2003-01-16 06:24:04

by Valdis Klētnieks

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Dell C840, 2.5.58, NVidia - something is on serious crack...

OK, so I get brave enough to try the NVidia drivers (no snickers please -
they Just Work under 2.4.18, and do a better job of finding the monitor
attached to my docking station than the 'nv' drivers do).

I get the 4191 drivers, apply the 2 patches from http://www.minion.de, get it
insmod'ed, and fire up X. Disks go chugga chugga for a bit, and then
I'm left looking at a black screen. No disk activity. Wedged. Screwed.
So I decide to get something to drink from the refrigerator, and when I
get back, there's a tiny blue icon in the upper left corner:

*******
* *
* * * *
* *
* * * *
* *** *
* *
*******

Say *WHAT*? Where did that come from? Wait a bit more. Nothing else.
Power cycled (since nothing else is working), and try again. System
starts booting up fine, and goes to start up XFree86. Sure enough,
same black screen, and about 2 minutes later, the icon pops up again.

Any idea where *THAT* came from?

For what it's worth, the last 3 or so lines of the XFree86.log are:

(**) NVIDIA(0): Use of AGP disabled per request
(--) NVIDIA(0): Linear framebuffer at 0xE0000000
(--) NVIDIA(0): MMIO registers at 0xFC000000

Nothing in the syslog, and it's possible there were further msgs that
didn't get flushed to disk - I haven't checked if XFree86 fsync()s the log.
The timestamp on the file matches when the screen went blank and things hung.

/Valdis


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2003-01-17 04:09:27

by Stephen Williams

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Dell C840, 2.5.58, NVidia - something is on serious crack...

Valdis,
Numerous people have had problems with the 4191 driver...me included.
Instead of here I'd suggest going back to the NVidia site and go to the
driver download page. There is a forum regarding the drivers and their
effects/sideeffects. That might help shed some light on the issue.

HTH,
Steve

On Thu, 2003-01-16 at 00:32, [email protected] wrote:
> OK, so I get brave enough to try the NVidia drivers (no snickers please -
> they Just Work under 2.4.18, and do a better job of finding the monitor
> attached to my docking station than the 'nv' drivers do).
>
> I get the 4191 drivers, apply the 2 patches from http://www.minion.de, get it
> insmod'ed, and fire up X. Disks go chugga chugga for a bit, and then
> I'm left looking at a black screen. No disk activity. Wedged. Screwed.
> So I decide to get something to drink from the refrigerator, and when I
> get back, there's a tiny blue icon in the upper left corner:
>
> *******
> * *
> * * * *
> * *
> * * * *
> * *** *
> * *
> *******

<snip>

> /Valdis