I just installed xdsl and its really hard to navagate as the screen seems to be missing the top bottom and left and right its like its been zoomed in to much is there a settings to fix this. No xbox games have this problem but evoX has it a tiny bit but its not noticable.

thankx

and keep up the good work with XDSL its really go now i have a computer in my room lol.

i have this same problem, and when i go to adjust the screen overscan and everything, it comes back saying it needs to be a correct value... when infact it is!

480p won't work with me either, i don't have an HDTV pack or an HDTV for that matter

It´s the same with me. I don´t have a HDTV and need to ajust the screen. It´s really hard to use the system with the big screen.

[]´s

If you want to change the resolution try opening a terminal window, type in sudo su, type in beaver, open the linuxboot.cfg file, and that should be in your e: drive, witch is mounted under cdrom, and then where it says video=xbox:640x480, change it to video=xbox:800x600.

That should work, unless I'm on the wrong track with what you were saying, probably the case.

As long as you don't have a v1.6 xbox and are not using a hdtv mode the best way to correct overscan is as follows:

open linuxboot.cfg and find the line which starts with append and contains video=640x480. Change this part of the line to

video=xbox:640x480,hoc=X,voc=Y

where X is the % horizontal overscan correction and Y is the % vertical overscan correction. Experiment with different numbers in the range (0-20) until you find something that fits your screen.

If you have a v1.6 or are using a hdtv mode (480p / 720p) then the above won't work. Instead you need to alter the framebuffer settings manually with fbset

see here for more details.

Since dslbox is down , anyone want to copy/paste a cache or something ? Would love to get 720p working nice here.

No problem

============================================================
On v1.6 xboxes the kernel has limited support for the xbox's graphics chip and so has no built in overscan correction i.e. the timing (the sum of visible and non visible pixels) is fixed. Simialrly there is no overscan correction when using any of the hdtv modes on any xbox versions.

In theory it should be possible to increase the number of invisible pixiels and decrease the number of visible pixels by the same amount, reducing the resolution but correcting overscan.

The command you need to use for this is fbset. This shouldn't be run in X so you need to start in textmode and either have a usb keyboard or be able to ssh into XDSL (add 2 ssh to the append line in linuxboot.cfg) see the CHEATCODES.txt included in the download for more details. Then if your using ssh connect to your xbox using the username root and pass xbox.

First run fbset -s to see your current framebuffer infomation

it should look something like this:

mode "640x480-60"
# D: 25.176 MHz, H: 31.469 kHz, V: 59.942 Hz
geometry 640 480 640 480 32
timings 39721 40 24 32 11 96 2
accel true
rgba 8/16,8/8,8/0,0/0
endmode

the format is as follows

geometry xres yres vxres vyres depth
timings pixclock left right upper lower hslen vslen

If you want to find out what all of these mean type man fbset. The ones we are interested in are:

xres, yres - horizontal and vertical resolution
vxres,vyres - virtual horizontal and vertical resolution (should match xres, yres in most cases)
left, right, upper, lower - margins at left, right, top and bottom of the screen

We want to decrease the resolution and increase the margins to compensate. The horizontal and vertical resolution number must always be divisible by 8 and the sums

xres + left + right
yres + upper + lower

should remain constant. You should keep any other settings (pixclock etc) the same

You can apply new settings with

fbset -g <xres> <yres> <vxres> <vyres> <depth> -t <pixclock> <left> <right> <upper> <lower> <hslen> <vslen>

So for example you could could try decreasing the vertical resolution by 40 and increasing the top and bottom margins by 20 each to compenstate

Starting with the timing infomation above this would yield

fbset -g 640 440 640 440 32 -t 39721 40 24 52 31 96 2

Moving centre of the screen:

With these adjustments you may find it fixes overscan on one side of the screen (e.g the bottom left) but not on the opposite side as the screen is nolonger centered. To change this try the following:

Looks like to change the position of the screen you need to change the position of the sync pulses. This time tweak hslen and vslen while keeping the sums

xres + left + right + hslen
yres + upper + lower + vslen

constant

hslen is length of horizontal sync pulse, vslen length of vertical sync pulse

To move the screen to the right I think you need to increase hslen & decrease the left and right margins to compensate. To move the screen up increase vslen & decrease the top and bottom margins to compensate. I think you will need to make your changes in multiples of 8 (i.e. could decrease top and bottom margin by 8 increase vslen by 16)

Disclaimer: I don't have a v1.6 xbox or hdtv set to test this on - this is all theory. If you make big changes to the timing infomation it may be possible to damage your television - be careful when changing things and just make small changes.

