Help with VIA Intergrated Graphics Card Problem

[GryphonOZ]

Hi all!

Well I would like to aske the following question and hope someone can help.

At this moment I am using OPensuse 11.4 and cannot get 3D acceleration active on VIA VT7205: KM400, P4M800 Intergrated Graphics Card. So my only option was to by a AGP or PCI graphics card until I came across PCLinuxOS 2011.9.

Wow, I ran the LIVE CD for PCLinuxOS 2011.9 and it immediately recognized My onboard Graphics card giving me all the 3d Acceleration that I was use to in Windows many moons ago, I could even change the resolution for my monitor something that OPensuse 11.4 did not allow me.

I was going to install PCLinuxOS 2011.9 but then I saw that PCLinuxOS 2012 "Phoenix" arrived , so I downloaded it and ran the LIVE CD , well immediately I noticed the difference between this new version and the old one, PCLinuxOS 2011.9, the new version does not recognize my graphics card at all , when I enter the configure desktop and go to Monitors it does not allow me to change the resolution beyond 1024x798.

Can someone tell why is this, why would the previous version of PCLinuxOS 2011.9 work perfectly for VIA Intergrated Graphics Cards and and this new release not work at all?

I would prefer to have this problem resolved before I install PCLinuxOS over my Opensuse 11.4.

Help

Thanks
rod

by the way in Opensuse 11.4 my PC details are:
 PCI 100.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)             
  [Created at pci.318]
  Unique ID: VCu0.Eb_wugO+xr1
  Parent ID: vSkL.S16qDHSKEeD
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.0
  Hardware Class: graphics card
  Model: "VIA VT7205: KM400, P4M800"
  Vendor: pci 0x1106 "VIA Technologies, Inc."
  Device: pci 0x7205 "VT7205: KM400, P4M800"
  SubVendor: pci 0x1043 "ASUSTeK Computer Inc."

On an Intel Pentium 4 3.00Ghz CPU

[Old-Polack]

Hi all!

Well I would like to aske the following question and hope someone can help.

At this moment I am using OPensuse 11.4 and cannot get 3D acceleration active on VIA VT7205: KM400, P4M800 Intergrated Graphics Card. So my only option was to by a AGP or PCI graphics card until I came across PCLinuxOS 2011.9.

Wow, I ran the LIVE CD for PCLinuxOS 2011.9 and it immediately recognized My onboard Graphics card giving me all the 3d Acceleration that I was use to in Windows many moons ago, I could even change the resolution for my monitor something that OPensuse 11.4 did not allow me.

I was going to install PCLinuxOS 2011.9 but then I saw that PCLinuxOS 2012 "Phoenix" arrived , so I downloaded it and ran the LIVE CD , well immediately I noticed the difference between this new version and the old one, PCLinuxOS 2011.9, the new version does not recognize my graphics card at all , when I enter the configure desktop and go to Monitors it does not allow me to change the resolution beyond 1024x798.

Can someone tell why is this, why would the previous version of PCLinuxOS 2011.9 work perfectly for VIA Intergrated Graphics Cards and and this new release not work at all?

I would prefer to have this problem resolved before I install PCLinuxOS over my Opensuse 11.4.

Help

Thanks
rod

Phoenix is a community XFCE remaster, not the official PCLinuxOS release. What you should be looking for is the pclinuxos-kde-2012.02.iso.

That does not guarantee that your on board video will be properly detected or that the proper driver will be available. VIA has always been a bit shaky with their Linux support, so not the best choice for either CPU or graphics. All you can do is try the official release and hope for the best.

We are a rolling release, which means upgrades are an everyday ongoing event, with upgrades to various applications becoming available as soon as a newer version is deemed to be stable. This includes the X server as well, and recently there have been changes where some of the older graphics drivers have been abandoned by the manufacturers of the older hardware, deeming it to have reached its practical "end of life". When a manufacturer stops supporting their own product in this way there is nothing we can do about it. There are open source drivers available but they are usually fairly basic, and lack many of the features of the closed source proprietary drivers. Whether this is actually the case with your specific GPU, or not, can only be determined by trying the current official release.

[GryphonOZ]

Thanks for responding.

I have to apologise I should have said that I used the LIVE CD for PCLinuxOS KDE 2012 Desktop.iso as you mentioned. But my 3d Acceleration did not work or was not detected by this version, however the VIA card with 3d acceleration was detected with the previous PCLinuxOS 2011.9 iso LIVE CD . Can this be explained?

thanks rod

[pags]

Thanks for responding.

I have to apologise I should have said that I used the LIVE CD for PCLinuxOS KDE 2012 Desktop.iso as you mentioned. But my 3d Acceleration did not work or was not detected by this version, however the VIA card with 3d acceleration was detected with the previous PCLinuxOS 2011.9 iso LIVE CD . Can this be explained?

thanks rod

I believe there was a (possible) explanation given...

...
 This includes the X server as well, and recently there have been changes where some of the older graphics drivers have been abandoned by the manufacturers of the older hardware, deeming it to have reached its practical "end of life". When a manufacturer stops supporting their own product in this way there is nothing we can do about it. There are open source drivers available but they are usually fairly basic, and lack many of the features of the closed source proprietary drivers. Whether this is actually the case with your specific GPU, or not, can only be determined by trying the current official release.

You would have to check the exact model / chipset you have against the manufacturer's current support, and see if that is no longer available in the version of X we're running...

[GryphonOZ]

Thanks Pags.

I am sorry if I am stupid or just thick, but my question was why does the previous release, which was PCLinuxOS 2011.9 desktop KDE LIVE CD detect my  VIA VT7205: KM400, P4M800 VIA video graphics card  and allows 3D acceleration and all the bells an whistles on it but the new release PCLinuxOS 2012 desktop does not detect it?

One would think that a new release would be better than the old release, is that not right?

Could someone answer that question.

Is there something special with the previous release or is there something wrong with the new release, someone forgot to think about the older PCs ?

thanks
Rod

[gseaman]

As new versions of X.org and the linux kernel come along, some older hardware is no longer supported. If that is the case for you hardware, you have the choice of using an older version of linux or purchasing hardware that is fully supported. There is nothing the developers of PCLinuxOS can do about this, other than look for the best solution with what is available. I hope this clears it up.

Galen

[GryphonOZ]

Galen

Thanks for that ok that makes sense.

So basically I have to decided to stay with PCLinuxOS 2011.9 or buy a stand alone graphics card to get Gnome or KDE to work with the new releases.

I guess the easiest is to locate a cheap PCI cards or AGP card from somewhere.

Thanks all

rod

[pags]

Thanks Pags.

I am sorry if I am stupid or just thick, but my question was why does the previous release, which was PCLinuxOS 2011.9 desktop KDE LIVE CD detect my  VIA VT7205: KM400, P4M800 VIA video graphics card  and allows 3D acceleration and all the bells an whistles on it but the new release PCLinuxOS 2012 desktop does not detect it?

One would think that a new release would be better than the old release, is that not right?

Could someone answer that question.

Is there something special with the previous release or is there something wrong with the new release, someone forgot to think about the older PCs ?

thanks
Rod

Never worry about asking the question.  It is how we learn.  The only stu bad question is the question left un-asked.

Regarding Galen's response, the other consideration to keep in mind is that some vendors do not release all their hardware specs to all developers (the Via Chrome, as well as nVidia, are in this group).  For "open" drivers for Xorg, it is left to the developers to "reverse engineer" the card through trial and error.  As a result, the only fully functional drivers are those (proprietary) drivers that come from the manufacturing.  If they stop supporting a card or chipset, and the older drivers no longer work with the newer versions (of kernels and/or X), then we lose access to drivers that fully exploit the hardware.

Fair?  No.  However, it is not a failing of X, but an unwillingness of the hardware vendor to release the full specs of deprecated hardware (perhaps they feel that would still expose their current hardware offerings...I don't know).
 

[AS]

There is something that is puzzling me in this thread ... while I can confirm about the possibly unsupported hardware and so on ... it appears that PCLinuxOS KDE-2011-09 it was using exactly the same X.org X server as 2012.02 :

X.Org X Server 1.10.4
Release Date: 2011-08-19

Therefore, IMO, there should be a different reason behind GryphonOZ,s issue.

