Poor Console resolution on Compaq 2103US

[Mervin McDougall]

I have one experience to share as a newbie, that of
trying to get a proper console resolution on my
laptop. I chose to stick with FreeBSD  over Slackware
for my laptop for the simplicity in its init system
and fewer init levels, its ports and packages system
which reduces the stress of looking for a file and all
its dependencies and getting it downloaded, compiled
and using on my laptop and basically its speed of
booting- in 2/3 the time it takes slackware linux to
boot, bsd is at the loging prompt.However,getting the
proper console resolution was a pain as I favour
console over X.

I tried recompiling the kernel including support for
Vesa by including options VESA and SC_PIXEL_MODE and
that didn't work.I tried compiling the kernel with
suppor for VGA_90WIDTH and that still did not provide
me with adequate space on my screen to get anything
else done. My console only the center of my screen and
only occupied a 1/3 rd of the entire screen. I was
very stressed until I cam across a website of someone
who had successfully installed FreeBSD 5.2.1 on a
similar laptop. I contacted him and he explained that
he had similar problem but got over the issue by
making use of a patch which allowed me to achieve
screen resolutions of 1024x768.

I have gotten over the problem happily but there are
still some issues that the patch created in making use
of it as slower performance in switching from console
to X and the printing of error information when the
kernel is initiating vidcontrol but I get to use
console more often thankfully.

I wish that the freebsd team would look into fixing
any errors in vidcontrol to get the problem with
screen resolutions on laptops fixed. I was able to do
this with ease using linux framebuffer settings with
slackware but had so much difficulty getting that done
under freebsd 5.3. 

I could have chosen to give up and simply use linux
but I like the way freebsd performs something about it
is just magically and wouldn't want to miss out on
using it. I just wish somethng could be done to better
the performance of the system as is and get rid of
some of those escape errors. or gett a better patch
from the freebsd team.

If anyone has a similar laptop and wants to get some
specifics about what works and what doesn't feel free
to visit 
http://demira.shopkeeper.de/~sascha/nx9005/
its pretty informative.

Some details ..
The Video Card is an ATI IGP 320M (Mobility 1)

Mervin McDougall


		
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