Framebuffering, part II.... Pretty mysterious, eh?

[TheSpeedoBeast]

I had an old post related to this, but after I figured part of my problem, the main point of the thread totally changed, so here is where I am at now:
I finally got the console framebuffer working at boot up. However, the highest resolution that I am capable of using is 800x600. Does anyone know of a particular way of getting the higher resolutions working with my video card? I am running the Nvidia Geforce4 Mx440se PCI. I just get the 'undefined mode' or whatnot error message whenever I boot up when I try to pass a resolution beyond 800x600. Oh, and by the way, I am using the 2.6 test11 kernel. Thanks for all your help, in advance!

[GaryJones32]

yea the kernel don't do higher resolutions so good
never tried to use framebuffer mode because it uses graphics mode
of the video card (slow slow and painfully slower)
but bassically the kernel has trouble identifying hardware
so can't try higher modes for fear of frying stuff.
solution:
you can use a utility called SVGATextMode
some modes probably won't work due to hardware specifics
but you will be able to use some of the high res modes
because you set the hardware details
you make a kind of x like config file
Make sure you read the docs real good cause you can fry both
monitator and vid card
if you try to compile and get an error due to gcc3 look for a patch from
a "Beyond Linux From Scratch" mirror
after install
cp TextConfig /etc/TextConfig
comment out the default VGA setting
scroll down and look for your chipset and uncoment
then set HorizSync and VertRefresh for your monitor
if you get scrambled screen just type
SVGATextMode 80x25
blindly to get it back
if you have savetextmode and textmode
save before trying SVGATextMode then you can use textmode to get back
to start of try something simple say
SVGATextMode 132x50x9
then experiment
if things are real misconfigured and you can't get back just reboot
lastly after you get it working you can turn off "SyncDisks"
(no need to flush the cache if it's working ok)
and comment out the config messages so you don't have to look at them

[TheSpeedoBeast]

Just wondering, but does this method change the resolution or just the text size?

[TheSpeedoBeast]

Sorry guys, but I gotta bump this one really quick; any ideas on whether or not the above mentioned method changes the resolution or text size or whatever would be awesome!

[Hayl]

there are dos in the kernel source code, uder Documentation, i belive the file name you are looking for is vesa.txt.

the vesa documentation explains exactly how to set different resolutions.

[TonyB]

mine is under /usr/src/linux-<uname -r>/svga.txt. Interesting reading...

[Suminigashi]

Well this may not be very helpful, but I would just like to say that I'm running mine at 1024X768 resolution and I don't seem to be experiencing any performance loss or problems. I'm not sure what distro you are using but when I was installing Slackware 9.0 I was given the option for setting the framebuffer under lilo. Have you tried setting it up in your lilo config file? If so and it doesn't work maybe its a driver problem, I'm not sure.