Video Problems with Solaris 10.

Hi Folks:

I'm attempting to get Solaris 10 1/06 running on a
low spec PC. This is a 233MHz Pentium with 256Megs
and 40 Gigs.

Installation went slowly, as Andrew predicted, but
7 1/2 hours after I started, I was able to boot Solaris
on this PC.

I never ran kdmconfig but CDE was running when the
PC booted after installation.

The problem is that the text quality was poor.

The Matrox Millennium in my departed PPro always
looked fine, so I inserted it in this PC.

The system boots as expected, and prints the
copywrite warning and the host name in text mode.

After that, while still in text mode, the display
has a purple frame around the edges, and the text
area consists of black, blue and green vertical
stripes, one set at each character column. The text
is barely readable, printed in purple.

So I decided I'd run Xorg setup, as described in
the kdmconfig message. I retrieved monitor specs
from the net and entered those. I think this video
card is a Matrox Millennium II, but it's 10 years
old and I wasn't sure it isn't the first Millennium.
So for video card I told Xorg's config program to
use the generic Matrox drivers, rather than risk
picking the wrong one.

The Xorg configuration seemed to go OK, but a
reboot showed that I still had the problem.

Sorry about going on for so long, but I wanted
to describe the situation.

Suggestions?

Thanks
Larry

Larry Lindstrom wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi Folks:
>
> I'm attempting to get Solaris 10 1/06 running on a
> low spec PC. This is a 233MHz Pentium with 256Megs
> and 40 Gigs.
>
> Installation went slowly, as Andrew predicted, but
> 7 1/2 hours after I started, I was able to boot Solaris
> on this PC.
>
> I never ran kdmconfig but CDE was running when the
> PC booted after installation.
>
> The problem is that the text quality was poor.
>
> The Matrox Millennium in my departed PPro always
> looked fine, so I inserted it in this PC.
>
> The system boots as expected, and prints the
> copywrite warning and the host name in text mode.
>
> After that, while still in text mode, the display
> has a purple frame around the edges, and the text
> area consists of black, blue and green vertical
> stripes, one set at each character column. The text
> is barely readable, printed in purple.
>
> So I decided I'd run Xorg setup, as described in
> the kdmconfig message. I retrieved monitor specs
> from the net and entered those. I think this video
> card is a Matrox Millennium II, but it's 10 years
> old and I wasn't sure it isn't the first Millennium.
> So for video card I told Xorg's config program to
> use the generic Matrox drivers, rather than risk
> picking the wrong one.
>
> The Xorg configuration seemed to go OK, but a
> reboot showed that I still had the problem.
>
> Sorry about going on for so long, but I wanted
> to describe the situation.
>
> Suggestions?
>
> Thanks
> Larry[/color]

whenever you add or exchange hardware, you should do a reconfigure
reboot. I.e. say "b -r" on the boot interpreter or "touch /reconfigure"
before you shutdown your system.

AFAIK Matrox cards should work with both Xsun and Xorg.

HTH,
Tom

Thomas Maier-Komor wrote:[color=blue]
> Larry Lindstrom wrote:
>[color=green]
>>Hi Folks:
>>
>> I'm attempting to get Solaris 10 1/06 running on a
>>low spec PC. This is a 233MHz Pentium with 256Megs
>>and 40 Gigs.
>>
>> Installation went slowly, as Andrew predicted, but
>>7 1/2 hours after I started, I was able to boot Solaris
>>on this PC.
>>
>> I never ran kdmconfig but CDE was running when the
>>PC booted after installation.
>>
>> The problem is that the text quality was poor.
>>
>> The Matrox Millennium in my departed PPro always
>>looked fine, so I inserted it in this PC.
>>
>> The system boots as expected, and prints the
>>copywrite warning and the host name in text mode.
>>
>> After that, while still in text mode, the display
>>has a purple frame around the edges, and the text
>>area consists of black, blue and green vertical
>>stripes, one set at each character column. The text
>>is barely readable, printed in purple.
>>
>> So I decided I'd run Xorg setup, as described in
>>the kdmconfig message. I retrieved monitor specs
>>from the net and entered those. I think this video
>>card is a Matrox Millennium II, but it's 10 years
>>old and I wasn't sure it isn't the first Millennium.
>>So for video card I told Xorg's config program to
>>use the generic Matrox drivers, rather than risk
>>picking the wrong one.
>>
>> The Xorg configuration seemed to go OK, but a
>>reboot showed that I still had the problem.
>>
>> Sorry about going on for so long, but I wanted
>>to describe the situation.
>>
>> Suggestions?
>>
>> Thanks
>> Larry[/color]
>
>
> whenever you add or exchange hardware, you should do a reconfigure
> reboot. I.e. say "b -r" on the boot interpreter or "touch /reconfigure"
> before you shutdown your system.
>
> AFAIK Matrox cards should work with both Xsun and Xorg.
>
> HTH,
> Tom[/color]
Thanks Tom:

That didn't do much.

The console, still in text mode with these stripes,
was frozen, and I had to power down to reboot.

I'm not seeing that part of the login where I can
select boot options, where I would type "b -s" if I
needed single user mode.

The boot process included a properly displayed GUI
screen where I'm asked to choose Solaris or Safe mode
Solaris. This graphic display looks like VGA mode,
but it's hard to say for sure. The question about
the type of boot is in a large window and the desktop
has those circular patterns of the Gnome desktop.
Andrew warned me that Gnome might be much of a burden
for this old PC, so I selected CDE on installation.

