[GLLUG] dual video with radeon 7000

[Mike Rambo]

Thanks for the responses.

I was running X version 3.3.6 with the original video. When
I ran XFdrake and selected the Radeon card from the list it
asked for one of the CD's and installed X version 4.2.0
automatically.

I'll have to try these things after work tonight - I'll be
sure and let you know ;-).

I suspect I'm in for it with this mess though. There seems
to be no way to disable the built in video in CMOS/BIOS.
That was one of the first things I looked for. There is an
option in CMOS only for choosing whether the primary video
is AGP or PCI - no disable is present. I suspect the built
in video would be automatically disabled if I had been able
to find an AGP card that would fit the case. As I wan't able
to do that, I have to use a PCI card and it doesn't disable
the built in video - at least not entirely. I found that I
had to set the CMOS primary video setting for PCI in order
for the Radeon card to even be acknowledged by the system.
When I did, the CMOS updated itself to reflect that the
built in video card now has 0MB of ram but doesn't appear to
have actually disabled it. This is a dual boot box. When it
starts up I always hear a POST error (beeps) that indicate
video card failure, I presume because of the 0MB video ram
thing, but then it proceeds to boot into windows fine. The
Radeon card is ok there but the built in video shows that it
failed to start in the windows device manager.

This leads me to conclude that I've got to deal with the
integrated video along with the Radeon card in X and then
disable (or ignore) one of them. I'll (at least try to) do
something with this tonight and post the X config file
somewhere if I can't get it to go.

<begin headache>
If only [insert name of almost any proprietary manufacturer
here] hadn't been so short sighted in building a system
which can't really be expanded.
<bummer - no end to headache>

Thanks.

Mike




Edward Glowacki wrote:
> 
> Which version of XFree86 are you using?  3.x is unsupported now, so you
> should probably be running 4.x, but I'm not sure what Mandrake includes
> by default.  Anyways, if you're running 4.x and you can get booted
> sans-gui to a command line, you can run "XFree86 -configure" and it
> should detect everything you need and store the configuration in
> "XF86Config.new" in the current directory.  Then it tells you to run
> "XFree86 -xf86config XF86Config.new" to test it out, and if it works,
> you just copy the config file to it's permanent home, probably
> "/etc/X11/XF86Config".  You may also need to edit the file to tell X
> which monitor is on which side, add any custom options, etc.  Quite
> painless, and it is known to work with dual head configurations (i.e.
> mine! =)  If only my video driver would get that stupid bug fixed so I
> can use the second display!!! =P)
> 
> --
> Edward Glowacki                         glowack2@msu.edu
> GLLUG Peon                              http://www.gllug.org

Marr wrote:
> 
> Hi Mike,
> 
> Funny you mention this. Just this weekend I was running (Slackware 8.0) Linux
> in a 3-monitor / 1-PC configuration. (With Xinerama enabled, in side-by-side
> monitor configuration, Emacs runs full-screen at over 504 columns wide --
> tres cool, in a geeky sorta way :^O). For those that may not know, Xinerama
> is the XFree86 extension ('startx -- +xinerama') that treats multiple
> monitors on the same host as one big desktop -- a very neat capability!
> 
> My case involved built-in i810 (Intel chipset) video and 2 PCI cards.
> Fortunately, I am able to disable the i810 video in the BIOS and debugged
> each card's XFree86 configuration separately, which made it much easier,
> especially since I had an old Hercules PCI card that insisted on running with
> the 'NoAccel' (or whatever it was called) flag enabled in the 'XF86Config'
> file. Before I debugged that (by trial-and-error), it would lock the box
> *COLD* (no remote telnet, no remote ping, no Ctl-Alt-Backspace to kill the X
> server, *nothing*!) whenever I mouse clicked on the screen it was serving.
> 
> I don't know what Mandrake might be doing, but can you post or email me your
> 'XF86Config' file? I might be able to make an educated guess....
> 
> Does the box crash even when configured to boot to console mode or just when
> XFree86 runs?
> 
> Can you run the 'xf86config' utility (after backing up your original
> '(/etc/X11/)XF86Config' file, of course) and compare what it generates with
> the Mandrake version?
> 
> I hope I'm not too far off base here. I don't use Mandrake, but my bro-in-law
> does and at times, I've seen some big differences between it and Slackware
> when I try to work on his box.
> 
> P.S. There is a "Xinerama HOWTO" ('/usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Xinerama-HOWTO' on
> Slackware) that might shed some small amount of light on this.
> 
> HTH(some)....
> 
> Bill Marr


> On Mon, 2002-05-06 at 16:27, Mike Rambo wrote:
> > I have an IBM box (a 300PL I think) that my son wanted
> > better video in. It comes with integrated S3 Trio and an AGP
> > slot. I found (the hard way) that the stupid proprietary
> > case design will not accomodate very many cards in the AGP
> > slot - and none that I could find with performance much
> > better than the integrated video. As such, I ended up
> > putting a 64MB Radeon 7000 PCI card in one of the slots.
> > Now, when I try to run the X configuration tool (XFdrake on
> > Mandrake 8.2) it finds two video cards but cannot configure
> > either one of them to work. I'm mainly interested in the
> > Radeon card - I'd be perfectly happy to totally disable the
> > integrated video but that isn't an option in CMOS setup on
> > this machine. When I try to configure the Radeon card I end
> > up with trashed video and a frozen box. I think Mandrake
> > uses a framebuffer setup by default but I've also used the
> > nonfb boot option with no change in results. I think I'm
> > dealing with what X thinks is a dual video setup but I don't
> > know how to get it to work. Any of you dual video guys want
> > to take a shot at this?
> >
> > Thanks.

-- 
Mike Rambo
mrambo@lsd.k12.mi.us