[Savage40] xe3 mode switch problems

[Dmitry Golubev]

Hello,

I have an HP XE3 notebook with Savage/IX-MV mobile 8MB integrated graphics 
controller. I am using up-to-date Debian SID distribution. While it worked 
fine, one day I decided that I want to utilize its dualhead capabilities by 
plugging in a 1280x1024 LCD monitor (the lcd panel of the notebook works in 
1024x768 mode). that where problems arise...

I have tried many drivers (using ubuntu xorg server; freedesktop xorg-dri 
distribution; and also both xservers with drivers from 
http://www.botchco.com/alex/new-savage/savage/working/ ) with almost all 
possible configurations and driver options, with the same result: while it's 
working properly in noaccel mode (this is obviously not what I want, since 
even moving windows is ridiculously slow), enabling accelerations bring out 
more or less weird problems (which, of course may as well be hardware 
problems, but in that case wouldn't it be on all XE3 notebooks and thus 
worked around long time ago???). it also seems like having 1024x768 mode on 
the second screen makes less or no problems, which is not what I want, as i 
have external lcd monitor connected, which is designed to work at 1280x1024 
and interpolation is not very interesting to observe...

1. If I go with acceleration on both heads, drawing more or less complex 
something on the second, makes garbage on the first, but opening, for 
example, firefox with a gnome theme (a lot of textures I suppose), blocks the 
X completely with garbage all over both screens

2. If I go with acceleration only on the first screen (lcd panel), everything 
seems to work fine until I switch to text mode (I do not need the text 
consoles, but unfortunately sleep/suspend/hibernate operations do switch 
modes... if you can make these procedures not switch modes, it would be an 
acceptable workaround for me) . The effect is that text modes work good, but 
switching back brings garbage on both screens, and a part of the second 
screen assumes it is the first screen... cant really describe this...

As the only thing that can fix the 2nd point is restarting X server I even 
spent some time on researching X session suspending, but have found no proper 
solution. NX although looks good seems to only work on one of the  screens 
(in X configuration with two separate screens, so that I can use xrandr from 
gnome), but with xinerama it looks like not realizing how to work with this 
extension, making windoes appear at the middle of the screen... (but i don't 
really like using xinerama as it disables xrandr, but in dulahead config it 
is obviously a good idea for notebook users since i have plans on attaching 
projectors (800x600 or 1024x768) to that external vga connector)

Thanks and excuse me for writing such a long email,
Dmitry