I have an old Dell GX110 (P3 667 I think). I have tried to install FreeBSD
on it and just cannot get it to function. The basic issue is that it is
unable to detect the graphics card.

The chipset is an intel i810 which I guess is the problem. I tried building
a custom Kernel with agp enabled, but a) it seeme to already be enabled by
defaut, and b) the new kernel didn't change anything.

Any suggestions on getting this to work? I have also tried a bunch of Linux
flavors with no luck there, and frankly, I'd rather use *BSD anyway.

Thanks

dsavitsk wrote:
> I have an old Dell GX110 (P3 667 I think). I have tried to install FreeBSD
> on it and just cannot get it to function. The basic issue is that it is
> unable to detect the graphics card.

What version of FreeBSD? What is the exact error message?

> The chipset is an intel i810 which I guess is the problem. I tried building
> a custom Kernel with agp enabled, but a) it seeme to already be enabled by
> defaut, and b) the new kernel didn't change anything.

So FreeBSD works fine, you just want X. Without seeing
/var/log/Xorg.0.log and xorg.conf, this is kind of a "the problem is on
line 17" situation.

--
Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota * USA

dsavitsk wrote:
> I have an old Dell GX110 (P3 667 I think). I have tried to install FreeBSD
> on it and just cannot get it to function. The basic issue is that it is
> unable to detect the graphics card.
>
> The chipset is an intel i810 which I guess is the problem. I tried building
> a custom Kernel with agp enabled, but a) it seeme to already be enabled by
> defaut, and b) the new kernel didn't change anything.
>
> Any suggestions on getting this to work? I have also tried a bunch of Linux
> flavors with no luck there, and frankly, I'd rather use *BSD anyway.
>
I just finished installing DesktopBSD 1.6 (FreeBSD 6.3+X11+KDE+packages)
on a... "mature," (i.e. 8 y.o.) Sony VAIO R505 JLK 12.1" lappy that uses
an Intel 815EM w/4MB vram.

The default install repeatedly identified the chip as vga and ended up
at the wrong resolution & color depth. I had to reconfigure xorg.conf
in part by running Xorg -configure , in part by hand. I can't stress
enough, btw, the value of the doc:

and the command dmesg for zeroing in on the exact hw and relevant driver.

In my case, I selected the 810 generic driver and specified the horiz &
vert frequencies and amount of ram. Xorg -configure didn't use
everything but, it's a good idea(tm) to have the specs up front. Xorg
-configure caught everything but...

For whatever reason, 'Section "ServerLayout"' reported the wrong monitor
value. After I edited that, everything worked out fine.

Pertinent section of xorg.conf below.

hth,

-Craig


# ************************************************** ********************
# Graphics device section
# ************************************************** ********************

# Any number of graphics device sections may be present

# Standard VGA Device:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Standard VGA"
VendorName "Unknown"
BoardName "Unknown"

# The chipset line is optional in most cases. It can be used to override
# the driver's chipset detection, and should not normally be specified.

# Chipset "generic"

# The Driver line must be present. When using run-time loadable driver
# modules, this line instructs the server to load the specified driver
# module. Even when not using loadable driver modules, this line
# indicates which driver should interpret the information in this section.

Driver "vga"
# The BusID line is used to specify which of possibly multiple devices
# this section is intended for. When this line isn't present, a device
# section can only match up with the primary video device. For PCI
# devices a line like the following could be used. This line should not
# normally be included unless there is more than one video device
# intalled.

# BusID "PCI:0:10:0"

# VideoRam 256

# Clocks 25.2 28.3

EndSection

# Device configured by xorgconfig:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "i810"
#VideoRam 4096
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection


# ************************************************** ********************
# Screen sections
# ************************************************** ********************

# Any number of screen sections may be present. Each describes
# the configuration of a single screen. A single specific screen section
# may be specified from the X server command line with the "-screen"
# option.
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16

Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
EndSection

# ************************************************** ********************
# ServerLayout sections.
# ************************************************** ********************

# Any number of ServerLayout sections may be present. Each describes
# the way multiple screens are organised. A specific ServerLayout
# section may be specified from the X server command line with the
# "-layout" option. In the absence of this, the first section is used.
# When now ServerLayout section is present, the first Screen section
# is used alone.

Section "ServerLayout"

# The Identifier line must be present
Identifier "Simple Layout"

# Each Screen line specifies a Screen section name, and optionally
# the relative position of other screens. The four names after
# primary screen name are the screens to the top, bottom, left and right
# of the primary screen. In this example, screen 2 is located to the
# right of screen 1.

Screen "Screen 0"

dsavitsk wrote:
> I have an old Dell GX110 (P3 667 I think). I have tried to install FreeBSD
> on it and just cannot get it to function. The basic issue is that it is
> unable to detect the graphics card.
>
> The chipset is an intel i810 which I guess is the problem. I tried building

In addition to the other questions in this thread: what does 'pciconf
-lv | grep -B 4' give as output?
Here are a couple of examples:
root@kg-vm# pciconf -lv | grep -B 4 VGA
vgapci0@pci0:1:5:0: class=0x030000 card=0x826d1043 chip=0x791e1002
rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'ATI Technologies Inc'
device = 'Radeon X1200 Series'
class = display
subclass = VGA
drm0@pci1:0:0: class=0x030000 card=0x7c13174b chip=0x59611002 rev=0x01
hdr=0x00
vendor = 'ATI Technologies Inc'
device = 'RV280 ATI RADEON 9200 se agp'
class = display
subclass = VGA
--
Torfinn Ingolfsen,
Norway

> Without seeing
> /var/log/Xorg.0.log and xorg.conf, this is kind of a "the problem is on
> line 17" situation.

Indeed. In order to get the exact messages, I am going to need to dig the
computer back out of the closet. I was hoping that there was a known issue
that someone would have at the ready -- I have seen some issues with this
particular computer and Linux as well, and any solutions I saw were not well
documented.

When I get the chance, I'll get the exact errors and repost.

In the meantime, I just found a different old junker that seems to work just
fine without any intervention on my part.

Thanks.