If it does work for you add the fbset command you used into /opt/bootlocal.sh so it is run everytime you use XDSL
========================================================

i tried that before. its very hard to get it to perfection.

haha, here i was gonna try out linux on my xbox. but i read this postr adn saw what u go through to change the screen resolution!! haha. no thanx

ill leave it to u smart peopel

bleh. so far i can run linux. its the stupid overscan correction thats not working on the 1.6 xbox's

damn that MS.

Can anyone confirm this works?

I can confirm that so far on my TV the fbset method appears to simply not work. (I have a Pioneer HDTV 56" Widescreen) I can SSH into X-DSL fine using Putty. Internet Connection via the router works easily. I've tried tightening the left and right and increasing the resolution but it still appears the same. When I use slightly more extreme values the screen disappears or overlaps. I've followed the rule set of divisible by 8 and keeping the 3 components constant that was listed above. I'm sort of out of options besides using the hoc and voc method. I've tried it once but I don't belive there was any difference at all. I will experiment with this a little more tonight taking it off of 480p and just using video=xbox:640x480 or 720x480.

It's also important to note that my default.xbe file is not cromwell or xromwell it's Gentoox's Cromwell Xromwell unofficial release. This probably doesn't effect anything. I just haven't got the cromwell 2.4 release to actually work don't know if this because UnleashX's BIOS is messing with this or not. Cromwell goes into a kernel panic and completely shuts down the Xbox.

Can anyone confirm anything about the hoc and voc method?

So i have a problem with my xdsl. Except i can't get my xbox to work with the hd pack at all. It looks like the vertical hold is gone crazy, is there anyway to ge that to stop and act normal? it works fine with the regular av pack. And if not will the S-video work? is it any better than the normal av pack?

I've been told by a couple of people using HDTV this has worked for them. I've been told by someone with a v1.6 they were able to improve overscan but not eliminate it completely (the screen wasn't centred). I don't have a HDTV/v1.6 so I really can't offer much more advice - it really needs more people to just mess about with fbset and report their findings. I got most of my info from the following places:

overscan thread on gentoox forums
hdtv howto on xbox-linux.org


As far as I know the hoc,voc options have no effect with HDTV modes or when using a v1.6 xbox. Everything I've seen suggests fbset is the answer for these. You might also want to try messing around with xbv (just type xbv --help for more info).



Do you have a HDTV? 480i doesn't work with component - only 480p and 720p are support using the hd pack. On v1.6s I think only 480p works. Also cromwell has some issues with HDTV + certain Xbox versions - you might want to give the gentoox loader a go to see if that's any better. I think s-video works but I'm not certain (and I've got no way of testing it here anyway).

Thanks to friedgold for the links. I did tool around with this further and found out that these settings work for me. (As suggested in both of the links)


SSH into X-DSL and type:
"fbset -g 640 440 640 440 32 -t 37000 100 54 45 33 64 7" (no quotes). Also you MUST (well, for me I had to anyway) alter the linuxboot.cfg file to read video=xbox:640x480. If you have this set on video=xbox:480p (or HDTV readable) when you input the above fbset command the screen will be garbled. Friedgold's link (overscan thread on gentoox forums) http://forums.shallax.com/viewtopic.php?t=1389 has a section regarding making this work with 480p. I haven't tried this. This tutorial was written for Gentoox, but it appears you can do the exact same thing on Xebian. (You can see I used the initial fbset settings from this forum to correct my overscan) However I can not find the file XF86Config-4 mentioned below. I'm not really advanced in this so if anyone knows if there's a way to alter console video "modes"..... please help!!

