On Sun, Nov 03, 2002 at 01:37:12PM -0700, Jonathon Jongsma wrote: > You may remember me asking last week about a graphics problem > with X-windows. I have a dell dimension 2300 with an intel 845 > chipset (integrated video). I was using mandrake, but tried > red hat 8 to see if that worked any better. it did work > slightly better. I can now get into X with an 800x600 > resolution @ 256 colors. This isn't acceptable of course, so i > did some research on the internet. According to several > message boards (and intel's website [1]) the solution is to go > into the bios under Advanced > Video Configuration > Frame > Buffer Size and change it to 8mb since it defaults to 1mb. > Then supposedly it will work as it's supposed to. My problem > is that there is no 'video configuration' under the advance > section of the bios settings. So apparently i can't change the > frame buffer size without a bios update. So what are my other > options? You should be able to get your i845 to get a better mode than 8 bit 800x600. I've got mine running at 16 bit 1280x1024. Could you send your /etc/X11/XF86Config or (XF86Config-4) file to the list so that we can take a look at it? I guess if your version really defaults to 1MB, you might be stuck, but it is worth a look anyway. > As i've said several times already, i'm not a hardware expert, > and i haven't been able to find the right answers on the > internet. My question is this: if i've got integrated video > on the motherboard, can I still go out and buy an alternate > video card and use that instead? Or am I stuck with the i845? > And if I can use a different video card, how do I tell it to > use the new card instead of the integrated video controller? > do I need to? Yes, you can buy an alternate video card. Red Hat or Mandrake might detect it automatically, I am not sure. -- Jim Crumley |Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List (TCLUG) crumley at fields.space.umn.edu |Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Ruthless Debian Zealot |http://www.mn-linux.org/ Never laugh at live dragons |Dmitry's free,Jon's next? http://faircopyright.org