i830MG Video BIOS

[Henk Poley]

I have a Motion M1200 Tablet PC that is working fine under Linux. Except one thing, the Video BIOS is broken. The drivers for Linux that Intel released do not program the hardware directly but call the VBIOS to change the resolution.

The resolutions the VBIOS reports to be available are:

640x480x8 (Windows XP safe mode)
800x600x8
1024x600x8 (Video BIOS crashes)
800x600x16
1024x600x16 (Video BIOS crashes)
800x600x24
1024x600x24 (Video BIOS crashes)

The built-in LCD panel is 1024x768 (not 1024x600). The PhoenixBIOS seem to run at 800x600, so that's probably why that works too besides the bare minimum to run Microsoft Windows XP in safe mode.

So what I'd like to know:
* How to override the VBIOS resolution tables?
* Or is the VBIOS really that broken that it can't go beyond 800x600?
* If so, where to get a working replacement?

Motion Computing, the manufacterer of the system, is not really helpfull since Microsoft Windows XP works fine. The Windows drivers from Intel directly program the chipset to set the resolutions. Intel in the mean time has EOL'ed the product support, besides that, they never released specs of the graphical subsystem of this laptop chipset.

Existing hacks for similar chipsets (like 855resolution) don't work. When I have time I might dive into Xorg to see if I can override to x86 emulator that runs the VBIOS to fetch it from a file, or otherwise change a shadowed version of the VBIOS.

So if anybody has any info that might help me, I would like to hear from you

PS, I *might* be slow in responding, since I'll be on holidays in about ~22 hours. But I thought I should get his request for help out asap, when I found this forum.

[Rainbow]

The BIOS seems to be Phoenix - http://www.motioncomputing.com/support/ ... d_1200.asp
Maybe try to open it using Phoenix BIOS editor (demo), get i830 VGA BIOS somewhere and replace it.

[thegnu]

The BIOS seems to be Phoenix - http://www.motioncomputing.com/support/ ... d_1200.asp
Maybe try to open it using Phoenix BIOS editor (demo), get i830 VGA BIOS somewhere and replace it.

As a note, MotionComputing says if you have a dual-branded tablet (eg, Gateway branded), use the vendor's BIOS. I've got a Motion Computing M1200 as well, Gateway branded. I've downloaded the BIOS, and the Phoenix BIOS Editor:
http://support.gateway.com/support/driv ... =112173895
http://www.dstyles.de/bios/bnobtc-files ... 0_18_0.zip

When I open the BIOS in Phoenix BIOS Editor, I get:

An unsupported module class 'Q' was found at offset E277B, do you want to continue?

I click yes, then it says:

Fixed-location module information was not found! This BIOS may not be workable after editing. Please rebuild the BIOS with CATENATE.EXE v2.90 or higher.

I don't really know what the error messages mean. I've noticed Phoenix BIOS Editor takes the stuff and dumps it into a temp directory. Do I find another BIOS for a motherboard with the same display adapter, copy out its display.rom, then replace this display.rom? I really don't want to mess this up, and I've never done this before.

Thanks!
-Nathan

EDIT: Can someone point me in the right direction as to where I can get a compatible display.rom? According to:
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/linux/ ... ml#xfree86
the Asus S1 has a fixed VGA bios, but it won't open in PBE

[Ritchie]

Especially since it runs fine under Linux, it seems more to me like a Windows driver mismatch or Windows driver corruption.

Or maybe the graphics chipset hardware is faulty but then you wouldn't expect it to run fine under another O/S.

[thegnu]

It seesm like some can get it working under Linux (but only at 800x600), but I really can't. I'm going to contact the authors of a few pages, and see if they have any updated information. I've tried with X.org 6.8 as well as 7.0, and none of it works, even when I follow the exact instructions and copy a complete xorg.conf file.

The problem is going into the graphical environment, the system locks up. I can't even get it to run at 800x600. The VGA driver works at 8-bit and something ungodly like 640x480, if that.

Check:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3879
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3894

I'm wondering if there's a safe way to fix the BIOS.

[Henk Poley]

Some old version of the i810 driver for X used to work at 800x600 yes.

And Ritchie this is a Video BIOS problem. Windows runs fine because the Intel driver runs the chipset with it's own code. The Linux driver doesn't work because it relies on the Video BIOS to work for mode switching, which is utterly broken in Motion's BIOS (plain crashes at most resolutions).

Thegnu, you can still SSH in and fetch the xorg logs, it doesn't crash the whole machine, only the graphics part. At least it did so several months ago when the X driver still somewhat worked. I used to use the fish:// KIO-slave to get the files off the system.

[thegnu]

I PM'd Henk, and got back

Alanh did tell me that if I could point him to an eBay auction of this machine he would definately look into it because of the Video BIOS weirdness.

I'm willing to ship my M1200 to someone interested in tinkering with it, and pay to get it shipped back. This approach would:

1) Save him money on a tablet that he may not fix after all. If he did fix it, then he could get one.
2) Put the tablet in more capable hands than myself
3) Possibly fix this horrible deal for everybody.

I know the Asus S1, as well as other laptops, have fixed the problem by just preallocating 8MB in the BIOS. The S1 doesn't have a Phoenix BIOS (Award, I think), however, and when I unpack it, I don't see a display.rom or similar file.

My guess from what Rainbow posted is if we can replace the display.rom file with a fixed one (preallocates 8MB), then repack the BIOS, we'd be set. But then, I'd rather have someone with experience do it, because I've trashed many a device by applying my kamikaze repair style.

#EDIT: Changed ambiguous wording.

[sunbirds]

please let me know the video bios rom which is correct,I will do some replace it .

[thegnu]

According to http://homex.subnet.at/~max/comp-05_hp- ... -xe3.shtml, the Omnibook xe3 works by default installation. The Dells for the most part seem to now work out of the box, but they don't use a Phoenix BIOS.

The Omnibook XE3 BIOS dl page (presumably with a functional Video BIOS):
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/Te ... em=ob762en

The Gateway M1200 BIOS dl page:
http://support.gateway.com/support/driv ... sion%20A04