Igor wrote:
> 
> It's your prerogative to disagree, and you are also right. But this stuff is
> all neatly menu driven, and it asks user in plain english for the Graphical
> boards and monitor names too, rather that RAMDAC shit, which even tech support
> people working for makers of the G-boards have trouble understanding, and are
> reluctant to talk about.
> 

Yes, I know that the programs "xf86config," "XSetup," and even
"XConfigurator"
will create a (usually correct) XF86Config file for you, but you can
still
edit the file by hand---it is only text.

The "xf86config" program does have a screen where you may choose
a RAMDAC type, but you can also just not choose and allow the program
to choose the default for your chosen video adapter, or sometimes the
server you use, depending upon which one, will autodetect the RAMDAC.

But sometimes servers contain initial, not-quite-finished support for
new or different components, and you can add a line here and there in
the
XF86Config file to try supporting, for example, RAMDAC "xyz" or memory
addressing scheme "abc."

At any rate, telling the program (the X server) exactly which RAMDAC you
have is not sh*t, but rather a way of getting around autodetection which
is sometimes not desirable as it autodetects the wrong thing.  In
addition,
you need not actually understand the RAMDAC itself, but rather the
alphanumeric
characters printed on the RAMDAC chip, which lies quietly soldered to
the
video adapter.

Anyway, aside from whether or not you are afraid to specify information
to your X server or not, I think Dave's problem is that the X server he
is
running is trying to use a feature of the video adapter called "hardware
cursor" which basically means the video adapter takes care of redrawing
the pixels which the mouse cursor passes over, allowing the X server
programmer
to move on to other tasks.  Of course this can also make the cursor
drawing
and erasing faster, and sometimes perhaps the video adapter will only
redraw
the cursor during the vertical refresh, so it doesn't jitter.  If the X
server
is incorrectly programming the video adapter's hardware cursor
registers, you
might have the adapter looking in the wrong place in memory for the
cursor bitmap,
or some other problem, which could result in a fuzzy gray square instead
of
the familiar x-shaped or arrow cursor.

-Alex (:-)
 alex@santa.asf.alaska.edu