Quote gentoox shallax forum:

Thanks to all the forum postings, various web pages, etc, I was able to put the pieces of the puzzle together. One guy's web page that I came across had the correct settings for X Windows to display correctly on an HDTV with 480p.

I will be tweaking the settings to see about 540p or 1080i (my TV doesnt support 720p) - IMO the desktop resolution of 640 x 480 is ridiculously small.

Here is how I did it:

1. DO this from a PuTTY/Terminal/SSH session as root (If X/KDE/XFCE is running the screen will be garbled after this - It is normal and ok):
fbset -g 640 440 640 440 32 -t 37000 100 54 45 33 64 7

2. Then run (this will give you needed parameters for X Windows):
fbset -x

---------------------------
THIS SHOULD APPEAR
---------------------------
Xbox # fbset -x

Mode "640x440"
# D: 27.027 MHz, H: 31.500 kHz, V: 60.000 Hz
DotClock 27.028
HTimings 640 694 758 858
VTimings 440 473 480 525
Flags "-HSync" "-VSync" # Warning: XFree86 doesn't support accel


EndMode
----------------------------

4. Edit "etc/X11/XF86Config-4" (pico XF86Config-4) find "Modeline 'xbox' "

5. Change the settings to what you got from fbset -x
Example:

Modeline "xbox" 27.027 640 694 758 858 440 473 480 525 -HSync -VSync

Exit and save XF86Config-4

6. X windows will still be garbled, You can restart X by pressing CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE, it should be purdy now.

-Jared
I am a n00b to Linux, but learning quickly. Please dont flame me.
(End Quote) ----------------------

This didn't correct my overscan completely. It left the lower screen still covered. I tooled around with it some more and it only got worse. I suggest for the users who wish to utilize the GUI (Looks like it's called the "Slit") on the right side of the screen to "right click" or press B on the X-pad and place it somewhere readable such as "Center Right". If anyone succeeds in the HDTV settings for X-dsl please post!!

You won't find a XF86Config-4 file because X-DSL doesn't use one. Basically the situation is this: gentoox/xebian use the XFree86/X.org X servers. They access the video hardware directly and so need a seperate config file telling them what video modes to use. X-DSL (and sXb mini I believe) use the the K Drive framebuffer X Server. This doesn't access the hardware directly but uses the framebuffer instead. This means all you need to do is get the video settings working on the framebuffer with fbset and the X Server will use these settings too. Once everything looks good just save the fbset command you used to a init script so it is run every boot.

i get a greenish screen on my hdtv with hd pack... have tried some of the suggestions to change res. but never worked... too bad!

its not an hdtv, and i have a 1.o xbox. Can you link me to any info on this gentoox loader? i want to find a way to work with this hd-pack because the normal video pack sucks horribly, its real blurry and out of focus fonts are real hazy. Would the s-video look any better or is it due to the res?

I'll say it again:

480i doesn't work with component

i.e. you can't use the hd-pack without a hdtv. This is a limitation of the current kernel in X-DSL and the bootloader will make no difference. If you are trying to use the hd-pack with a hdtv then the gentoox loader may help in some cases and is available from shallax's site.

Hi,

I wasn't sure whether to start a new thread or not so I didn't.

Anyhoo...

When running xdsl on my TV, my display is bad. I'd like to run it at 720p, but the bottom and sides are cut off.

I've read many faqs and tutorials, I've edited the linuxboot.cfg for pretty much every screen size, and I've tried using fbset.

I know that xdsl does not have an x config file and that I must make the changes via fbset, but in my searching, I found a post (herehere) where someone had altered the modeline for the "X config file" for my exact tv, and claimed that it worked properly.

I have tried editing fbset, but I have always ended up with an orange, unreadable screen. (I don't have all of the combinations I tried here, but I can post them when I get home). I made sure my height and width were divisible by 8, and that the sum of the horizonal + margins and vertical + margins was the same after my modifications as it was before...

Anyways, I just found the following info and am wondering if there is a way to translate it into something could could put into fbset. These settings are reported to work for my tv, and if I could adapt them to my needs, I'd be a happy man.

