Screen resolution on SIS 771/671 and Viewsonic 1600x900 monitor

Hi,

I am trying to get my Viewsonic monitor to run at it’s preferred 1600x900 resolution. I have read loads of stuff on the forum and Wiki but can’t sort out what to do and am reticent to make a change that will lose the display altogether. Can anyone give me a bit of guidance please?

If I do Yast2 - Hardware Information and “Save to file”, I can see the following extracts:

Display
SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.0
Hardware Class: graphics card
Model: “Silicon Integrated 771/671 PCIE VGA Display Adapter”
Vendor: pci 0x1039 “Silicon Integrated Systems Corp.”
Device: pci 0x6351 “771/671 PCIE VGA Display Adapter”
SubVendor: pci 0x105b “Foxconn International, Inc.”
and

63: None 00.0: 10000 Monitor
[Created at fb.71]
Unique ID: rdCR.EY_qmtb9YY0
Hardware Class: monitor
Model: “Generic Monitor”
Vendor: “Generic”
Device: “Monitor”
Resolution: 1280x1024@77Hz
Driver Info #0:
Max. Resolution: 1280x1024
Vert. Sync Range: 50-90 Hz
Hor. Sync Range: 31-82 kHz
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

However there is nothing about the Monitor which does show in the Hardware Information Display:

Monitor
VA2014 SERIES
Bus: None
Class (spec):
Class: Monitor
Device Identifier: 155686
Device: VA2014 SERIES
>Display
Hwcfg Bus: none
Model: VIEWSONIC VA2014 SERIES
Old Unique Key: Qydz.3OXrXj1KscF
>Resources
>Resolution
…A long list of resolutions including:
>1600x900
Height: 900
Vertical Frequency: 60
Width: 1600

When I try to set the resolution in Size and Orientation - System Settings I have only one choice of size in the default monitor which is 1280x1024 which doesn’t work very well on a 16x9 screen.

I did try:

EEL013:/home/adrian # Xorg -configure

Fatal server error:
Server is already active for display 0
If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock
and start again.

Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
at X.Org Wiki - Home
for help.
which, as you can see was not successful!

I am on openSuse 12.1 and KDE v4.7.2 running on an Acer SA90

I think I need to inform the system about the Viewsonic monitor but i can’t see how. Is it possible to get the 1600x900 resolution, if so how, please? Or should I go out and buy a new graphics card, if so any suggestions, please?

Best wishes and a Happy New Year

Adrian

sis 717/671 is not so common and may make this difficult.

Please as a start open the file /var/log/Xorg.0.log and copy the contents and paste them to SUSE Paste and press create and copy the web site url and paste that web/url/address here. That will give our graphic gurus something more to work with.

Here is the link:

SUSE Paste

Adrian

I found instructions for starting up in run level 3 and this gave me a better shot a running “Xorg -configure”. However it failed with a message

Number of created screens does not match number of detected devices.
And it didn’t generate a xorg.conf.new file.

I restarted and have copied the contents of Xorg.0.log.old to SusePaste as it seems to have the log of what happened in the level 3 session. The link is here:

SUSE Paste

So maybe that helps too.

Best wishes

Adrian

Thanks. Are you certain this Silicon Integrated 771/671 PCIE VGA Display Adapter is supported in GNU/Linux ? I note from the ‘man sis’ page:

The sis driver supports PCI, AGP and PCIe video cards based on the following chipsets:

   SiS5597/5598 SiS530/620 SiS6326/AGP/DVD SiS300/305 SiS540 SiS630/730 SiS315/E/H/PRO SiS550/551/552 SiS650/651/661/741 SiS330 (Xabre) SiS760/761 XGI Volari V3/V5/V8 XGI Volari Z7

No where in that listt do I see the SiS 771 nor SiS 671.

