[LI] Configuring SiS cards in RHL6.1 (PCQ CD)

[Sanjay Dutt <sanjayd@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all:

My linux box has a SiS6225 video card with 2MB VRAM. I too had been facing
problems in getting X to run properly. I was getting black boxes instead of
the fonts, something a lot of people in this list have complained about.

One option was to remove the latest version of the SVGA server and install
the older one from the Chip CD. This worked, but did not answer the problem
properly. It was like 'solve the problem by removing the problem'. 

I re-installed the SVGA server package from the RHL6.1 CD and decided to
tweak things in the XF86Config file, and finally got the SVGA server up!

I used 'XF86Setup' for configuration. If this package is not installed then
install it from the PCQ CD by logging in as root, mounting the CD, cd to
/mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS and giving the command 'rpm -ivh
XFree86-XF86Setup*.rpm. If it exits with an error saying VGA16 not
installed, then install it first (it is in the same directory), then
install this. My experience is that this is a very user-friendly GUI based
configuration tool (though not fully bug-free) and much better that the
other ones in RHL.

On the page for selecting the card, there is a button to view the Readme
file. I suggest all you folks having problems with the SiS series cards
read this file *after* selecting the card. Lot of stuff I did not
understand... some stuff I tried which are not supported by my card... and
stuff which got things going.

Someone on this list had suggested adding the lines
Option    "no_BitBlt"
Option    "no_imageblt"
in the 'Devices' section of XF86Config.

I did that but things did not work.

Then I uncommented the following line in the window on the Card Selection
page which allows you to put in additional entries which will go in the
'Devices' section.

Option    "no_accel"

This got my X server up and running. Only thing is that it is a bit slow in
refreshes in 1024x768x16bit mode but works fine in 800x600x16bit.

The card called 'SiS6215c (PCQ)' is an entry put in by PCQ (as explained in
the Nov99 issue) which helpfully gives all the default values, some
uncommented, some commented. This should help folks whoc have this card and
still find the server not coming up properly. Just uncomment the 'no_accel'
option. Make sure to change the value of the VideoRAM if it is not 1MB on
your card!

It goes without saying that the most important thing is RTFM. Most of us
are unwilling to spend time doing this and impatient to get the new
installation up and running... in the process spending frustating hours
when things don't work out.

Although I have my X server up and running, I still am not satisfied with
things as there definitely seems to be some problem with the SiS drivers in
the SVGA server which has not been addressed properly. The older version
gave me the advantage of acceleration, which is not there in the latest
version. Maybe some Linux guru could shed some light on this.

Hope this helps.

Sanjay Dutt

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