Success with Tritton USB2VGA on Pogoplug Mobile

As detailed in my earlier thread on this usb-2-vga device, I had a lot of trouble getting it to work properly with my dockstar. In the end, I decided that since all I needed was the ability to run "slideshow" of graphics on the root window I wouldn't worry about all the problems I had with X crashing upon loading the various window managers &/or more than 1 or two Xterms or other windows.

I used "xloadimage" to do the image work & wrote a little script to manage that & it worked fine. So, I installed xorg & xload image on one of my Pogoplug "mobile" & was off. In the end a single USB host for the sound device & VGA device showed it's limitations so I pretty much decided on not wasting any more time on it.

BUT THEN, today I realized that I had NOT ever tried to run a full x-session on the pogo-plug, which is what gave me all the grief on the dockstar. Since I could NOT be sure it wasn't a botched package install or something, I gave it a try.

Woah... Sucess! Beleive it or not, I was able to fire up X, start the fluxbox window manager, load several xterms, an xlcock, an xcalc & even run my slideshow all without X crashing. The peformance wasn't even that bad. Go figure.

But, I went back to the dockstar, wiped it's flash/drive, put on a fresh install of Bodhi's Debian 3.18, configure it, xinstalled xorg, fluxbox & fired it up. Crash. So, it's something with the Dockstar... seems weird but there it is.

Anyway, the good news is this makes a very cheap very decent display adapter for (at least) the Pogoplug mobile (& probably the other 'plugs). They can be had on ebay for about $5. See my other thread for the needed xorg.conf settings.

Oh, & no, I could never force the USB2VGA dongle to put NTCS timings.. don't think that's really possible.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/2016 09:17PM by craigcoffman.

well done sir!

I presume that you are describing the xorg conf file here as being the one that worked?
http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?9,26260,26273#msg-26273

im currently going through the agony of attempting to get a graphics adaptor - onboard this time - to work, so far i have found that support for my graphics adaptor isnt carried through into jessie.

AGAIN : WELL DONE AND THANKS FOR SHARING

> But, I went back to the dockstar, wiped it's
> flash/drive, put on a fresh install of Bohdi's
> Debian 3.18, configure it, xinstalled xorg,
> fluxbox & fired it up. Crash. So, it's something
> with the Dockstar... seems weird but there it is.
>

Did you try to run run this PogoMobile rootfs on the Dockstar? you could clone the rootfs and try it on Docksar.

-bodhi
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Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

gravelrash:

the only important part in the xorg.conf is the "device" part which specifies the driver to use:


Section "Device"
Identifier "Tritton USB-VGA"
Driver "sisusb"
VendorName "sis"
BoardName "unknown sis card"
Option "SWCursor" "off"
Option "HWCursor" "on"
Option "CRT1Gamma" "off"
EndSection

I putzed with tweaking the input section etc all in an attempt tot get Xworking properly on the dockstart & in the end that was all wasted time. Just the referenced bit is all that's needed.

to reiterate, this doesn't give you a display at boot. The display only becomes active when you start X.

Bodhi:

IIRC (now that I really think about it) the pogo plugs are running your Debian 3.14 kirkwood image. ONLY the dockstar is running the 3.18.

This is because:

1) I didn't know about the 3.18 image until you & exchanged messages about the problems I had with ugrading the "install" on the Dockstar, &

2) the Dockstar would not boot (if you recall) the 3.14 image no matter what I did, but did boot the 3.18 just fine.

This IS probably where the issue lies now that I think about it.. makes more sense than a hardware specific problem. If you want to, we can pursue this further, but I will probably need to lean on you some if we want to get that 3.14 image/fs booting on the dockstar so as to isolate the problem.

craigcoffman,

> think about it.. makes more sense than a hardware
> specific problem. If you want to, we can pursue
> this further, but I will probably need to lean on
> you some if we want to get that 3.14 image/fs
> booting on the dockstar so as to isolate the
> problem.

If you are running the new u-boot (2015.10) and rootfs 3.14 on the Dockstar then may be it's the DTB issue. The 3.14 does not have DTB (it was still a non-FDT kernel). So with the new u-boot you need to clear the DTB variable in u-boot (u-boot 2014.07 does not have this setup as default, but the 2015.10 does).

In Debian:

fw_setenv dtb_file

In serial console:

setenv dtb_file

If this still does not help, then we need serial/net console log.

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

Bodhi:

I'm not real concerned about this, but will work this end if you want to dig into the X issue to make sure it's not something in the 3.18 tar-fs.

The dockstar is running an older arch-version of uboot... & we covered some issues related to the dtb file, etc. in this thread:

http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,25827

There is also a serial console boot log posted there as well.

I will try your suggestions with regard to the dtb env variable, but let's make sure before I try that: this is an older arch-uboot, not your latest.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2016 05:48AM by craigcoffman.