@GryphonOZ,

how much RAM is installed in you system ?
can you boot from PCLinuxOS 2011-09 and provide the output of the following command:

Code: [Select]

lspci
AS

[Linuzoid]

I don't know to much about this, but could it be the Kernel version being used?

[AS]

I don't know to much about this, but could it be the Kernel version being used?

no, it is the same: 2.6.38.8-pclos3 ... what might have been changed could have been the compression factor of the live filesystem ... which would require more RAM ...

[Old-Polack]

I don't know to much about this, but could it be the Kernel version being used?

no, it is the same: 2.6.38.8-pclos3 ... what might have been changed could have been the compression factor of the live filesystem ... which would require more RAM ...

There's also the question of the quality of the .iso image d/l and that of the burn. Were either checked with md5sum, and was the burn done at the lowest possible speed? Everything needed might be there, in the available image, but corruption during either process prevents its use.

[GryphonOZ]

There is something that is puzzling me in this thread ... while I can confirm about the possibly unsupported hardware and so on ... it appears that PCLinuxOS KDE-2011-09 it was using exactly the same X.org X server as 2012.02 :

X.Org X Server 1.10.4
Release Date: 2011-08-19

Therefore, IMO, there should be a different reason behind GryphonOZ,s issue.

@GryphonOZ,

how much RAM is installed in you system ?
can you boot from PCLinuxOS 2011-09 and provide the output of the following command:

Code: [Select]

lspci
AS

Thanks everyone.

To respond to AS , I ran lspci and got this info:

linux-8qhj:/home/gryphoninc # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN333/CN400/PM880 Host Bridge
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN333/CN400/PM880 Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN333/CN400/PM880 CPU Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN333/CN400/PM880 Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN333/CN400/PM880 Host Bridge
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN333/CN400/PM880 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/VX700 PCI Bridge
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6105/VT6106S [Rhine-III] (rev 8b)
00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN400/PM800/PM880/PN800/PN880 [S3 UniChrome Pro] (rev 02)

I am running a Pentium 4 3Ghz with 1.3GbRAM.

I am currently running Opensuse 11.4 without 3D acceleration in its fallback mode an I love it for its stability but I have decided to change and for this reason I have come to PCLinuxOS , I downloaded the Live CD for 2011.9 a while ago and ran this and wow I had 3d acceleration and recognition of my VIA Graphics card something not occuring before. When I was going to install PCLinuxOS in my system I found out that there was version 2012 and downloaded the Live CD ran it and boom no 3d acceleration . For this reason I asked the question.

Responding to the burn speed , that could be a good answer normally I burn ISO a 8x this time by accident I burnt the ISO at 24x maybe this caused a glitch. May try to download it again and burn it slower.

But as I mentioned before if it worked in the previous version I would have expected that it would have worked with the new version 2012, you don't go backwards only forwards isn't that right...... oh I forgot, Ubuntu screwed its self with Unity..... well anyway thanks everyone. Lets hope that this can be solved cause I was really impressed with PCLinuxOS 2011.9 especially it ease of use.

rod

[Phil]

Just some thoughts.

So 2011.9 works and 2012 does not.

How about save out your data, clonezilla your existing system (so you can get it back if needed)
Install the functional 2011.9, see if 3D works when installed. Update it with synaptic, see if 3D still works. If yes, clonezilla it as a backup and keep going. If no go back, retry and ignore any updates to the graphic card/system.

Note on the 3D effects on my machine in the PCC Control centre (equivalent of yast) Configure 3D desktop Effects is OFF. On Configure Your Desktop KDE which used to be kcontrol, on workspace appearance > desktop effects > yes (and so that is how I get them to work on my setup).

[bicol_willem]

Think you're out of luck. I was recently also beaten by a VIA chipped HP Mini 2133

See: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,103624.0.html

That it worked with PCLOS 2009 can be explained by the fact that VIA indeed made some drivers available for "selected distro's". With 2012 version we are out of luck...

Look it up here: http://linux.via.com.tw/support/downloadFiles.action

Its mainly a Xbuntu and Suse support from VIA (Think they think BIG!).

VIA graphics chips are on my "no go" and "no buy" list from now.