Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> Pursuing my obsession for lower electrical power, I have been
> attempting to get an ASUS EEE Box (the desktop, not the
> micro-notebook) working with SL5.0  .  The box draws only 16
> watts, up to 20 with some USB peripherals added.  However, it
> is a bit of a driver nightmare, and a few things are implemented
> wrong (2.8V on the microphone input?  Should be 5V to power 
> electret microphones).
>
>
> I've got most of the problems solved, but the graphics is still
> driving me a bit nuts.  It uses an Intel 945GM chipset.  I have
> a 1400x1050 monitor, and have been fiddling around with
> 915resolution and xorg.conf and modelines, but X insists on
> bringing up the display in ugly 1280x1024 mode using the vesa
> driver in SL5.0 with the updated 2.6.18-92.1.18.el5 kernel and
> X version 7.1.1 .  Playing with the i810 or i915 driver prevents
> X from starting.  I am quite ignorant of what I am doing, but
> don't know which portion of my ignorance to correct in order to
> get this running.
>
> The EEE and the 1400x1050 display works fine with the delivered
> WinXP (on a different hard drive) and with installed Ubuntu
> 8.04 Hardy Heron (on yet a different drive).  It also works
> directly off a live CD with Ubuntu 9.04alpha3 Jaunty Jackalope. 
> I've been looking at the Xorg log from that for clues, but I
> suspect that X and the drivers are so much newer than SL5
> that there is little knowledge that ports backwards.
>
> The eee will eventually end up in my wife's office, with a
> 1280x1024 display anyway - so I am probably wasting time trying
> to get the larger monitor working properly.  However, there
> might be folks here interested in the eee, so I will continue
> attempting to do resolution hacks if that is of interest.
>
> Does anybody care enough about this for me to spend a few
> more hours banging my head against this wall?  If so, can
> anyone point me at successful usages of Centos5/SL5 X with
> Intel graphics chipsets and this non-standard VESA resolution?
>
>
> BTW, I plan to run a VMware Win2K client on the SL5/EEE, with
> Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Professional running, copying a
> similar setup from my T30 laptop.  The next task is to compile
> a custom kernel with some realtime timing hacks so that the
> sound processing is smoother.  I will be using a USB mike,
> bypassing the stupidly designed analog input.
>
> With the Intel graphics sucking bandwidth out of the main
> memory, I wonder if the speech recognition will fail?  Since
> the T30 uses a 2GHz P4 with PC2200 RAM, and the EEE  uses
> a 1.6GHz Atom with PC5300 DDR2 RAM, I suspect there will be
> more overall bandwidth available for computation on the EEE.
>
> Keith
>   
Keith,

I've used intel graphics in SL since 4.1 using the vesa driver with 
little to no problems.  Unless you need acceleration of sorts, I don't 
see any reason to beat yourself up to get the i810/i915 drivers 
working.  With that said, supplying some of your failed Xorg log files 
from /var/log/ may shed some light on the problems.  WW lines are 
warnings, EE lines are errors.  My laptop has a 1400x1050 resolution, 
but uses a ati chip.  I believe I had to supply a proper modeline.  I 
could check later this evening if needed.

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
Mr. Mark V. Stodola
Digital Systems Engineer

National Electrostatics Corp.
P.O. Box 620310
Middleton, WI 53562-0310 USA
Phone: (608) 831-7600
Fax: (608) 831-9591