[9fans] Blank screen after boot :-/

[9fans] Blank screen after boot :-/

[forsyth]

>>Anyone have any idea what I might be doing wrong? The new card

the first step is to check that the chips on the card (appear to) match
those in the vgadb entry.  manufacturers often (i'm tempted to say `invariably')
change the parts without changing the card's model number.

if they seem to agree, then start up, but don't run aux/vga etc (change /rc/bin/termrc as required).
instead, go into the basic console mode, so that you can try the example in
the vga(8) man page to save aux/vga's proposed settings to a file
without setting them.  i think it is still:
	aux/vga -ip 640x480x1 >/tmp/settings
you then have got something more to puzzle over ...

[9fans] Blank screen after boot :-/

[Digby]

Hi,

I had my Plan9 (licensed copy) on working on an old PC with an ugly
512K 'on motherboard' graphics adapter, which sort of ran, but
was pretty minimal for a display...

I recently installed a '#9 GXE-LEVEL 16' ISA 4MB VRAM graphics
adapter in an attempt to get a usable screen, but immediately
after the message 'starting /bin/rc' my screen flickers and
goes blank :-/

Anyone have any idea what I might be doing wrong? The new card
works fine under Unix/X or even (just as a test) Windows, so
I am pretty sure I have disabled the hardware on the motherboard
properly.

I checked the magic string in memory, and it seems to match what is
in the vgadb entry.

I also tried selecting 640x480x1, as suggested in the manual, with 
nbo effect. I tried changing 'Monitor' in plan9.ini from vga to
other things, and also deleting entries from vgadm, and nothing
seemed to change what happended - so I am not sure that I
am fiddling in the right place. Presumably the vgadb that
it is using is on the boot disk, not the DOS filesystem one,
in which case it is not obvious to me how to get at it :-/

Any ideas/related experiences??

P.S. I tried grabbing the latest set of four floppies and
installing from scratch, but that made no difference either.

P.P.S. I picked the #9 card because it was ISA, which would
allow me to get a high res display on any old PC I get access
to, and because it appeared to be in the list of supported
displays for both Plan9 and BSD/OS Unix.

Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk