(please CC me as I'm not subscribed.)
Hi,
I have an VIA KT333 + Athlon box with an old, noname AGP GeForce 400 MX
card.
Upon first booting 2.5.70 i noticed heavy screen flicker. (never seen
with 2.4.x or 2.5.x < 2.5.70) it behaved nice once in X, upon the next
reboot i did some work in the console (X not started). Still lots of
flickering and a misplaced text cursor in text-mode. So i decided to go
back to my old 2.4 kernel but was unable to boot since my BIOS no longer
recognizes my graphics card.
When I run the box with an old PCI card as my primary adapter and the
AGP geforce card as secondary the Geforce card doesnt seem to run it's
VGA BIOS (no boot message). X also refuses to detect the Geforce card.
Is it possible that the new console layer or the new agp gart code or
whatever in 2.5.70 poked in the wrong registers and replaced the BIOS
flash rom on the GeForce with garbage?
Of course it could very well be something else, but the fact that it
happened _exactly_ when I switched kernel makes me suspicious.
Some googling reveals that the screen might flicker during flashing of
the graphics BIOS on geforce cards. Unfortunately since I don't know the
brand of my card I can't try to replace it's bios.
I should also add that the 2.5.70 build was without framebuffer and that
other AGP graphic adapters still works in my computer and that my
Geforce card also doesn't work in other machines.
Any ideas? How much does the kernel poke with the graphic card?
/ Jakob Kemi
On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 03:05:49PM +0200, Jakob Kemi wrote:
> When I run the box with an old PCI card as my primary adapter and the
> AGP geforce card as secondary the Geforce card doesnt seem to run it's
> VGA BIOS (no boot message).
most (if not all) modern BIOS's have an "Init {AGP/PCI} display first"
option. You may need to fiddle with that.
> X also refuses to detect the Geforce card.
> Is it possible that the new console layer or the new agp gart code or
> whatever in 2.5.70 poked in the wrong registers and replaced the BIOS
> flash rom on the GeForce with garbage?
Extremely unlikely. WRT agpgart, it pokes chipset registers, not
graphic card registers.
It may even be that the two cards you have won't play together.
Try them both _independantly_ before jumping to conclusions about
wiped BIOSes etc.
Dave
Thanks for your fast reply,
Dave Jones wrote:
> On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 03:05:49PM +0200, Jakob Kemi wrote:
>
> > When I run the box with an old PCI card as my primary adapter and the
> > AGP geforce card as secondary the Geforce card doesnt seem to run it's
> > VGA BIOS (no boot message).
>
> most (if not all) modern BIOS's have an "Init {AGP/PCI} display first"
> option. You may need to fiddle with that.
Of course, but should't the AGP bios report itself during initialization
even when 'Init PCI display first' is set, or is the legacy BIOS
completely ignored on the secondary adapter?
> > X also refuses to detect the Geforce card.
> > Is it possible that the new console layer or the new agp gart code or
> > whatever in 2.5.70 poked in the wrong registers and replaced the BIOS
> > flash rom on the GeForce with garbage?
>
> Extremely unlikely. WRT agpgart, it pokes chipset registers, not
> graphic card registers.
>
> It may even be that the two cards you have won't play together.
> Try them both _independantly_ before jumping to conclusions about
> wiped BIOSes etc.
The PCI card was installed afterwards to be able to use the computer at
all since it now refuses to boot with the geforce card. I've tried to
use the PCI card as the primary card and only use the geforce card with
X to see if it'd work that way (which it didn't).
/ Jakob Kemi
I have an ATI card that went nuts a couple years ago, ~4 months old,
fizzled on boot. Doesn't work in text mode at all, works fine in
graphics mode however. I have an old ISA card stuck in the machine so
the machine will boot. The motherboard doesn't recognize the AGP card
without another video card installed. This is the only motherboard that
I can get it to work on. The card simply doesn't work at all on any
other m/board.
Good thing I run Linux, I don't think I'd have this option under winblows ;)
David
Dave Jones wrote:
>On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 03:05:49PM +0200, Jakob Kemi wrote:
>
> > When I run the box with an old PCI card as my primary adapter and the
> > AGP geforce card as secondary the Geforce card doesnt seem to run it's
> > VGA BIOS (no boot message).
>
>most (if not all) modern BIOS's have an "Init {AGP/PCI} display first"
>option. You may need to fiddle with that.
>
> > X also refuses to detect the Geforce card.
> > Is it possible that the new console layer or the new agp gart code or
> > whatever in 2.5.70 poked in the wrong registers and replaced the BIOS
> > flash rom on the GeForce with garbage?
>
>Extremely unlikely. WRT agpgart, it pokes chipset registers, not
>graphic card registers.
>
>It may even be that the two cards you have won't play together.
>Try them both _independantly_ before jumping to conclusions about
>wiped BIOSes etc.
>
> Dave
>
>