I chose safe mode and the display reverted to text
mode. The stripes popped up again but I was able to
"touch /reconfigure" and type "shutdown -g0 -i0 -y"
which caused a normal shutdown.

The system re-booted, but the stripes are back,
and after allowing a text login, the system seems to
be frozen, unresponsive to any command I type. This
has been the situation, and I've already had to cut
power to shut down Solaris several times. This is
not something I like to do, and I may have already
corrupted some files.

I would understand a video mismatch distorting the
GUI session, but it seems odd that they would show up
while the system is still in text mode, after displaying
part of the login session properly.

I've attempted to re-install, thinking it might go
better if this Matrox card is in the system from the
start. So in goes the Solaris DVD. After a couple of
minutes the system drops into this mode again.

There are a couple of messages on the striped
install screen:

Configuring devices
asy1: UART @ 2f8 scratch register: expected 0x5a, got 0xff
Cannot identify UART chip at 2f8
asy1: UART @ 2f8 scratch register: expected 0x5a, got 0xff
Cannot identify UART chip at 2f8
/

1. Solaris Interactive (default)
2. Custom Jumpstart

Larry Lindstrom wrote:[color=blue]
> So I decided I'd run Xorg setup, as described in
> the kdmconfig message. I retrieved monitor specs
> from the net and entered those. I think this video
> card is a Matrox Millennium II, but it's 10 years
> old and I wasn't sure it isn't the first Millennium.
> So for video card I told Xorg's config program to
> use the generic Matrox drivers, rather than risk
> picking the wrong one.
>
> The Xorg configuration seemed to go OK, but a
> reboot showed that I still had the problem.
>
> Sorry about going on for so long, but I wanted
> to describe the situation.
>
> Suggestions?[/color]

Are there any hints in /var/log/Xorg.0.log?

--
Ian Collins.

Andrew Gabriel wrote:[color=blue]
> In article <EpSdnTRNVuEH52DenZ2dnUVZ_sydnZ2d@comcast.com>,
> Larry Lindstrom <nobody@aracnet.com> writes:
>[color=green]
>>Hi Folks:
>>
>> I'm attempting to get Solaris 10 1/06 running on a
>>low spec PC. This is a 233MHz Pentium with 256Megs
>>and 40 Gigs.[/color][/color]

< Snip >
[color=blue][color=green]
>> The problem is that the text quality was poor.
>>
>> The Matrox Millennium in my departed PPro always
>>looked fine, so I inserted it in this PC.
>>
>> The system boots as expected, and prints the
>>copywrite warning and the host name in text mode.
>>
>> After that, while still in text mode, the display
>>has a purple frame around the edges, and the text
>>area consists of black, blue and green vertical
>>stripes, one set at each character column. The text
>>is barely readable, printed in purple.[/color]
>
>
> I suspect this is the auto-discover probing of the video
> card. I've had this do nasty things in several PC's (in
> the case of some Dell servers, it instantly wedges the
> system).
>
>[color=green]
>> So I decided I'd run Xorg setup, as described in
>>the kdmconfig message.[/color][/color]

< Snip >
[color=blue]
> I would suggest using kdmconfig to switch to Xsun.
> If it has a suitable driver, you may find it works
> better. Xsun's support for older PC video cards is
> actually very good, and Sun's Xsun setup program is
> very much better than Xorg's.
>[/color]

Thanks Andrew:

No luck.

With the Millennium installed, the system goes
stripy and locks after asking for a boot to run
kdmconfig. This happens before I'm asked to do
a "Normal" login.

I've tried several things, including running Xsun
setup with the onboard video card, in hopes the system
would come up thinking Xsun after installing the
Millennium, and wouldn't do whatever it did to cause
the odd display.

Booting to safe mode allows the PC to run, with
the corrupted display, but kdmconfig, and almost
every other command I attempted to execute, weren't
found. Even when in the command's parent directory.

I appreciate your assistance, and I'd like to get
my nice crisp Millennium II working. I can live with
the on-board graphics if I have to. I have some
pressing tasks this machine needs to tackle, so I
think it's time to move on with what I have. But
please offer any suggestions you can think of.

Am I missing something, or is safe mode a
serious security problem? I wasn't asked for a
password but I was able to move through at least
some of the directories on the system.

Thanks
Larry

Ian Collins wrote:[color=blue]
> Larry Lindstrom wrote:
>[color=green]
>> So I decided I'd run Xorg setup, as described in
>> the kdmconfig message. I retrieved monitor specs
>> from the net and entered those. I think this video
>> card is a Matrox Millennium II, but it's 10 years
>> old and I wasn't sure it isn't the first Millennium.
>> So for video card I told Xorg's config program to
>> use the generic Matrox drivers, rather than risk
>> picking the wrong one.
>>
>> The Xorg configuration seemed to go OK, but a
>> reboot showed that I still had the problem.
>>
>> Sorry about going on for so long, but I wanted
>> to describe the situation.
>>
>> Suggestions?[/color]
>
>
> Are there any hints in /var/log/Xorg.0.log?
>[/color]

Thanks Ian:

There were no error messages in that log. "MGA",
the Millennium's chip, was mentioned in the last
statements of the log, so it was recognized. But
nothing I read looked like a warning or report of
an error.

The last several lines of text in the log seem
to be random numbers. I don't know if these are
the octal encodings of unprintable characters or
what. But something wasn't right.

I'm grateful for your advice. As I told
Andrew, it's time to put this PC to work.

Thanks
Larry