Dell Inspirion and Photon Display Issue

Hello,

We got QNX4 running with Photon on our Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop. A
problem arises whenever the lid of the laptop is closed; the when it is
re-opened, the screen is vertically offset. In this offset state,
applications appear with their top-most parts at the bottom of the
screen. It’s looks and acts as if the top part of the screen was cut off
and pasted to the bottom. If you move the mouse from the “top” of the
screen to the “bottom”, you will see the mouse jump from the top to the
bottom as it traverses that offset chunk of screen.

I suspected refresh rate problems, but the Photon screen configuration
only allows a default refresh rate on the Inspiron (this is not
uncommon). I tried the svga driver, but nothing seems to rectify this
problem.

A caveat; the programs running on this machine must never be put in
“stand-by” mode (databases run on this machine). Because of this, the
“stand-by mode activated when the lid is closed” feature has been
disabled from the BIOS, as well as all power saving features.

The screen remains on, at full brightness, at all times, unless the lid
is closed, at which time the problem occurs.

Any suggestion or input into this problem?

Adrian Mellognio <amellognio@crisys.com> wrote:

Hello,

We got QNX4 running with Photon on our Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop. A
problem arises whenever the lid of the laptop is closed; the when it is
re-opened, the screen is vertically offset. In this offset state,
applications appear with their top-most parts at the bottom of the
screen. It’s looks and acts as if the top part of the screen was cut off
and pasted to the bottom. If you move the mouse from the “top” of the
screen to the “bottom”, you will see the mouse jump from the top to the
bottom as it traverses that offset chunk of screen.

I suspected refresh rate problems, but the Photon screen configuration
only allows a default refresh rate on the Inspiron (this is not
uncommon). I tried the svga driver, but nothing seems to rectify this
problem.

A caveat; the programs running on this machine must never be put in
“stand-by” mode (databases run on this machine). Because of this, the
“stand-by mode activated when the lid is closed” feature has been
disabled from the BIOS, as well as all power saving features.

The screen remains on, at full brightness, at all times, unless the lid
is closed, at which time the problem occurs.

Any suggestion or input into this problem?

It sounds like some System Managment code is mucking with the
graphics device’s registers when the lid is closed (or opened).

I don’t know what could be done about this; graphics drivers
do not expect the device state to be altered by some “external
force” while the are running.

One possibility, is that you write a little script that does
slay Pg.
crttrap start

When you run this script, it will restart the graphics driver,
which should fix the display.

Dave

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion; the screen does right itself when you restart
the graphics driver. The problem with restarting the driver is that this
would require the user to actually execute a script after the lid is
re-opened. I doubt we can have our clients doing that (that’s too kludgy
to give to a client).

Currently, I don’t know of any way to run the script automatically upon
the lid being re-opened. How would the system be able to find out if the
lid has been closed?





David Donohoe wrote:

Adrian Mellognio <> amellognio@crisys.com> > wrote:

Hello,


We got QNX4 running with Photon on our Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop. A
problem arises whenever the lid of the laptop is closed; the when it is
re-opened, the screen is vertically offset. In this offset state,
applications appear with their top-most parts at the bottom of the
screen. It’s looks and acts as if the top part of the screen was cut off
and pasted to the bottom. If you move the mouse from the “top” of the
screen to the “bottom”, you will see the mouse jump from the top to the
bottom as it traverses that offset chunk of screen.


I suspected refresh rate problems, but the Photon screen configuration
only allows a default refresh rate on the Inspiron (this is not
uncommon). I tried the svga driver, but nothing seems to rectify this
problem.


A caveat; the programs running on this machine must never be put in
“stand-by” mode (databases run on this machine). Because of this, the
“stand-by mode activated when the lid is closed” feature has been
disabled from the BIOS, as well as all power saving features.


The screen remains on, at full brightness, at all times, unless the lid
is closed, at which time the problem occurs.


Any suggestion or input into this problem?


It sounds like some System Managment code is mucking with the
graphics device’s registers when the lid is closed (or opened).

I don’t know what could be done about this; graphics drivers
do not expect the device state to be altered by some “external
force” while the are running.

One possibility, is that you write a little script that does
slay Pg.<drivername
crttrap start

When you run this script, it will restart the graphics driver,
which should fix the display.

Dave

Adrian Mellognio <amellognio@crisys.com> wrote:

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion; the screen does right itself when you restart
the graphics driver. The problem with restarting the driver is that this
would require the user to actually execute a script after the lid is
re-opened. I doubt we can have our clients doing that (that’s too kludgy
to give to a client).

Currently, I don’t know of any way to run the script automatically upon
the lid being re-opened. How would the system be able to find out if the
lid has been closed?

Well that’s the problem. Intel (or whoever makes the CPU that’s
in your laptop) have done an incredibly good job of making “system
management” operations transparent to the operating system. Neither
the OS nor the graphics driver have any idea that the lid had opened
or close, or, for that matter, that there is a lid.

