Thursday 11 February 2010

Great news on SIS672 X Driver!

I have managed to get the SIS671 driver working by making some changes to the source code & re-compiling it! I am now running at 1360 x 768. Not quite the maximum resolution (1366x768) but hardly detectable...



I have created a new Special Timing option for the ASUSX5DC. I then edited, xorg.conf and under device section I placed the following parameter:

Option "SpecialTiming" "ASUSX5DC"

I need to do a bit more work to the source before it is ready for release(I will be asking for the SIS671 Driver to be patched); in the meantime, if you have a ASUS X5DC and you would like a copy of the driver for test purposes, I am happy to provide a copy! Just leave a comment against this blog or email me, and I will send you a copy.

I have also extracted the EDID information from Windows 7 Registry and beginning to decode it. I hope to modify the SiS driver to read the EDID information directly from a file, enabling anyone to port EDID Information from Windows Registry... Useful if a manufacturer used the Microsoft's Windows - Custom EDID option, when configuring the screen driver.

19 comments:

  1. Hi Terry,

    Purchase in haste, repent at leisure: I bought a Proline W763S in South Africa, not realising that it has a SIS chipset. It has the standard widescreen lcd reaction to the sis671 driver: screen fades to white quite alarmingly from the corners a few times while X.org searches for a working mode, then bombs out.

    Please mail me your patched code, I'd like to try it out.

    Regards,

    David

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  2. Hello, I am Italian, sorry for any spelling mistakes ....
    I would like a copy of your driver to my mail is: info1 at email.it
    Thanks

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  3. Im very interested in your SIS671-driver-improving efforts.
    I suggest doing "svn checkout http://svn.mandriva.com/svn/packages/cooker/x11-driver-video-sisimedia/ x11-driver-video-sisimedia" to get the latest driver from Mandriva, and work on top of that.
    Im interested in contributing if you need any help, maybe posting source in a git repository could be useful.

    Regards,

    Daniel Uranga

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  4. Hi Daniel,

    thanks for your feedback..with regards to your suggestion to use the Mandriva src as a base...I will if there is a compelling reason to, can you let me know why you feel its better to use? I got the impression that more people were using the sis671 driver?

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  5. The driver from Mandriva is the same, but is updated with much fixes (supports xorg 1.7 & Clevo patches for example) and somewhat cleaned code. Much people is working on Sis 671 drivers, but the work is not centralized and happens mostly in forums, i think that is quite messy, you never know where is the "last" version of the driver.
    You see a lot of files called sis671.tar.gz and dont really know the differences between them, i think is necessary to merge versions and try to unify efforts. An "official" community supported driver would be just great...
    Somewhat off topic, this problem: http://launchpadlibrarian.net/27107413/DSC00298.JPG could be caused by EDID problems? i want to fix that and dont know how to...
    If my text is hard to understand, please feel free to ask, is just that english is not my native language and im not very good with it.

    Daniel Uranga

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  6. I agree...it really comes down to a lack of support from SiS. The distributions aren't that interested in getting the problem resolved because - they say its not worth the effort, when you look at the number of users if effects. Which is a bit backward in my opinion (because more people would use the hardware if it was supported)

    When I get time I will take a look at the sisimedia src code to see the differences and make a decision.....with regards to your problem, can you post a copy of your xorg.conf & xorg.0.log and I will take a look (but can't promise anything)

    Regards

    Terry

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  7. I have posted xorg.conf & xorg.0.log some time ago here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-sis/+bug/301958/comments/31

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  8. Daniel,

    I had a quick look at your xorg.conf & xorg.0.log. What resolution are you using? looking at the xorg.0.log is only 640x480....is that correct? and it causes your screen to look like this http://launchpadlibrarian.net/27107413/DSC00298.JPG? what hardware do you have and what resolutions are you wanting to support on it?

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  9. I have a Clevo notebook, te screen resolution should be 1440x900. It fails to detect correct resolution and the screen looks like http://launchpadlibrarian.net/27107413/DSC00298.JPG.
    Im using binary mandriva drivers on ubuntu 9.10 and it works ok. But any driver i compile fails detecting correctly my screen.
    Here is a xorg.0.log where screen is detected Ok.

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  10. [QUOTE]Im using binary mandriva drivers on ubuntu 9.10 and it works ok. But any driver i compile fails detecting correctly my screen.[/QUOTE]

    So, even if you compile mandriva it fails to detect your screen?

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  11. hi daniel,

    have you tried setting Option "SpecialTiming" "CLEVO_D4X0" in your xorg.conf file (under device options)?

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  12. [QUOTE] So, even if you compile mandriva it fails to detect your screen? [/QUOTE]
    Yes... im going to try "SpecialTiming" option, thanks for the suggestion!

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  13. Nop... Special timing did not work. Neither other options i tried.

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  14. Daniel,

    I downloaded the sisimedia src as you suggested, but I am unable to compile it! see errors below:

    sis_driver.c: In function 'SISProbe':
    sis_driver.c:567: error: 'struct _ScrnInfoRec' has no member named 'HandleMessage'
    sis_driver.c: In function 'SISErrorLog':
    sis_driver.c:840: warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments
    sis_driver.c:847: warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments
    make[2]: *** [sis_driver.lo] Error 1
    make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/purct/sisimedia/x11-driver-video-sisimedia/current/SOURCES/xf86-video-sis-0.9.1/src'
    make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
    make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/purct/sisimedia/x11-driver-video-sisimedia/current/SOURCES/xf86-video-sis-0.9.1'
    make: *** [all] Error 2

    Any idea's?

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  15. Did you applied the patches? Copy them inside "xf86-video-sis-0.9.1" and then use "patch -p1 "

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  16. Last post was incomplete: use "patch -p1 (patchname)"

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  17. I would like a link to the driver you have configured for the X5DC, if possible. Cheers,

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  18. hi, I'm from Brazil and i have a laptop with sis 671/771, i would know if you have a drive working with compiz. i am looking for this a wile on google but no solution

    Best Regards

    Helio
    uinbrazil@gmail.com

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  19. hi Helio,

    No only a 2D driver. Currently there is no 3D Driver available for Linux.....SiS never released 3D Driver (well thats not quite true, it was available to one manufacturer who shipped a linux distro with there hardware - but the driver wasn't developed any further so doesn't work with later disto's).....

    Regards

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