Dell Inspiron 1100 - 5.0.1 - display size

[candtalan]

With 5.0.1 the display is not full size, and centered on the screen. However with 4.0.2 it fills the screen ok. I can see that the video file (xfree86??) when running, is different in the two versions. If there is a cheat fix I can use it personally and that would be sort of ok, but my real problem is that I use knoppix as a demo CD in an Open Source 'Infopoint' display etc at computer fairs. I suspect the Inspiron has something unusual with the way its video ram gets reported to the bios or something, but it is (was) a major product line, and 5.0.1 is no longer a good demo for me. Is this problem only on inspiron 1100's?

Anyone - any suggestions please? Any chance of this being fixed in the next version?
tia

[penguine5]

This is an identical problem that I have with my Inspirion 1100. I love KNOPPIX and I was really excited to have the 5.1 version. However, I get a small screen and blue pinstripe vertical lines on the screen. The program itself works wonderfully otherwise. I have no idea what a cheat is. I'm extremely new to this and I really don't understand the technical stuff yet. I need help in plain English - step by step like. Thanks.

[Harry Kuhman]

I have no idea what a cheat is.

Boot parameters that help or bypass the hhardware detection routines at boot time. Follow the documentation link near the top of this page and read the wiki section on cheat codes. Type f2 as Knoppix boots at the first prompt for some limited info (but the wiki article is more detailed).

[candtalan]

With 5.0.1 the display is not full size, and centered on the screen. However with 4.0.2 it fills the screen ok. I can see that the video file (xfree86??) when running, is different in the two versions. If there is a cheat fix I can use it personally and that would be sort of ok, but my real problem is that I use knoppix as a demo CD in an Open Source 'Infopoint' display etc at computer fairs. I suspect the Inspiron has something unusual with the way its video ram gets reported to the bios or something, but it is (was) a major product line, and 5.0.1 is no longer a good demo for me. Is this problem only on inspiron 1100's?

Solution:
I used this boot entry:
boot: knoppix xmodule=i810
and it WORKS!

Details:
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Dell Inspiron 1100 (Bios revision A92)
Knoppix 5.0.1
(Note this procedure was not needed for knoppix 4.0.2, which used xfree86 not xorg)

Original posting:
Thu Jul 06, 2006 3:58 pm
Dell Inspiron 1100 - 5.0.1 - display size
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24847

and a reply from penguine5 Fri Jul 21, 2006 5:03 am
with the same problem,

followed by a reply from Harry Kuhman (moderator)
mentioning the wiki

The wiki:
http://www.cwelug.org/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?HomePage
and for this problem, specifically the section:
Knoppix/BootProcess
http://www.cwelug.org/cgi-bin/wiki.c...otProcess#tip4
[Testing various xmodule= cheatcodes quickly]

particular useful extract:
When Knoppix finish booting, change to VC 1
with Ctrl-Alt-F1 and enter runlevel 3 with 'init 3'.
To see what driver Knoppix used, type:
grep -i driver /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

When I gave this a try, the response I saw with my Dell Inspiron 1100
(bios revision A29) was:
i810
(which seems to be the driver I needed knoppix to run).
So I took the hint from a wiki entry:
'Once you find one that works better than what Knoppix guessed, you can use it at the boot prompt like so:
boot: knoppix xmodule=fbdev'

In my case the driver was i810, not fbdev
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hth

[jacksonon]

update your bios from the dell site.