Thinstation with Intel 82865G video controller

We were attempting to get Thinstation V2.2 beta to run on a Dell GX270 system, however with every boot, the system would come up with the incorrect resolution (640x480). The system would also boot in text mode and would not show the splash screen.

From what I can tell, this issue might affect all Intel on-board video cards which use this chipset. These include: i810, i810-DC100, i810e, i815, 830M, 845G, 852GM, 855GM, 865G, 915G and 915GM chipsets.

SOLUTION

1. The first thing I found was that in the BIOS for the GX270 there is a video memory setting. This setting can most likely also be found on other motherboards using the Intel 82865G chipset. On my system, the setting was set to the default of 1MB video memory which is WAY too low. 1MB of video memory is not enough to support higher resolutions. I changed this to 8MB. The next time I booted, the splash screen displayed correctly at 1024x768, however when X-windows started, the resolution was still wrong.

2. I found someone who was having similar problems on the Thinstation mailing lists and they said they used the following video settings to get it fixed. I tried these, and it worked. These settings go in one of your Thinstation.conf files (or just thinstation.conf.buildtime if you only have one).

SCREEN_HORIZSYNC="32-80 | *"
SCREEN_VERTREFRESH="57-75 | *"
X_DRIVER_NAME="i810"

You'll also have to make sure that the following line is uncommented in your build.conf file. This just includes the i810 driver with your build.

package xorg6-i810

After making this change, it all worked without problems. I believe the problem was a combination of the fact that it didn't have enough video memory, it was using the default VESA driver and it needs specific vertical and horizontal sync rates. NOTE: I also updated the BIOS while trying to fix this problem. I don't think that was part of the problem, but it may have been.

Author: DPAK
Created: Jan 3 2006
Categories: Thinstation
TechByte #117

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Comment posted by '-Xlnt' on Apr 29 2008 @ 08:31:43
I had the same problem and this worked!!! Thanks alot! -Xlnt