffer driver.  As a result of compiling both drivers into the kernel, gensplash would never work.  I'm not sure why, but after a week of banging my head into the wall I decided to just opt out of the Matrox drivers and just try the vesafb-tng driver by itself...

VOILA!! Instand gensplash!!  (very cool, btw!)

So now I'm interested in whether its possible to use the Matrox drivers instead of the vesafb-tng driver in Gentoo, and still support the use of gensplash.  The reason I'm interested in the Matrox drivers is twofold:  1) I think that the Matrox drivers may be faster than the generic vesafb-tng drivers, and 2) the Matrox drivers also allow the user of other non-vesa resolutions and screen refresh rates.  I'd prefer to use the higher-than-vesa refresh rates when they're supported by the video card and monitor. 

So I've developed a few questions:

1.  Will Gensplash work with the Matrox Milennium I/II drivers? 

2.  Was my problem caused by the loading of two drivers into the kernel?  If so, am I going to have problems when I try to go to a dual head setup?

3.  How does the Matrox driver performance compare to the vesafb-tng driver?

4.  Where can I find info on the parameters for the matrox framebuffer driver?  I've seen some people refer to settings in their posts, but I have no idea what any of the parameters mean, and I'd appreciate a link to some reference info.

Thanks!

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## GatoVolador

I can answer a couple of your questions, but not the stuff about gensplash, as I have yet to try to get it working.

I've tried matroxfb and vesafb-ng and really can't tell the difference in performance - if there is one it is apparently small. One note - I'm on a P2 266, so that could have something to do with it.

You can get more info about the matrox fb in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/fb/matroxfb.txt. You may have to replace the linux with the directory that has your kernel if you don't have a linux symlink.

Regards.

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## Bob P

<insert pearl of wisdom here>

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## mwarnes

Bob you star!   :Very Happy: 

I've been beating my head on and off for even longer and still couldn't get gensplash to work with my Matrox card. After reading your last post I removed all the vesafb and vesafb-tng from my kernel just leaving the Matrox drivers. 

Set my kernel boot parm to:

video=matroxfb:vesa:0x1BB splash=silent,theme:emergence

Rebooted and finally up pops the the Gentoo bootsplash logo

Cheers .. Martin

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## Bob P

wow!  i'm so glad to hear that my hypothesis about <insert hypothesis> was right!  and I'm especially glad that it helped you to get genspash working!  

i'm sure that when the emergence splash screen finally showed up, you were as relieved as i was to see it.  it had to have been a very pleasing reward to see that image after beating your  head against the wall for so long.    :Cool: 

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