Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 07:53:59 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Lewis Thompson" <lewiz@fajita.org>, "FreeBSD-questions" <questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: VESA_800x600 (age old question) Message-ID: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNCEEHEPAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20040908211320.GA47384@fajita.org>
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> -----Original Message----- > From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Lewis Thompson > Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 2:13 PM > To: FreeBSD-questions > Subject: Re: VESA_800x600 (age old question) > > > On Wed, Sep 08, 2004 at 04:59:23PM -0400, Parv wrote: > > in message <20040908183714.GA43489@fajita.org>, wrote Lewis Thompson > > thusly... > > > vidcontrol: cannot set videomode: Operation not supported by device > > > > > > Can somebody please tell me what this means? > > > > All that means is the card does not have proper/complete VESA > > implementation. IOW, get a card w/ proper/complete VESA > > implementation? > > Aha! So while it does have a VESA BIOS it's just not complete. > Presumably the vesa code uses some of the less common features to > achieve what it does? In a word, it's doesn't work and it's not going > to without some really radical changes to the vesa code? Can you > confirm/refute this? > VESA was a standard that was important back in the DOS days. When it first came out the card vendors all came out with TSR's that would intercept the VESA calls and either make the equivalent BIOS calls into the card BIOS or would setup the registers directly. Later on the card vendors all integrated that into their video card BIOS roms. These days in the age of Windows and protected mode OSs, the video card driver generally does not make calls into video BIOS for most things. With FreeBSD the VESA stuff is handled by the VESA driver (kldload vesa) which talks to vga() which I believe handles the ugliness of the bios calls into the actual video card bios. Only certain cards have been tested with this module and this driver. (you did load the vesa module before running vidcontrol and specing VESA modes, did you?) It's quite possible that your video card does have vesa extensions but because of some difference in their implementation, the calls from vga() fail, thus the vesa module cannot use it. Or it's quite possible that your manufacturer didn't include VESA support at all. There are some DOS utilities floating around which test for VESA compatability, you might try booting your laptop into DOS and running one of those. If they say your laptop supports VESA extensions then perhaps the vga developer would add support into the driver. Ted
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