[syslinux] Problems booting Samsung NC20 netbook with pxelinux

[H. Peter Anvin]

Dirk Thierbach wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 11:18:42AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> There is a program called "vesainfo.c32" included with Syslinux, which
>> outputs diagnostic information about your VESA stack.  Getting that
>> output would be extremely helpful -- just run it from the pxelinux
>> command line.
> 
> Is there any way to redirect the output over the net? Because
> I'm not going to type all the modes verbatim unless it's really necessary.

Over the net, no.  You can use a serial console in the unlikely case 
your netbook has a serial port, or you can just use a digital camera and 
photograph the screen.

> To sum up, it says: "VBE version 3.0" and then a table of modes, first
> is 0x0101, last is 0x0233, about three screens worth of it. Attribute
> is either 0x009f or 0x009b (is that the text/graphic difference?),
> resolution from 640x480 to 1920x1200 in various aspect ratios (native
> display resolution is 1280x800), bpp 8/16/32, layout 4/6, rpos
> 0/11/16, gpos 0/5/8, bpos always 0.
> 
> Nothing else. Any particular additional details that are needed?

The difference between 0x009f and 0x009b is whether or not the BIOS can 
write text to the screen (which we never do, so it's not an issue.)

0x0233 is quite an odd value for the mode number, however.

What is quite possible, however, is that your display doesn't support 
all the modes the VESA BIOS is capable of generating, and there isn't 
any hardware support for scaling.  This would normally be classified as 
a BIOS bug; at least 640x480 should be supported in some manner (which 
may be simply in a small rectangle in the middle of the screen...)

Since it's VBE3 it might be possible to do a DDC query, but that could 
break other systems.

	-hpa