On Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 01:07:35PM -0400, Charlie Root wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> I have two laptops with different OS's: NetBSD on ThinkPad 380Z; Win98
> on Gateway Solo 5150. Both have 98MB of RAM, and have NeoMagic 256 video
> chipsets. Both are running Netscape 4.7X.
> 
> But any JPEG's viewed on the NetBSD box via Netscape look very low res
> compared with the same JPEG seen on the Win98 box via Netscape.

Hey there, Charlie Root!  Give poor old Gan an account already, would
ya?  Put him in the wheel group and tell him about the sudo package. 
It's OK, you can trust him.  Really.  

Right.  This an X question.  When I start X, I use a dumb little
script that redirects stdout and stderr, viz:

	$ startx >x.log 2>x.err &
	
(I use bash, in which "2>" redirects stderr.  I don't know how real
shells :) do it.)

If you do something like this and have a looksee at x.err, you'll see
something resembling (vaguely) this:

XF86Config: /etc/XF86Config
(**) stands for supplied, (--) stands for probed/default values
[snip]
(**) SVGA: videoram: 4064k
(**) SVGA: Using 16 bpp, Depth 16, Color weight: 555
(--) SVGA: Maximum allowed dot-clock: 256.000 MHz
(**) SVGA: Mode "1280x1024": mode clock = 185.640
(**) SVGA: Mode "1024x768": mode clock =  85.000
(--) SVGA: Virtual resolution set to 1280x1024

That is, my box is running ~65,000 colors (16 bits per pixel) in 
1280 x 1024 dots.  Yours will be something else, and more to the point
will be different from what Windows is using (and reporting).  

Compare x.err to your desktop properties and I think you'll see where
the difference lies.  The real question will be how to get XFree86 to
exercise your hardware.  Definitely one of the low points of the free
software experience, sad to say.  

> PS -- Hey, I'm sending this via Netscape on the NetBSD laptop. First
> time! Hurrah, hurrah! All my prior posts were either via Win98 Netscape
> or via NetBSD KDE. Such is the rate of my progress, alas...

How excellent.  

--jkl