When I look at the Xorg.0.log file I note:


    21.176] Current Operating System: Linux EEL013 3.1.0-1.2-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Nov 3 14:45:45 UTC 2011 (187dde0) i686
    21.176] Kernel command line: root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HDS721616PLA380_PVC300Z5RV0T8J-part6 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HDS721616PLA380_PVC300Z5RV0T8J-part5 splash=silent quiet vga=0x31a
.........
    21.206] (II) LoadModule: "sis"
    21.207] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sis_drv.so
...........
    21.207] (II) LoadModule: "fbdev"
........
    21.209] (II) SIS: driver for SiS chipsets: SIS5597/5598, SIS530/620,
        SIS6326/AGP/DVD, SIS300/305, SIS630/730, SIS540, SIS315, SIS315H,
        SIS315PRO/E, SIS550, SIS650/M650/651/740, SIS330(Xabre),
        SIS660/[M]661[F|M]X/[M]670/[M]741[GX]/[M]760[GX]/[M]761[GX]/[M]770[GX],
        SIS340
    21.209] (II) SIS: driver for XGI chipsets: Volari Z7 (XG20),
        Volari V3XT/V5/V8/Duo (XG40)
........
    21.281] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for sis
    21.281] (--) Assigning device section with no busID to primary device
    21.282] (II) Loading sub module "fbdevhw"
    21.282] (II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw"
........
**    21.287] (II) UnloadModule: "sis"**
    21.287] (II) Unloading sis
.......
    21.289] (II) FBDEV(0): FBIOBLANK: Invalid argument (Screen blanking not supported by vesafb of Linux Kernel)
    21.289] (==) FBDEV(0): Backing store disabled

Its pretty clear from that log file that your computer is using the very basic low performance (but highly compatible) FBDEV graphic video driver.

So I asked myself if your SiS 771/671 is supported. I can’t tell. I note from the xorg-X11-driver-video file that it comes with:


/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sis_drv.la
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sis_drv.so

and when I look at the change history I note:


* Mon Aug 23 2010 sndirsch@suse.de
- xf86-video-sis 0.10.3
  * sis video driver 0.10.3 for server 1.9
  * obsoletes xf86-video-sis-19070.diff,
    xf86-video-sis-website.diff

with no update since August 2010.

I tried to find the development page for the SiS,… I found this depreciated (out of date) link: SIS 671 (Intel D201 GLY) and GEODE LX/GX Linux drivers for XWindows/Xorg which noted

no longer maintain these. The most up-to-date patch set is available here: xorg-video-sisimedia.

SIS 671 (Intel D201GLY) and Geode LX/GX XOrg video drivers with XVideo acceleration and fixed high resolution issues. These drivers are different from freedesktop Xorg tree or the OLPC Geode driver.

where the xorg-video-sisimedia link referred to xorg-video-sisimedia 0.9.1 which appears older than the 0.10.3 in openSUSE-12.1.

I note a reference to Mandriva Linux picking up the driver as sis-media … but I got no where following that up. So I can not tell who (if anyone) maintains these drivers. I did a search for " 0.10.3 sis " but I could only find packager references and not developer references.

I also looked for SiS proprietary drivers and failed. I’m not saying they are not out there, … I just ran out of the time that I want to spend as an unpaid volunteer. Sorry.

So I am a bit of a loss as to how to get your PC to load the sis drivers, and indeed at a loss if there is an update.

I suppose you could try to get the resolution you want with the basic and primitive fbdev graphic driver, but thats not a nice solution.

Out of curiousity, could you try this: …

(1) install the program midnight commander (mc) which is a text editor that can be run in a full screen text mode as a regular user or as root (by typing command ‘mc’ (no quotes)). It can be navigated via very friendly function keys. Its useful if stuck in a text mode and one needs to edit a configuration file.

(2) edit the file
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf so that it looks something like:


Section "Device"
  Identifier "Default Device"

  #Driver "radeon"
  Driver "sis"

  ## Required magic for radeon/radeonhd drivers; output name
  ## (here: "DVI-0") can be figured out via 'xrandr -q'
  #Option "monitor-DVI-0" "Default Monitor"

EndSection

save the change, and reboot using the boot code ‘nomodeset’ when booting.

Does that work at all ? If not, remove the edit and we are back where we started.

Note when trying my recommendation, remove any /etc/X11/xorg.conf file that you may have created for previous tests.