[GLLUG] dual head question

[Mark Szidik/mlc]

Thanks for you comments Mike.  This is my first ATI card, I have always
used Nvidia with good results, but this card came with my Dell.  I am going
to give up on the dual head for now.  I have tried to disable all of the
modules in X to no help.  I'll revisit this issue some other time.

---
Mark Szidik


mrambo at scnc.lsd.k12.mi.us wrote on 06/02/2003 09:08:02 AM:

> Marr wrote:
> >
> > On Saturday 31 May 2003 07:43am, Mark Szidik/mlc wrote:
> >
> > ---------------
> > I have a Radeon 7000/VE that came with my new Dell PC.  It is dual head
> > capable, so I thought I'd put that feature to work right away.  Well, I
am
> > close.  When I start X (running RH's bluecurve temporarily) both
displays
> > come up and look as I would expect them.  Monitor0 works perfectlyWhen
I try
> > to move my mouse to monitor1 the screen goes blank and the monitorgoes
into
> > powersaver mode.  So I know that the signal to the display drops,
> but why?  I
> > suspect Xinerama, but when I remove it the same thing mappens.  Any
ideas?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > -Mark
> > ---------------
> >
> > Hi Mark,
> >
> > I don't see anything obviously amiss in your configuration.
> >
> > My first guess would be to (temporarily) disable DPMS on the
> monitors, but it
> > looks like you've already thought of that.
> >
> > My next guess would be to start disabling things in the "Module"
> section like
> > GLX, DRI, DBE, etc since I've read of problems with some of those
things
> > (can't remember which or any details) with multi-head, especially with
> > accelerated multi-head.
> >
> > Also, check into the options for the 'radeon' XF86 driver. A year
> or so ago, I
> > had to add this line to the "Device" section for an old Hercules PCI
card,
> > using the 'tseng' XF86 driver, in a 3-headed configuration. Without
this
> > line, it just wouldn't work!
> >
> >     Option "noaccel"      # when problems with accelerator
> >
> > Also, looking back at a similar email thread from a year ago, I
> see that Mike
> > Rambo had problems with a Radeon 7000 (PCI) in a dual-head setup. His
> > (private) email to me after he got a passable working setup
> indicated that he
> > "can't get color depth beyond 15 bit". It sounded as if the 'radeon'
driver
> > was rather immature at that time. His problem was distinctly different
than
> > yours, but maybe he can shed some light on this.
> >
> > HTH some....
> >
> > Bill Marr
> >
>
> Yes, my problem was somewhat different. First of all, both of my radeon
> 7000's had only one head enabled on the card from ATI - they were more
> cost effective (read cheap) versions of the cards. The dual head setup I
> was messing with involved a second video card that was integrated on the
> MOBO of one of the machines I was working with. Also, my problems were
> with outright lockups of the box. It locked up totally! I had no choice
> but to turn off power and restart.
>
> Overall I've concluded the radeons aren't all they're cracked up to be -
> they've given me fits on occasion even with That Other OS [tm} to say
> nothing of Linux. I decided to buy them at the time because "they
> supported Linux and the open source community" whereas nvidia was a
> closed source binary driver. After getting my radeons, and judging from
> comments from others on various lists, I've concluded that ati may
> support open source in some way but when you get down to brass tacks
> nvidia works... Whatever...
>
> One thing you can try is to to disable DRI. Bill suggested that above.
> Bill also mentioned that, at the time, I found that the driver wouldn't
> support greater than 15 bit color. That was a couple of years ago though
> (on Mandrake 8.2 initially and I did find that Mandrake 9.0 later
> represented a small degree of improvement though still not very good) so
> things might have changed significantly since then. YMMV. I was never
> able to get a good frame rate with either the PCI or AGP radeon 7000 and
> still have a stable platform. Basically, disable 3d and acceleration,
> get the color density reduced enough, and you can get a useable degree
> of stability. My experience was that you can't expect much more. As I
> said, this was some time ago. You can always hope that the drivers have
> improved since then. You can probably tell I'm not much of a fan of
> radeon cards...
>
>
> --
> Mike Rambo
> mrambo at lsd.k12.mi.us