About vesa driver - there is some cheat as to run normal X - shutdown it - run X in vesa mode - run reboot. As usually, it either works or not.. And by the time you'll finish your experiments, you'll find reasonable driver on dri.freedesktop.org, I hope.

Oh so you mean, I can run X using my amd driver, and then during shutdown I can shutdown my X, and run X with vesa driver and then I can reboot/shutdown(normally), right?

I know I have already asked much, but will it be possible for you to give me some idea how this can be done???

Also regarding the SVGAtextmode I did not find any information on this thread. Is SVGAtextmode part of svgalib??

Thanks

About X: write config for amd. Copy it to config-amd. Write config for vesa. copy it to config-vesa. Store both next to xorg.conf . Copy config-amd to xorg.conf . Now run X server as usual (with amd config in xorg.conf). Now switch to console. You have it static, yes? Login (blindly) and type:
X -config config.vesa vt12 :1
or something very like this. Maybe also try it just from xterm (should work).
Try switching to console from it.

SVGAtextmode: enter svgatextmode into searchbox. You'll get info about how to obtain it. Idea is that it changes console text mode to other text mode. Maybe it will work.

--
Advice in a forum doesn't tell you what to do, it merely gives you a lot of good search terms you didn't think of.

hello kushalkoolwal you can also use the values generated in http://www.dkfz-heidelberg.de/spec/linux/modeline/ instead of using the default values of fb.modes. btw did you try to upgrade your kernel? perhaps it can fix the problem.

Thanks Konsolebox. I will try your suggestion tomorrow. Hopefully it would be good if fbset can solve this problem because I guess that's the most simple way to solve the problem. Meanwhile I am working on suggestions by raskin also.

Thank you guys so much...bows....

here's an update. you can also use gtf to produce fbset settings:

Thanks. This weekend I am going to run couple of tests(as suggested by you guys) and try to resolve this issue. Hoping for your supports guys....Thaaaaaanks a looooooot....

Well, it seems that I am really having a bad stroke of lucks. I tried the "gtf" method but it did not work. Again the same behavour(screen blank with the ability to type blindly).

Ok in order to use the modeline tool I need to know my monitor's vertical freq. Upon searching on net I got this:
http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/product.asp?pid=9116

but instead of giving a specific value for the vertical freq, it gives me a range like "Vertical Frequency 50~75 Hz" SO which one should I use?

Thank you.

Oops. Do you know what is refresh rate (== vertical sync freq)? It is number of frames physically displayed per second. Choose one, higher is better, special bonus for not hitting power supply frequency (50Hz, I guess..). So you can choose any, try all reasonable in the range (reasonable == ending with zero or five).

Yes actually I know that, but I just wanted to make sure that I am putting the right values? Actually I tried generating the modeline for VFreq 75 but it did not help. Also I observed another strange thing: Even though my xorg.conf file says the Vfreq as 75 in monitor section, why does running fbset gives me a mode of "1024x768-76". Why it shows 76 instead of 75.

Thanks

Hello raskin, I tried your suggestion of switch the xorg.conf file in the same boot and see if it switches to text mode or not. well it does not. This is what I did:
1.Booted into X with AMD xorg.conf
2.Switched to virtual terminal(got blind)
3. copyied the Vesa xorg to xorg.conf
4. Killed XDM(so X automatically gets killed, I think so)
5. Started XDM and the monitor went blank.

Do you think I performed the correct steps?

Ok, after loads of trail I decided to recompile my kernel and I made the following changes:

1. Removed the "Select Compiled-in fonts" option under "Console Display Driver"

2. Also this time I enabled(built-in) the option "AMD Geode GX framebuffer support" into my kernel along with "VESA VGA graphic support" (which was already enabled). So basically I built-in the support for framebuffer driver for the VESA and my Graphics Card both.

I don;t think I made any other changes. Now when I booted from this new kernel with the vga=791 option (which was always there), I could still the Tux logo but this time the resolution in the graphics boot mode was not crisper. After the boot process I got my regular XDM login screen with the usual resolution--there was no change in the resolution of X. Now when I tried to switch to the VC 1, guess what I was able to see the text login prompt....hurraayyyyyyyy....

Now I was suspicious about the resolution of my framebuffer console, so I ran fbset command and this time I was able to see the mode as "640x480-60" instead of "1024x768-76". Now how did this happen? Does it mean that the kernel is usung the framebuffer driver of my Graphics Card(called as gxfb...which I had compiled in this time) instead of the Generic Vesa Framebuffer driver(vesafb)? If yes, then how can I know what is being used ?

Also if you think that this is not the cause then what could be the actual cause?

It would be really good if you can give your expertise knowledge in this matter.

Thanks a lot lot lot lot for keeping up my confidence and encouraging me to try different things.

Raskin and Konsolebox, waiting for your reply..

Finally you got it .

Good work there kushalkoolwal.

I guess the driver's the cause. The generic vesa driver was only meant to run vesa compliant cards.. common cards that is. Perhaps your card requires a more specific fb driver to handle different-from-vesa functions like changing resolution and powerdown of console.

Vesafb and card-specific fb's also differ from the amount of memory they can use.

Yes I am glad and all the credit goes to you(konsolebox) and raskin, but there is a just a minor thing that is still left to be done. Now I mentioned before, right now my framebuffer driver is operating at "640x480-60", so the screen is a little bit off the display and characters are quite big(expected). After booting into fluxbox, I tried giving the following command "chvt 1; fbset -v "1024x768-60" and the framebuffer text console I got was correct--it was operating at 1024x768, that means it supports this mode. So how can I boot with the framebuffer driver with 1024x768 mode? Do I have to create an init.d script with the line fbset -v "1024x768-60"?

I also tried passing this parameter during the kernel boot video=gxfb:mode:1024x768" but it still boots with 640x480.

Any suggestions?