[haiku-development] Re: S3 Video Driver Problem

Antti Soininen wrote:
Sorry for spamming the mailing list with private Haiku mail traffic, but AT&T seems to think that both my ISP and university mail servers spread spam.
Do you mean that you were notified after you sent an email to my email address that AT&T rejected it because they thought your mail servers spread spam? If this is the case, I can send an email to you with another email address that you can use. I use this email address for only Haiku related communications, and disabled spam filtering a while ago because they were marking and holding some email from this list as spam. 

Gerald Zajac wrote:
> Is there any way that you can change the color depth or resolution to see if the chip then draws okay? 

Well, the LCD remains black after boot process is finished, so I can not
open nor use the Screens preflet. There is no keyboard shortcut similar
to X's ctrl-alt-+/- either, is there? Prehaps lower screen resolution
needs to somehow be hard-coded to the Haiku image during compilation.
This could be done probably by preconfigured Screens config file or
modifying the driver. Any thoughts?
With BeOS and Zeta, the keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+Alt F12 will change the video resolution to 640x480 which would be helpful in this case. On Haiku, that keyboard shortcut takes you to the Kernel Debugger. I don't know of any keyboard shortcut on Haiku for changing the video resolution. Does anyone know if there is such a shortcut? If there is none, one should be implemented.
BTW, do you have BeOS or Zeta installed on your computer? I can send you a copy of the S3 driver that will run on BeOS or Zeta. It is the same code, but compiled to run on BeOS or Zeta. I did most of my testing/debugging under Zeta, and only after the driver was working under Zeta and BeOS, did I try it on Haiku.
> I would like to know if it is only 1400x1050x32 that causes the problem. 

Bit depth is something I have not considered as the cause for this
problem. I always thought it was some EDID/wrong modeline problem since some of the lower resolution 32-bit modes worked with the old driver (not all). So, I never tested the lower bit depths.
If some of the lower resolutions worked on the old Savage driver, they should work with this driver. After thinking about your problem some more, my initial idea about the accelerated drawing causing the problem might be wrong. If some of the lower resolutions worked at 32 bit color with the Savage driver and others did not work, it could be some bit(s) in the video registers were set incorrectly especially if the display is blank. Although X works fine on your computer and the code in the S3 driver is derived from the X driver, X by default uses the video BIOS to set a video mode. That option is not available under Haiku, and the X code for setting the video mode, when the use of the video BIOS is disabled, is buggy. I have fixed a few problems in this area related to some of the other Savage chips, but it takes a few iterations to find the registers that are set incorrectly. However, first the accelerated drawing should be ruled out as described below. 

> I also can modify the driver so
> that accelerated drawing is disabled for 1400x1050. Would you like to try such a driver on your computer? 

Sure! Just send the patch and installation instructions (I am not keen
with diff).
I will send you a new s3.accelerant file to replace the one you have, and I will send it directly to your email address. 

Best regards,
Gerald

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