Hi, I have a huge unsent email sitting here about all my frustrations with ATI Radeon adapters. Instead of going down that path with you all (Holly - can I write you offline?) ;-) I bought an NVidia adapter from 3D Fuzion. It uses a GeForce4 MX 4000, runs at 4X and has 128MB DDR. I thought I'd try this out. Low and behold I'm doing worse than with the Radeons!
For configuration I'm working mostly from this page: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/nvidia-guide.xml Currently I have MTTR enabled and /dev/agpgart and agp_via support in the kernel. (As modules) The NVidia card comes up fine in text mode as I boot, but when the machine goes into graphics mode I get only the NVidia logo and a mouse arrow. The mouse will move the arrow so the adapter is alive, but beyond that I see almost nothing. The screen never goes to the GDM login. If I type my user name and password I hear the machine going into Gnome but the screen never changes. There does appear to be a very small dark area, about the height of 1 or 2 pixels, in the upper left corner, but other than that nothing but the NVidia logo screen. I tried disabling glx loading in xorg.conf but got the same result. Bummer! I've ssh'ed in. Here's what I'm seeing: godzilla ~ # lsmod Module Size Used by <SNIP> via_agp 7680 1 evdev 7296 0 realtime 7752 0 sbp2 21832 0 ohci1394 32052 0 ieee1394 90164 2 sbp2,ohci1394 nvidia 3464700 12 agpgart 29384 2 via_agp,nvidia godzilla ~ # [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ $ dmesg | grep NV BIOS-e820: 000000002ffff000 - 0000000030000000 (ACPI NVS) nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel. NVRM: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 NVIDIA Kernel Module 1.0-6629 Wed Nov 3 13:12:51 PST 2004 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ $ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ $ dmesg | grep agp Linux agpgart interface v0.101 (c) Dave Jones agpgart: Detected VIA KT266/KY266x/KT333 chipset agpgart: AGP aperture is 32M @ 0xfc000000 agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0. agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 4x mode agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 4x mode agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0. agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 4x mode agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 4x mode [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ $ There are no errors in /var/log/Xorg.0.log and only a couple of warnings. The 'Failed to load GLX' error goes away when I tell xorg.conf to load glx: godzilla ~ # cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep EE (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. (II) Loading extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to load GLX godzilla ~ # cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep WW (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. (WW) Open APM failed (/dev/apm_bios) (No such file or directory) (WW) (1600x1200,My Monitor) mode clock 162MHz exceeds DDC maximum 140MHz (WW) (1600x1200,My Monitor) mode clock 175.5MHz exceeds DDC maximum 140MHz (WW) (1400x1050,My Monitor) mode clock 155.8MHz exceeds DDC maximum 140MHz (WW) NVIDIA(0): Not using mode "800x600" (height 1200 is larger than (WW) NVIDIA(0): EDID-specified maximum 1024) (WW) NVIDIA(0): Not using mode "800x600" (height 1200 is larger than (WW) NVIDIA(0): EDID-specified maximum 1024) (WW) NVIDIA(0): Not using mode "700x525" (height 1050 is larger than (WW) NVIDIA(0): EDID-specified maximum 1024) (WW) NVIDIA(0): Not using mode "700x525" (height 1050 is larger than (WW) NVIDIA(0): EDID-specified maximum 1024) godzilla ~ # godzilla ~ # lspci 0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333]0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333 AGP] 0000:00:06.0 Unknown mass storage controller: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC20265 (FastTrak100 Lite/Ultra100) (rev 02) 0000:00:0c.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB12LV23 IEEE-1394 Controller 0000:00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 05) 0000:00:0e.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB82AA2 IEEE-1394b Link Layer Controller (rev 01) 0000:00:0f.0 Multimedia audio controller: Xilinx Corporation RME Hammerfall DSP (rev 68) 0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233 PCI to ISA Bridge 0000:00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06) 0000:00:11.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 1b) 0000:00:11.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 1b) 0000:00:11.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 1b) 0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000 AGP 8x] (rev c1) godzilla ~ # I've almost never read an NVidia thread on this list some I'm starting from nowhere here. I hope this is some stupid mistake some nice person out there will recognize and save me from yet another bad Linux adapter weekend. Thanks, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
