Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 08:41:34 -0500 (CDT) From: "M. L. Dodson" <bdodson@beowulf.utmb.edu> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, durham@w2xo.pgh.pa.us Subject: Re: fixed-freq monitor syscons useage Message-ID: <199708291341.IAA15059@beowulf.utmb.edu>
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> > I've asked this question before, but I still keep hoping to get the > attention of someone who may have investigated this... > Don't have one, but have read about it casually and am willing to speculate. YMMV on my responses ;-) > I have a fixed-frequency 19 inch monitor. These are readily available > on the surplus market from Hitachi and Sony. They make excellent X > displays. By massaging the XF86Config file, you can set the X server > up with most VGA cards to work just fine with these monitors. The two > that > I have are 1024x768 only. They will not display 640x480. > > The problem is that you do not see the boot messages as the computer is > booting > and you can't use the syscons virtual screens because they run in > 640x480 . This > can be a real pain in times of trouble when something hangs up (like > when you are > installing new hardware or something of that sort). I have to keep an > old 640x480 > monitor around for these occasions, and it's very unhandy to have to > carry this thing > in and connect it to the computer just to see why the system didn't > boot! 8-) . > > I believe the problem is that the ROM BIOS sets the initial resolution > to 640x480, so > that the resolution in which the boot messages are displayed. > > I don't what to comtemplate changing the ROM BIOS, but I thought that > someone in the > FreeBSD gang was playing with at least being able to change the scan > rate immediately > after BIOS passed control to FreeBSD, but I haven't seen anything about > this lately. > Was this wishful thinking? > I think the problem is that the BIOS wants to talk to a 640x480 VGA display on most (all?) PCs on bootup. I've never heard of a BIOS setting to use anything but that or a monochrome card (which you should stay away from if you are using an ISA ethernet card, at least in my experience). I've often thought that you might be able to fool some BIOSen to boot from a serial terminal, then you could shift to your display card, keyboard, mouse when you start X. Even if you could not fool the BIOS into using serial terminal, I'm almost positive you could force BSD to use a serial terminal console, in which case you would only miss the BIOS messages, but should get the BSD boot messages. Does anyone else know about this stuff in more depth and would be willing to comment? I have an old 386SX I could get to boot DOS and go into Kermit to use as a serial terminal if anything along this path might work. > Anyone working on this or even interested? > > regards, > -- > Jim Durham <Television Engineer-Unitel Mobile Video, Pittsburgh> > <Computer Consultant/Hobbyist> <Amateur Radio: W2XO> > <Web:http://www.w2xo.pgh.pa.us>; <Packet:W2XO@W2XO.#SWPA.PA.USA.NOAM> > -- M. L. Dodson bdodson@scms.utmb.edu 409-772-2178 FAX: 409-772-1790
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