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Date:      Wed, 05 Aug 1998 20:15:58 +0100
From:      Brian Somers <brian@Awfulhak.org>
To:        Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
Cc:        Brian Somers <brian@Awfulhak.org>, Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, Randy Philipp <cphilipp@pop500.gsfc.nasa.gov>, Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>, freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG, Jeroen van den Boom <jeroen@ctxnl.com>
Subject:   Re: Neomagic chipset - is it a hardware problem ? 
Message-ID:  <199808051915.UAA04919@awfulhak.org>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 05 Aug 1998 16:47:47 %2B0930." <19980805164747.I6348@freebie.lemis.com> 

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[.....]
> > I can only guess that the sleep/resume is being caught by the power
> > management stuff and X is re-initialising (wrongly) the display
> > whereas the LCD off/on event is completely transparent and the laptop
> > firmware knows how to make the screen work when hot..... once this
> > `tweak' has happened, the display is fine forever more - up until it
> > goes into text mode and back into graphics mode (ala X server).
> 
> I'm not convinced that this is the problem.  Presumably, under
> Microsoft you can run the thing for hours (or until the "system"
> crashes) without this problem occurring.

I've no idea.  I installed FreeBSD on the laptop as soon as I got it, 
but I would think that this is the case - ruling out a hardware 
problem (which I think I can, as I can make it work by turning the LCD 
off then on), we must assume that as NeoMagic themselves wrote (or 
contracted the writing of) the Windows driver, they know how to do what 
that little switch does.

[.....]
> Well, I don't have a NeoMagic chipset.  I've just been passing this
> information around for people who do.  I'll gladly do a make world (if
> this damn server would give me access), but I don't think it would do
> much.

No - I was only interested in finding out if the graphics chipset is 
over-heat-able on other machines given the same software setup.

> What I *do* think could be useful would be to extract the video
> registers under Microsoft and compare them to what gets written in
> there by X, if you have a Microsoft partition left on the laptop.  If
> you don't have anything suitable, I can check what I have here.

I can probably find a 2.5" disk with windows on it, but I would have 
thought that even Windows 95/98 would GPF a program that tried to 
read the graphics card registers - even if it didn't, I'm pretty sure 
that there are probably some read-only registers (I'm talking from 
UART experience - I know nothing about graphics cards) that would 
invalidate the exercise.

I'm quite happy to live with the limitation of closing and opening 
the lid after starting X (this makes everything work) - I'd just like 
to hear if anyone else with a NeoMagic can reproduce the problem - or 
even better, if someone with a CTX Cybernote running X 3.2.2 (the 3rd 
patch is just some security stuff - not relevant here) on 
FreeBSD-current could try to reproduce the problem.

When (if?) NeoMagic release the specs, I'm sure everything will 
become clear :-)

> Greg
> --
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers
> finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key

Thanks for your input.

-- 
Brian <brian@Awfulhak.org>, <brian@FreeBSD.org>, <brian@OpenBSD.org>
      <http://www.Awfulhak.org>;
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour....



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