1400×1050 with Intel Mobile 915GM

As I posted previously, I got a new laptop and am in the process of setting it with Linux. Installing Linux is easy – to make it take full advantage of the existing hardware is tricky. My current challenge is to have the Graphics subsystem use the full 1400×1050 resolution of the screen. I will…

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I started off with a clean Suse 9.2 installation. After various dead ends, this is what I did so far:

  • Reinstall X.org (X11R6.8.2) from the sources. This seems necessary to compile the Intel drivers.
  • Install Intel’s linux driver. Without recompiling X first, this kind of fails, but still seems to do something to the system. After the above reinstallation, the installation succeeds without an error.
  • Run “modprobe intel-agp” before starting X. Obviously, this should be automated, once everything is working.
  • Set 1400×1050 as a legal resolution in the Video Bios using 855resolution. However, this doesn’t seem to work with my Bios.
  • I guess I’ll have to update 855resolution. That doesn’t seem so difficult after all. the trick seems to be to make the video bios writable by talking to the right ports. Fortunately, the Intel 915GM Specification is freely available. Thanks, Intel!
  • It turns out there is a tool that tweaks the 915GM!!! The tools is available on Steve Tomljenovic Geocities site (thank you, Steve!!!), and I got pointed there by Christian Zietz on the XFree86.Org Developers Mailing List (thank you, Christian!!!).
  • The tool 915resolution must run on every start – just put the following in /etc/rc.d/boot.local: “915resolution 5c 1400 1050” (on Suse)

Comments

2 responses to “1400×1050 with Intel Mobile 915GM”

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    915GM linux and 3D ?? suse 9.2 9.3 ? – does the 3D work for you ?
    I got a dell 6000, 1280×800, screen resolution works, but no 3D …. on 9.2 not even mplayer would work, supertux for the kids to choppy,…
    well , like to hear from people having 3D support working under linux, suse, … thanks, Robert Schultz
    linux @ robsphoto .com (remove space)

  2. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Yes, 3D works – 3D works for me at reasonable speeds (supertux ~60 fps @ 1400×1050) … I had to specifically enable it using sax2. But I did a number of other things too, including recompiling X, and then compiling Intel’s drivers. So I am not sure what got 3D to work.