Z83 Mini Computer graphics

balanga · Tuesday at 10:39 PM

I recently rediscovered an old Z83 Mini Computer and was surprised that I had somehow managed to install FreeBSD onto it.
Now I'd like to see if I can find a video driver for it, although not entirely sure what to look for...

Running pciconf -lv shows a VGA line which contains

Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor X5-E8000/J3XXX/N3XXX Integrated Graphics Controller

Is that enough to tell me what driver I need to install?

Phishfry · Tuesday at 10:49 PM

You need Intel drm-510-kmod which was last found in FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE. It will be EOL soon so set it up now. No support for Z8xxx after drm-510. Baytrail Graphics.
pkg install drm-510-kmod
kldload i915kms

balanga · 2025-11-12T07:21:43+0000

Phishfry said:
You need Intel drm-510-kmod which was last found in FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE. It will be EOL soon so set it up now. No support for Z8xxx after drm-510. Baytrail Graphics.
pkg install drm-510-kmod
kldload i915kms

No packages found. The system is currently running 14.0-RELEASE.

I checked this also

FreshPorts -- graphics/drm-510-kmod: Direct Rendering Manager GPU drivers

amdgpu, i915, and radeon DRM drivers modules. Currently corresponding to Linux 5.10 DRM. This version is for FreeBSD 13.1 and above.

www.freshports.org

Phishfry · 2025-11-12T12:47:37+0000

Phishfry said:
which was last found in FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE

This says it all.
You want GUI on Baytrail you must use 13.5-RELEASE
It is the last working version.

balanga · 2025-11-12T16:17:56+0000

Actually, I just wanted a better resolution. as I was intending to use it in text mode only.

Does mean I have to downgrade the system to get a better resolution?

Phishfry · 2025-11-12T16:20:38+0000

Unless you are OK with SCFB video driver with no video acceleration....

Phishfry · 2025-11-12T16:23:00+0000

Believe it or not resolution on SCFB is set by the framebuffer resolution.

So to change resolution on SCFB/Xorg you can change GOP settings in loader.conf.

You could probably also use an Xorg monitor resolution config file or window manager settings.

balanga · 2025-11-12T16:29:01+0000

Phishfry said:
Unless you are OK with SCFB video driver with no video acceleration....

You are using FLAs which I don't understand and have never used.

balanga · 2025-11-12T16:33:48+0000

I just did a search for SCFB

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www.scfb.org

Phishfry · 2025-11-12T20:50:02+0000

Chapter 5. The X Window System

This chapter describes how to install and configure the X Window System providing a graphical environment

docs.freebsd.org

You could consider SCFB to be the SAFE MODE video driver for FreeBSD x11.

It is installed by default now and if the graphics card does not work right SCFB is the fallback driver.
Sometimes you do have to write a config file for it. Especially on Optimus laptops.