Yike I forgot to save grub.conf setting for text mode settings

[Robert G. (Doc) Savage]

On Sat, 2004-07-24 at 07:58, Harry Putnam wrote:
> Before installing FC3 I saved nearly everything usable from an running
> FC2, but foolishly forgot about /boot/grub.conf.
> 
> I had some trick string on the kernel line that caused a smaller
> character size in non-x terminals  something like 0x318 or similar.
> 
> Where can I look up those notations and how they relate to character
> size?  There must be a chart somewhere that shows how many lines
> veritically and how many chars horizontally one gets.

Harry,

Are you looking for the VESA modes? There is a hex listing in
/usr/share/doc/kernel-doc/2.4.xxx/fb/vesafb.txt. If you used vga=0x318,
you got a 1024x768x16M graphic screen, whose smaller characters show you
a lot more than the standard 80x25 character mode screen:

    | 640x480  800x600  1024x768 1280x1024
----+-------------------------------------
256 |  0x101    0x103    0x105    0x107
32k |  0x110    0x113    0x116    0x119
64k |  0x111    0x114    0x117    0x11A
16M |  0x112    0x115    0x118    0x11B
 
The video mode number of the Linux kernel is the VESA mode number plus
0x200.
  
      Linux_kernel_mode_number = VESA_mode_number + 0x200
 
So the table for the Kernel mode numbers are:

    | 640x480  800x600  1024x768 1280x1024
----+-------------------------------------
256 |  0x301    0x303    0x305    0x307
32k |  0x310    0x313    0x316    0x319
64k |  0x311    0x314    0x317    0x31A
16M |  0x312    0x315    0x318    0x31B
                         ^^^^^

I use vga=795 (decimal), which is the same as vga=0x31B.

--Doc
Robert G. (Doc) Savage, BSE(EE), CISSP, RHCE | Fairview Heights, IL
Fedora Core 1 kernel 2.4.22-1.2197.nptl on P-III/M IBM Thinkpad A22p
"Perfection is the enemy of good enough."
                         -- Admiral of the Fleet Sergei G. Gorshkov