[SATLUG] Re: Wild colors in X applications

[Jeremy Mann]

Frank, I had this problem when I had an old Sparc thin client
workstation. The framebuffer would only support 8bit, so I when I
tried to load multiple applications, the colors would vary from app to
app depending on which one wanted a certain color map. I'm guessing
this is your problem.


On 7/24/05, Frank Huddleston <fhuddles at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The spec sheet on the computer lists the video card as:
> Diamond Permedia 2, 8MB AGP, 3D Video Card. So I guess that's 8MB.
> Resolution on the monitor is 1280 x 1024.
> I forgot to mention that I'm running Fedora Core 3; I don't if that 
> matters.
> I notice that although the monitor specs say it has modes all the way 
> up to 1280x1024, when I select "display" in gnome or kde, the only 
> resolution options presented are 640x480 and 800x600. At this screen 
> resolution the windows are all huge, but the color problem is the same. 
> In order to get the higher resolutions I have to manually edit the 
> xorg.conf file. I am wondering why this is, although perhaps it's 
> because of the driver used for the card, which I think might be more 
> general: glint.
> I have noticed that, although the rendering of shadings and such is 
> noticeably grainy and dithered-looking, only some applications exhibit 
> this bizarre coloring. Of course I haven't tried them all, but a few 
> which do show this way are Firefox, Xine, and Gimp, and also the krdc, 
> the root window of which is displayed on the remote machine (using the 
> same monitor, though). Perhaps (probably) these applications use more 
> video memory than most others.
> Does all this sound consistent with the video memory problem?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Frank Huddleston
> 
> On Jul 22, 2005, at 8:34 PM, Thomas Cameron wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 2005-07-22 at 12:08 -0500, Frank Huddleston wrote:
> >> Greetings,
> >>
> >>     I'm getting some really intense, wild color combinations which
> >> render most text and labels unreadable when running some programs: 
> >> xine
> >> for one, and krdc on the remote machine for another. There have been
> >> others, but I can't remember what they were. In the example of xine,
> >> when the cursor is focussed on the xine control window, the colors are
> >> wild and appear excessively dithered; very grainy. When I put the 
> >> focus
> >> back on the desktop, all returns to normal. I can only imagine that
> >> somehow I have not correctly configured the communication between the
> >> system and the video card. Output from lspci relevant to the video 
> >> card
> >> appears to be:
> >>   01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Texas Instruments TVP4020 
> >> [Permedia
> >> 2] (rev 01)
> >> Display is a Dell D1226H Color Monitor.
> >> So can  anyone tell me what to do to correct this problem, or at least
> >> point me in a direction? xorg.conf entries, maybe?
> >
> > I have seen that on Solaris when I run out of memory to render all the
> > colors I'm asking the desktop to render.  How much video memory do you
> > have and what is the resolution at which you are running?
> > -- 
> > Thomas Cameron, RHCE, CNE, MCSE, MCT
> > 512-241-0774 (office)
> > 512-924-8592 (cell)
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > SATLUG mailing list
> > SATLUG at satlug.org
> > http://alamo.satlug.org/mailman/listinfo/satlug
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
> SATLUG mailing list
> SATLUG at satlug.org
> http://alamo.satlug.org/mailman/listinfo/satlug
> 


-- 
Jeremy