[ArkLinux 0000014]: Display On Averatec 3200

A BUGNOTE has been added to this bug.
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http://www.arklinux.org/mantis/bug_view_page.php?bug_id=0000014
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Reported By:                Anonymous
Assigned To:                bero
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Project:                    ArkLinux
Bug ID:                     14
Category:                   Useability
Reproducibility:            have not tried
Severity:                   major
Priority:                   normal
Status:                     assigned
Component:                  <component>
Component Version:          <component version>
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Date Submitted:             02-20-2005 12:07 CST
Last Modified:              02-20-2005 12:44 CST
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Summary:                    Display On Averatec 3200
Description: 
My averatec 3200 series laptop installed arklinux just fine, and it boots
fine, but when the boot screen closes the screen turns black and the
display is unusable.
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 bero - 02-20-2005 12:44 CST 
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This is a known problem. The Averatec 3200 uses a S3/VIA Unichrome Pro
(K8M800) chipset; due to the fact that VIA does a horrible job at
supporting Linux (they won't release working drivers, and chipset
specifications that would enable someone else to write a driver are
released under NDA only), support for this chipset is incomplete.

The chipset has been reverse engineered to a point where an external CRT
will work just fine, but so far we haven't figured out how to make the
chipset address the LCD panel in notebooks.

This is currently being worked on (I've sent the maintainer of the driver
a K8M800 based notebook for testing last week); your only option right now
(aside from using an external display) is to use the VESA driver (this will
work, but you won't have any hardware acceleration).

You can force usage of the VESA driver by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf (or
/etc/X11/XF86Config if you're using an old version), and replacing the
line saying 'Driver "via"' with 'Driver "vesa"' (you can also try 'Driver
"fbdev"').

Since the hardware maker is very uncooperative, it is hard to tell when
this problem will be fixed for real.

Bug History
Date Modified  Username       Field                    Change              
======================================================================
02-20-05 12:07 Anonymous      New Bug                                      
02-20-05 12:07 Anonymous      Component                 => <component>     
02-20-05 12:07 Anonymous      Component Version         => <component version>
02-20-05 12:37 bero           Assigned To               => bero            
02-20-05 12:37 bero           Status                   new => assigned     
02-20-05 12:44 bero           Bugnote Added: 0000035                       
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