Widescreen console?

Miklos

Miklos

I'm truely enjoing FreeBSD 8.1 as my laptop (MSI GX623) is finally fully supported hardward wise.

There is just one last thing I'd like to fix, it's not really broken but as I enjoy working in the console this would make my setup perfect. I can't get the vidcontrol to accept a 1680x1050 resolution (or any other 16:10 for that matter) thus im stuck with smudged text :(

If anyone knows how to get the console to run in 1680x1050 I would really appreciate you sharing how to :)

I've attached my dmesg and vidcontrol output and my kernel config in case it is needed
 

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vidcontrol and the vesa framebuffer driver are limited to the modes the video manufacturer programs into the cards BIOS. If it's not there, it's not there :)
 
Oh, I didn't know that.

So if the mode is added to the VGA BIOS it automatically will work in FreeBSD?

Thanks for your reply :)
 
You'll need to add VESA framebuffer support to your kernel. This will allow you to set your console to a higher resolution. First, add these lines to your kernel conf file:

Code: 
options VESA
options SC_PIXEL_MODE

Rebuild your kernel and then reboot. Next, you'll want to see what screen modes your video card's BIOS reports. To do that, run the vidcontrol command:

Code: 
vidcontrol -i mode

For 1680x1050, I tend to go with mode 334. It may be a different mode # on your system, so always check with the command above. If the VESA BIOS in your card isn't broken, you should have a widescreen once you type it in:

Code: 
vidcontrol MODE_334

If you want all of your consoles to use this mode upon reboot, add this to your /etc/rc.conf file:

Code: 
allscreens_mode="MODE_334"

Another option is to use the jfbterm port located over in the sysutil directory. It allows for Unicode wide characters, better color support, and access to X fonts. You need the same kernel options as vidcontrol. Note that on my 8.2 and 8.3RC2 systems, I cannot use resolutions in jfbterm higher than 1280x1024 without getting a weird "cannot convert UTF8 to UCS-BE2" error. Your mileage may vary.

The VESA module has been around for the i386 platform for a while, and has just recently been added to the amd64 platform in 8.x. So if your laptop is x86 or x86-64, you shouldn't have any issues if you're running 8.2-RELEASE.
 
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