screen flashing to black every several seconds - Solved - well, sort of

[Claude Jones]

Pete wrote:

>Claude,
>
>I had this problem too. The screen would just black
>out mysteriously and then return again, without any
>seeming rhyme or reason.......... 
>
>The problem seemed to be dpms. Go into KDE Control
>Centre and disable dpms under
>Peripherals/Display/Power Control. This seems to do it
>just fine. I have never had the problem again. If you
>are using another window manager, and just to be on
>the safe side, put a '#' in front of the line "Option
>dpms" in the monitor section of your
>/etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
>  
>
I tried this, and then applied the updates, but the problem returned. 
DPMS was already off in Power Control, but there was an earlier bug 
reported with this that someone had worked around by turning it on, 
applying some settings, then setting all the settings down to their 
minimum values, applying those, then turning DPMS back off. This 
actually helped me solve a slightly different problem, earlier in my 
Linux career.  This is what I did tonight but it made no difference.

>I read through the thread and somewhere noticed
>mention of nvidia. I am not sure whether you have an
>nvidia display adaptor (I have), but the nvidia driver
>README.txt says that DPMS is experimental and not
>fully supported. So far, they have only implemented
>the most rudimentary functions, like screen blanking.
>And who wants that, with the beautiful X
>screensavers...
>
>
>  
>
My card is the ATI Radeon 9200SE.
I remember when I was reading through Bugzilla reports that were close 
to my problem, that there was mention of problems with DVI and some 
Radeon cards, or something to that effect. So, tonight, after I went 
through the above procedure, I disconnected the DVI cable and connected 
the VGA. The flashing to black has stopped. Obviously, one would wish 
for DVI to work, but, this gets me past the problem, for now.


-- 
Claude Jones
Bluemont, VA, USA