11 Configuring X for Your Hardware

Contents of this section

After you have added the required settings and setup a working network, run the xf86config program to create a standard configuration file in Y:\XFree86\lib\X11\XConfig from a windowed or full screen OS/2 text session:

[C:\] xf86config

The xf86config program will ask a number of questions. You will need the information obtained from the SuperProbe program here. The program should be self explanatory; if you have problems to understand something though, seek assistance in the newsgroups.

It is possible, but strongly discouraged for the non-expert, to edit the XConfig file with a text editor. In a few situations, as described in the FAQ, this might even be mandatory. This file is not a hacker's area, such as the Win95 registry, but it has in common with it that you can easily cause damage.

For details about the XF86Config file format, refer to the XF86Config(4/5) manual page.

If you know the configuration process from Linux or other XFree86 platform, you will encounter a few differences:

In most cases, an existing XF86Config file for the same XFree86 version from Linux or another platform may be used without changes. There is one prominent exception: some S3 805 based VLB cards put their video memory in odd locations. The X server can search for this memory by experimentally mapping and unmapping possible memory regions. In XFree86/OS2, the OS may run out of memory tiles during this process. If this happens, you must find out the location of the memory yourself and add it as an option

        MemBase 0x12345678
to the XConfig file.

Once you've set up a XF86Config file, you can fine tune the video modes with the xvidtune utility.

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