Kodi on old Dell, Bizarre rainbow effect as if the color pallot is being randomized or misinterpreted

vidiot · May 29, 2024 at 4:16 PM

I have an old Dell "n Series" Pentium Core Duo and I would like it to be able to play back DVDs too but I will settle for just MP3 playback. I just installed the latest version of Kodi 12.0.0 to a thumb drive. The install took a while but seemed to go without any error.

But when Kodi booted up, I got this bizarre rainbow effect that leaves the screen 95% unreadable. When I move the mouse around, the colors change in waves. By scrolling over menu items, they almost become readable. But its still like trying to read white text with a super bright pink outline on a bright yellow background. All the colors are 100% maximum but nothing is clear and readable.

I am using the Dell's native VGA connector to connect to a toshiba TV that happens to have a VGA input so there is no adapting going on. And for background, this setup already works ok with windows 10; its old and too slow but the display is just fine. In Kodi, I tried changing the display resolution and refresh rate but that didn't seem to change anything.

**Da Flex** · May 29, 2024 at 9:51 PM

Sounds like a VGA driver issue. Try the Generic-Legacy variant. Login by SSH, and do this:

Code

cd /storage/.update
wget https://releases.libreelec.tv/LibreELEC-Generic-legacy.x86_64-12.0.0.img.gz
reboot

vidiot · May 30, 2024 at 4:41 AM

You got it! Thank you!!

I skipped that one because it specifically said "NVidia" and I was prey sure this generic old dell did not have an nvidia graphics chip. But that worked!! I didn't notice the word "legacy" which should have been a tip off that it was best for older hardware.

**chewitt** · May 30, 2024 at 6:06 AM

The difference is Xorg vs GBM graphics; there are no differences in the Generic/Generic-Legacy kernels so while Xorg might work better on some older hardware the sole (intended) purpose of the legacy image is supporting nvidia (which cannot run GBM).