Re: X & mouse on Power Mac 4400


Subject: Re: X & mouse on Power Mac 4400
From: Scott Parrish (parrisc@mindspring.com)
Date: Mon Jul 10 2000 - 13:21:13 MDT


Hi, I have a Motorola Starmax 4000/200 (same MB and
graphics chipset as the 4400). This problem seems
to be a tanzania problem (the MB in the 4400).
If you search the YDL and LinuxPPC listserv archives
you will find this question comes up alot. I have
yet to hear a satisfactory solution to the problem
that uses XF86FBDev.

The best solution I have found so far is to stop
using XF86FBDev and use Xpmac. The acceleration
is not as good as that of FBDev but there are no
screen artifacts. Alternatively, you could
probably install a Rage 128 card and use FBDev.
I havent tried installing a new card so I'd
be interested in hearing if that fixes things.

Use this link for installation/use of Xpmac:

http://members.home.com/njolly/xppc/faq.html#xpmac_faqs

The bottom line is...there is something flaky about
the tanzania motherboard and the Mac64VT chipset.
Other macs seem to use the Mach64VT and FBDev without
these problems (the complaints are overwhelmingly from
tanzania users). I seriously doubt this problem
will ever be fixed, as each new version of FBDev
has the same problem and development is heavily
weighed on supporting new cards.

If you do decide to use Xpmac make sure you have both
75 and 100dpi fonts installed. If either of these are
not installed Xpmac will not run.

Good luck and please keep me posted on your results,
I'm very interested in hearing how others solve this
problem.

Scott

>
>-X comes up _very_ slowly and mouse movements destroy
>the desktop
>appearance.
>I am running KDE (this came by default), but I don't
>think the problem
>it's
>RAM; the machine has 128 Mb RAM and, even running X,
>still there is a
>lot
>of free RAM.
>The installation program detected a 2Mb graphic board
>(ATI, if I'm
>right)
>I have tried different resolutions and color depths,
>without any
>improvement (on Mac OS the screen works at 800x600
>with millions of
>color).
>Maybe the problem is related to screen refresh, but I
>think it has been
>properly set up in XF86Config.
>I have tried the Xautoconfigurator script as suggested
>on the list, but
>what I get in a useless XF86Config ( X doesn't start
>at all), so I went
>back to my original configuration file.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Mon Jul 10 2000 - 13:24:09 MDT