Modeline "1280x720" 74.48 1280 1336 1472 1664 720 721 724 746 -HSync
+Vsync

Monitor/TV: Olevia 27" Widescreen (16:9) HDTV (480p,720p and 10801i compatible)

Thanks for reading!

PS: I can't remember my xbox version, but I i know it's not 1.6.

ok look i dont have much linux skills but i do have a USB keyboard and the overscan is HORRIBLE on my tv. So I haven't really understood what to type to change the res. So can anyone help.



Thank You

fbset -x shows the xfree86 compatible video settings. By playing around with this they seem to be in the form:



The pixclock is measured in pico seconds so dotclock=1E12/pixclock.
Therefore pixclock=1E12/dotclock.

Therefore Modeline "1280x720" 74.48 1280 1336 1472 1664 720 721 724 746 translates to

geometry 1280 720 1280 720 32
timings 13426 56 136 22 3 192 1

or

fbset -g 1280 720 1280 720 32 -t 13426 56 136 22 3 192 1

(If my reasoning is correct anyway)

so i would type that ^^^?

Hey friedgold,

Muchos gracias -

I'll try it when I get home tonight. I'll be eternally grateful if it works!

G.

Hey st3ph3nt4n,

The answer above was addressing my specific TV (hopefully). For your setup, before you go messing around with fbset, make sure you've tried out some of the different screen resolutions in the linuxboot.cfg file.

There's a few different screens that are supposed to work - check the CHEATCODES.txt file that came with your install.

Hey friedgold,

I wanted to let you know that your fbset worked (mostly). I think the left and right margins got flipped in your calculationse, so I flipped them and tweaked it a bit and it seems to work now.

(In case anyone else is setting up up syntax olevia 27", try this:
fbset -g 1280 720 1280 720 32 -t 13426 156 36 22 3 192 1
)

A couple more noob questions...
Do I have to type this every time I want xdsl? When I restart my xbox, it uses the settings in the linuxboot.cfg file (not fbset). If I remove the video info from linuxboot.cfg file, I get a warped squished-double-screen thing happening... There must be some way I can permanently apply fbset? Should I leave the video=xbox:720p in the cfg file?

Also - using the fbset above, the picture isn't as nice as the 720p. Don't get me wrong - I'm thrilled that it now fits on the desktop , but if someone could tell me how that modeline to fbset was done, I might like to recheck the math...

thanks but i dont think it would work cuase i have a 1.6 or editing the linuxboot doesnt have make a diff on version

here is a pic of it now with the overscan...can i get some suggestions on waht res i should try? THANKS

bump

Add the fbset command you needed into one of the startup scripts. The easiest place to add it is probably /opt/bootlocal.sh. If you using a frugal install you will also need to make a backup file (not necessary with loopback/native). Then your settings well be applied every time X-DSL boots.

so any help with mine ?

Hey Friedgold -

Hopefully this is my last question for you --

I tried adding the fbset to the bootlocal.sh, but I don't know how/where to make the backup you mention. Without it, my fbset command is heartlessly ripped from the file (i guess that's why you told me to make one!). Is there an FAQ you could point me to?

Thanks!

g

`It is a pain in the fucking ass. Man I hope no other Linux does this on the Xbox. I have 1.6aa Xbox and no HDTV and when I get on thereI like XDSL but the screen resolution is a pain in the ass. I tried the fbset -s thing and it makes my screen look like crap.I can't even look at the web pages without having to move FireFox over a little bit just to scroll which is ridiculous. And I just made a keyboard for my xbox and i get stuck with this crap omg.

any help with mine?

I DONT KNO IF THIS APPLIES TO THE SAME TOPIC BUT WHEN I LAUNCH XDSL. THE DAMN FONTS ARE GODDAMN HARD 2 READ N SHIT. IMMA GO BLIND LIKE THIS. SORRY IM A NOOB BUT IS THEIR A WAY TO CHANGE THE FONT SIZE OR DOWNSIZE THE RES?

