Grabber Softwares : Enhance Your Computing

Running X on SiS cards

Setting up SiS 6215-based display cards to run the
X Windows System on Linux

There were quite a few questions on our Linux mailing list on configuring X for PCs using SiS 6215-based cards. Many computers these days come with SiS 6215-based video cards, and users have had problems running X windows on them. After some experimentation, I was able to get X up and running with a SiS 6215-based card. Here is what I did.

For using X with SiS 6215-based cards, you’ll need XSiS X Server from XSuse. The XSiS X Server and xf86config files are on this month’s CD-ROM under /Linux/sis.

Installation

You need to install the XSiS rpm and the xf86config program. Use the following commands to install the rpm on your machine.

rpm -i xsis.rpm
cd /; tar xvfz xsuseconfig.tgz

Configuration

Now we need to configure the software.

  1. Run xf86config command. Select your monitor details, etc. From the cards database select 405 (SiS86 C201) as the card. DO NOT run X probeonly now.

  2. Let the xf86config set up the symbolic links for the X Server.

  3. I did not select any RAMDAC.

  4. Complete the installation of X. This creates the file /etc/XF86 Config.

  5. Set up a symbolic link to XF86_SVGA (this is the driver selected) to point to XFCom_SiS using the following command.

cd /usr/X11R6/bin; ln -s XFCom_SiS XF86_SVGA

  1. Add the following line to the device section of /etc/XF86Config file:

ChipSet "SIS86C205"

Now we are all set. Run "startx" or whatever and enjoy!

I don’t know how the X Servers work. Neither do I know about video hardware. So I might have goofed in some places. If you find that there are better ways of doing this, please send mail to linux-india@grandteton. cs. uiuc.edu.

Gopal Upadhyaya