Re: Linux: 16bpp video modes on TP701?

[whittle@usc.edu (Randy Whittle)]

At 7:19 PM 12/14/95, John H. Kim wrote:
>First, after playing with my 701 active matrix side by side with a
>monitor, I can state with a fair amount of certainty that the TFT
>is only capable of displaying 32k colors (5 bits per primary).  The
>TFT shows obvious color gradient contour lines on finely shaded
>pictures.  These lines match an external monitor in 32k color mode.
>The monitor produces finer contours in 64k and 16M color modes, but
>the TFT's display remains the same.  So most of the time, running
>in 15bpp (32k color) mode should be sufficient.  In fact, 15bpp can
>often be better than 24bpp since many apps will dither in the former
>mode but not the latter.

        Actually (and I can't remember the source--think it was an IBM guy
who worked on the 701's that John referred me to), the 701 screen
supposedly does 256K colors in the 16.7M color mode.

        As for me, I just run it in 32K colors generally--looks quite
beautiful to me, but then I save the desktop publishing for a separate
desktop machine (where I run in 16.7M colors & higher resolutions).

        Oddly enough, the 701 Manual (or some associated document) suggests
that running in 32K color mode as opposed to 256 color mode extends the
battery life slightly.  Strange, eh?

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