Special BIOS code runs when the CPU receives a system management
event, and there is even special circuitry in place so that the
memory used for system management is physical inaccessible when
the system is not running in system management mode. (Presumably
a lid open/close event trips the system into system management
mode).

It’s rather rude of the BIOS to go messing up the display and not
restore the registers properly when the lid is opened. The fact
that it even happens with the generic svga driver rather surprising.
I wonder if there’s a BIOS upgrade available for the laptop?

Regards,
Dave

David Donohoe wrote:

Adrian Mellognio <> amellognio@crisys.com> > wrote:

Hello,


We got QNX4 running with Photon on our Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop. A
problem arises whenever the lid of the laptop is closed; the when it is
re-opened, the screen is vertically offset. In this offset state,
applications appear with their top-most parts at the bottom of the
screen. It’s looks and acts as if the top part of the screen was cut off
and pasted to the bottom. If you move the mouse from the “top” of the
screen to the “bottom”, you will see the mouse jump from the top to the
bottom as it traverses that offset chunk of screen.


I suspected refresh rate problems, but the Photon screen configuration
only allows a default refresh rate on the Inspiron (this is not
uncommon). I tried the svga driver, but nothing seems to rectify this
problem.


A caveat; the programs running on this machine must never be put in
“stand-by” mode (databases run on this machine). Because of this, the
“stand-by mode activated when the lid is closed” feature has been
disabled from the BIOS, as well as all power saving features.


The screen remains on, at full brightness, at all times, unless the lid
is closed, at which time the problem occurs.


Any suggestion or input into this problem?


It sounds like some System Managment code is mucking with the
graphics device’s registers when the lid is closed (or opened).

I don’t know what could be done about this; graphics drivers
do not expect the device state to be altered by some “external
force” while the are running.

One possibility, is that you write a little script that does
slay Pg.<drivername
crttrap start

When you run this script, it will restart the graphics driver,
which should fix the display.

Dave

David,

Thanks for your input. I will check with Dell support regarding this
issue; it might just be a defective unit. I will try and make that
determination through them.




David Donohoe wrote:

Adrian Mellognio <> amellognio@crisys.com> > wrote:

Hi,


Thanks for the suggestion; the screen does right itself when you restart
the graphics driver. The problem with restarting the driver is that this
would require the user to actually execute a script after the lid is
re-opened. I doubt we can have our clients doing that (that’s too kludgy
to give to a client).


Currently, I don’t know of any way to run the script automatically upon
the lid being re-opened. How would the system be able to find out if the
lid has been closed?


Well that’s the problem. Intel (or whoever makes the CPU that’s
in your laptop) have done an incredibly good job of making “system
management” operations transparent to the operating system. Neither
the OS nor the graphics driver have any idea that the lid had opened
or close, or, for that matter, that there is a lid.

Special BIOS code runs when the CPU receives a system management
event, and there is even special circuitry in place so that the
memory used for system management is physical inaccessible when
the system is not running in system management mode. (Presumably
a lid open/close event trips the system into system management
mode).

It’s rather rude of the BIOS to go messing up the display and not
restore the registers properly when the lid is opened. The fact
that it even happens with the generic svga driver rather surprising.
I wonder if there’s a BIOS upgrade available for the laptop?

Regards,
Dave


David Donohoe wrote:


Adrian Mellognio <> amellognio@crisys.com> > wrote:


Hello,


We got QNX4 running with Photon on our Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop. A
problem arises whenever the lid of the laptop is closed; the when it is
re-opened, the screen is vertically offset. In this offset state,
applications appear with their top-most parts at the bottom of the
screen. It’s looks and acts as if the top part of the screen was cut off
and pasted to the bottom. If you move the mouse from the “top” of the
screen to the “bottom”, you will see the mouse jump from the top to the
bottom as it traverses that offset chunk of screen.


I suspected refresh rate problems, but the Photon screen configuration
only allows a default refresh rate on the Inspiron (this is not
uncommon). I tried the svga driver, but nothing seems to rectify this
problem.


A caveat; the programs running on this machine must never be put in
“stand-by” mode (databases run on this machine). Because of this, the
“stand-by mode activated when the lid is closed” feature has been
disabled from the BIOS, as well as all power saving features.


The screen remains on, at full brightness, at all times, unless the lid
is closed, at which time the problem occurs.


Any suggestion or input into this problem?


It sounds like some System Managment code is mucking with the
graphics device’s registers when the lid is closed (or opened).

I don’t know what could be done about this; graphics drivers
do not expect the device state to be altered by some “external
force” while the are running.

One possibility, is that you write a little script that does
slay Pg.<drivername
crttrap start

When you run this script, it will restart the graphics driver,
which should fix the display.

Dave
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