Nvidia Drivers

[Cef]

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 14:36, Shawn Christopher wrote:
> I have a PNY Technologies Verto GeForce FX 5200 PCI card (Nvidia Clone?)
> with 128MB's DDR Ram however no matter how I install the Nvidia drivers
> I cannot get it to work. I have tried the instructions that are on the
> Nvidia website, and the Forums and am unable to do so. Everytime I tried
> to do so it always comes back as Unable to start X would you like to
> look at the log. It says no screens found HOWEVER I have the Nvidia
> driver loaded and nvidia is listed in the driver location. I also tried
> nv and that didn't work either.

Check the logs in /var/log/ [1]..

Look for lines like the following:

(--) NVIDIA(0): Display device DFP-0: maximum pixel clock at  8 bpp: 400 MHz
(--) NVIDIA(0): Display device DFP-0: maximum pixel clock at 16 bpp: 400 MHz
(--) NVIDIA(0): Display device DFP-0: maximum pixel clock at 32 bpp: 400 MHz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not probing EDIDs.
(II) NVIDIA(0): Generic Monitor: Using hsync range of 29.00-57.00 kHz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Generic Monitor: Using vrefresh range of 43.00-60.00 Hz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Clock range:  12.00 to 400.00 MHz

Now you may have something mentioning that the card probed EDID's (unlike mine 
above): The drivers usually do this, and in most setups, this works fine. The 
driver uses the intersection of the details returned from EDID, and what is 
specified in the config [2].

eg: If you specify the hsync (HorizSync in the Monitor section of the config 
[2]) goes from 45-60, and EDID specifies that the monitor can use a hsync of 
55-65, then the driver will only allow you to use a hsync of 55-60.

If this returns nothing, or just one fixed value, then it may not work. You 
could either modify the config to increase the HorizSync setting, or, if the 
EDID settings returned by the driver are just plain wrong, you can add 
'Option "IgnoreEDID"' to the config [2] in the monitor section.

If you're not sure, perhaps you could put the log online somewhere, and get 
someone to have a look. Please do not attach the log to your reply - not 
everyone wants to see your log file.

1 - For XFree86 (the default for 4.10 aka Warty) the log is named 
XFree86.0.log, and for Xorg (the default for 5.04 aka Hoary) the log is named 
Xorg.0.log

2- For XFree86, the config is /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, while for Xorg, the 
config is in /etc/X11/Xorg.conf

-- 
 Stuart Young - aka Cefiar - cef at optus.net