Onboard graphics woe

Thu Nov 16 00:02:26 UTC 2006

Steve Searle wrote:
> Around 02:14am on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 (UK time), Jim Cornette scrawled:
> 
>> Does the BIOS have a setting where you can change the primary and 
>> secondary card around?
> 
> No it doesn't - I can't see one and checking online seems to back this
> up.

I have two video cards on a Dell and no integrated video card. I didn't 
do anything for video in BIOS, so Dell may lack a method to designate 
internal or External video cards. I might look around in my BIOS later 
for any relevant information for video. They could have called it anything.
Dell does have stupid options like disabling a slave drive. I would 
think they would put useful options in the BIOS as well.

> 
>> Unless you try to perform a text install using xdriver=ati, I would not 
>> have a clue. Of course as Alan mentioned, you can find the pci ids and 
>> add them to the xorg.conf file with information you get from lspci 
>> regarding the video card IDs.
> 
> I have installed in text mode, and it runs fine in text mode.  Using the
> command line output is sent to the monitor on the pci card - so it seems
> to have recognized that one is installed and uses that.  However running
> system-config-display locks up, and looking at xorg.conf seems to
> indicate this is set to the onboard video card.

I did have troubles with s-c-display trying to configure the wrong card 
as primary. There is an alternative method to configure X provided in 
the xorg-x11 packages. The program is really an option to the X server. 
You need to start your computer in runlevel 3 to use this option. It 
does not work otherwise.

What you do is login as root in a terminal. From the terminal you type
'X -configure' - When the server comes up, a version of xorg.conf should 
be generated. I believe once X is up, I had to ctl-alt-backspace to kill 
the server. In the terminal was directions to test the configuration. If 
it works, copy the file over from /root/xorg.conf.new to 
/etc/X11/xorg.conf. Afterwards, you can log into X.

If this method also gives you problems, you can manually enter the video 
driver and the PCI ID as Alan mentioned in an earlier posting. Here is 
an excerpt regarding my xorg.conf file generated by 
system-config-display. If you add the BusID as below and edit the 
driver, you should get proper results with the card. I'll edit your 
xorg.conf as I think it should be for BusID information so the video 
card is properly recognized.

Excerpt:
Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Videocard0"
	Driver      "mga"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Videocard1"
	Driver      "nv"
	VendorName  "Videocard Vendor"
	BoardName   "nVidia Corporation NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro]"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

lspci output:
lspci |grep VGA
Note the BusID, leading zeros seem to be dropped
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2 
Model 64/Model 64 Pro] (rev 15)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G200 (rev 01)

> 
> Here is the output of lspci, and my xorg.conf.  Can you indicate how I
> should change the xorg.conf.  The ATI is the pci card I want to use, and
> the Matrox is the onboard one I don't want.
> 
> 

> 00:10.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage I/II 215GT [Mach64 GT] (rev 41) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
> 	Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage I/II 215GT [Mach64 GT]
> 	Flags: stepping, medium devsel, IRQ 9
> 	Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
> 	I/O ports at f800 [size=256]
> 	Memory at fedff000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
> 	[virtual] Expansion ROM at 10040000 [disabled] [size=128K]
> 00: 02 10 54 47 83 00 80 02 41 00 00 03 08 42 00 00
> 10: 00 00 00 fd 01 f8 00 00 00 f0 df fe 00 00 00 00
> 20: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 10 54 47
> 30: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 01 08 00

> 
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G100 [Productiva] AGP (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
> 	Subsystem: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA-G100 AGP
> 	Flags: bus master, stepping, medium devsel, latency 64
> 	Memory at f6000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [disabled] [size=16M]
> 	Memory at fcff8000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=16K]
> 	Memory at fc000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=8M]
> 	Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 1
> 	Capabilities: [f0] AGP version 1.0
> 00: 2b 10 01 10 84 00 90 02 02 00 00 03 00 40 00 00
> 10: 08 00 00 f6 00 80 ff fc 00 00 00 fc 00 00 00 00
> 20: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 2b 10 01 10
> 30: 00 00 00 00 dc 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ff 01 00 00
> 
> 
> # Xorg configuration created by system-config-display
> 
> Section "ServerLayout"
> 	Identifier     "Default Layout"
> 	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
> 	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
> EndSection
> 
> Section "InputDevice"
> 	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
> 	Driver      "kbd"
> 	Option	    "XkbModel" "pc105"
> 	Option	    "XkbLayout" "us"
> EndSection
> 
> Section "Device"
> 	Identifier  "Videocard0"
> 	Driver      "mga"
> EndSection

What I think the settings should be:
Section "Device"
  	Identifier  "Videocard0"
  	Driver      "ati"
	BusID       "PCI:0:10:0"
EndSection
> 
> Section "Screen"
> 	Identifier "Screen0"
> 	Device     "Videocard0"
> 	DefaultDepth     24
> 	SubSection "Display"
> 		Viewport   0 0
> 		Depth     24
> 	EndSubSection
> EndSection
> 

I hope it at least gives you some ideas. The X -configure option might 
give you dual head if you preferred dual head operation. I'm sure 
primary video is what you want to try first.

Jim

> 
> Cheers
> 
> Steve
> 
> 

-- 
Logic doesn't apply to the real world.
		-- Marvin Minsky