[9fans] Yet another VGA issue (CT65550)

[Matt Gushee <mgushee@havenrock.com>]

Hello, all--

Well, I have wanted to try out Plan9 for some time, and finally decided
to take the plunge. I have installed the distribution on my old Toshiba
Satellite Pro 420CDS, which has a Chips & Tech 65550 video card. I have
got a working system--I can log in, navigate around, execute various
commands, etc., but I can't get VGA working. Actually, this is not a
complete surprise, because I've run Linux on this box for several years,
and had a hell of a time getting XFree86 working--actually none of the
several configuration tools I tried could generate appropriate settings
for my card; I ended up having to do it manually. Anyway, here's the
output of 'aux/vga -piV' and the relevant portions of my working
XFree86Config. If anyone has an idea what to do about this, I'd greatly
appreciate your suggestions:

aux/vga -piV
------------
Oops, I guess not! The floppy disk containing that info has died, and my
9box is put away for the moment. Guess I'll have to send it later.

One somewhat unusual thing I noticed is that the base memory address for
the CT65550 on my machine is 0xE0000. But I tried adding an appropriate
entry to /lib/vgadb, e.g.

    0xE0090="TOSHIBA Video BIOS V2.00"

but that only resulted in error messages like 'hiqvideo: not found'.
(Note to Plan9 maintainers: couldn't these error messages be a little
more descriptive, explaining exactly what was not found where? It might
be helpful to confused newbies like me)

Anyway, here's the XFree86 stuff. Perhaps it will be of some use.


XF86Config
----------

Section "Monitor"

    Identifier  "Crawdad Viddy"
    VendorName  "Toshiba"
    ModelName   "800x600 LCD"

	Bandwidth 25.2
	HorizSync   25-64
	VertRefresh 40-70

	Modeline "800x600@8bpp"		40     800  840  968 1056   600  601  605  628 +hsync +vsync
	Modeline "800x600@16bpp"	35.464     800  824  896 1024   600  601  603  625
	# Modeline "800x600@24bpp"	31.5   800  824  896 1024   600  601  603  625
	Modeline "800x600@24bpp"	26.598	800 824 896 1024  600 601 603 625

EndSection


# **********************************************************************
# Graphics device section
# **********************************************************************

# Any number of graphics device sections may be present

# Standard VGA Device:

Section "Device"
    Identifier	"Generic VGA"
    VendorName	"Unknown"
    BoardName	"Unknown"
    Chipset	"generic"

#    VideoRam	256

#    Clocks	25.2 28.3

EndSection

# Device configured by xf86config:

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "My Video Card"
    VendorName  "Chips & Technologies"
    BoardName   "ct65550"
    #VideoRam    2048
Option "sw_cursor"
Textclockfreq 36
Option "STN"
# Option "no_stretch"
# Option "no_center"
# Option "use_modeline"
# Option "fix_panel_size"
    # Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection

--
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Englewood, Colorado, USA    Horses bear manure through
mgushee@havenrock.com           its fields;
http://www.havenrock.com/   When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.

                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)