Here's the setting for my Samsung 56" DLP running in 720P mode, I got it to fit perfectly.


dsl@box:~$ cat /opt/bootlocal.sh
#!/bin/bash
# put other system startup command here
/sbin/syslogd
loadkeys us
fbset -g 1198 656 1198 656 32 -t 13468 265 127 56 37 80 5

Hi,

having trouble with this. I'm not a pro with this, so bare with me. I have a 30" Viewsonic lcd-tv (n3000w), that supports 480i, 480p, 720p and 1081i. I want to use xdsl with 1280x720, but surprise surprise I happen to have the darn 1.6 xbox So I wanted to try to correct the overscan and have a 720p mode with xdsl, but I really cannot so the math how. Could someone please help me on this? If I try with a line in bootlocal.sh

"fbset -g 1280 720 1280 720 32 -t and whatever here" I only get blank screen before the desktop would appear Any clues how to do this? Is the problem with the pixel clock value or what?

Hey can someone help me, i have managed to set the resolution on 640 X 510 with fbset, but the left right lower upper margins don't do anything, i tried even with extreme values, i got an normal pal television, xbox 1.6( and i'm using x-dsl frugil or something. Plz help me i can see the right bar of firefox, thats very anoying..

Dont feel bad, im in the same boat. Nothing I try works on my 1.6 box and 4:3 Television.

same prob here 4:3 tv and 1.6 box
but can someone elaborate on the prerequisites for going ssh into xdsl?
i dont have an ftp connection from pc to xbox...is it reqd?
cant i just replace some values in some file in the iso ??

hi, a bit off the subject but i am having the same problem with xebian, anyone know how to fix it on that?

Wow...seeing all these problematic sets, has ANYONE gotten XDSL working on a HDTV? I personally use a 32" non-HDTV and it works great for me.

I think you need to connct the Xbox to a router with interweb. And then use putty to get into it from your computer and type stuff. I didn't try this tho. I gave up after I saw the first few posts in this thread......I have a 1.6 too. So much hassle just to get a proper res. 4get about it... >_>

Until the smart people update the kernel for 1.6 boxes I'm not bothering either. It would be so cool, looks like the best flavor on xbox just this small problem.

How do I do the buffer shit? I try through Terminal and tells me "dev/fb0: permission denied"

will there be an update to fix this?

I have no idea how to do ssh or whatever its called, I only have an xbox controller, and Im a linux noob

How do I do this? I did the loopback install, but can't seem to get it to work. When I launch Linux, it added the option to launch the loopback install, but when I select it nothing happens.

Would I edit this xf86 file on the computer with a text editor? And should the loopback install be putting it into a new folder on the E: partition?

I'm able to SSH and change fbset, but pretty much any time I change anything, it only ends up worse...

ok, I found out that it was giving the wrong address when it was adding the loopback title to the .cfg file...

So I have the loopback working, but still wondering how to edit the fx86 file.

Ah, just noticed this post. So that means I'm having another problem... When I type in a new configuration for fbset, the screen goes all screwy. As far as I can tell, I'm doing it all correctly, but how is the big timing # right after "-t" calculated?

Ok thanks to the help provided on page 1 of this thread I've been able to get my overscan issues sorted
The text is a little harder to read now prob due to the scaling but heres what I did to get this working nicely on 720P

mind u this is after I've done a loopback install

right click / go to window manager and then click exit
in console type su to get root, entered xbox as password
then typed fbset to get my settings

and followed the instructions by subtracting from resolution and adding to margins until I got it nice.
at any time I clicked startx to reload x and see where i ended up, exiting it again back to prompt

When you have it right take note of yoru settings
go to breeze and then open the linuxbooter.cfg or whatever its called in the /opt directory and add that item into the script (note you need to still have root to do this)

and woola,

my settings for 720P on a panasonic PV500A 42 inch HD plasma are

fbset -g 1216 688 1216 688 16 -t 13468 252 102 36 21 80 5

as i said its not quite perfect but a lot better than so much info being offscreen, though text in mozilla is now quite hard to read properly (any ideas on this?)