AGP disabled, No Video BIOS, Lockups when starting X...

[faytl]

I'm wondering if anybody has any clue of why this would be working, basically I'm gonna paste a copy of my terminal as I go through the steps.

First the basics:

Asus A7V333 mobo
512 meg ram
GeForce2 MX400 AGP
Debian Unstable
Kernel 2.4.20

Secondly:

I've tried starting X using AGPGART (as a module, and built into the kernel), and using NVAGP, both with the same result.

bender:/home/james# modprobe nvidia
Warning: loading /lib/modules/2.4.20/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.o will taint the kernel: non-GPL license - NVIDIA
See http://www.tux.org/lkml/#export-tainted for information about tainted modules
Module nvidia loaded, with warnings

bender:/home/james# dmesg
...
0: nvidia: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 nvidia.o Kernel Module 1.0-4191 Mon Dec 9 11:49:01 PST 2002

bender:/home/james# cat /proc/driver/nvidia/cards/0
Model: GeForce2 MX/MX 400
IRQ: 11
Video BIOS: ??.??.??.??.??
Card Type: AGP

bender:/home/james# cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status
Status: Disabled

bender:/home/james# cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/host-bridge
Host Bridge: Via Apollo Pro KT266
Fast Writes: Supported
SBA: Supported
AGP Rates: 2x 1x
Registers: 0x1f000213:0x00000000

bender:/home/james# cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/card
Fast Writes: Not Supported
SBA: Not Supported
AGP Rates: 4x 2x 1x
Registers: 0x1f000007:0x00000000

bender:/home/james# cat /proc/interrupts
CPU0
0: 239220 XT-PIC timer
1: 6812 XT-PIC keyboard
2: 0 XT-PIC cascade
5: 14370 XT-PIC eth0
9: 0 XT-PIC acpi
10: 0 XT-PIC cmpci
12: 67846 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse
14: 577680 XT-PIC ide0
15: 14 XT-PIC ide1
NMI: 0
ERR: 1

bender:/home/james# cat /proc/pci
...
Bus 1, device 0, function 0:
VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX] (rev 178).
IRQ 11.
Master Capable. Latency=64. Min Gnt=5.Max Lat=1.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xd5000000 [0xd5ffffff].
Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xd8000000 [0xdfffffff].

Thirdly:

I have no idea where to go from here, I'm pretty sure that it's meant to at least give some indication that the kernel driver is working, however I have seen from other posts that the AGP: Disabled bit wont change until X is loaded.

Fourthly:

My X Config is here...

...
Section "Module"
# Load "GLcore"
Load "bitmap"
Load "dbe"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "pex5"
Load "record"
Load "speedo"
Load "type1"
Load "vbe"
Load "xie"
EndSection
...
Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection
...

I think they are the relevant sections you may need to help me.

Fifthly:

When X boots up, a screen full of random garbled crap comes up and the machine comes to a complete halt and dosen't accept any input. It still is possible to SSH to the machine from another, I tried this once to see what was in /var/log/XFree86.0.log. I don't have a copy of this handy but i'm pretty sure there was othing exciting in it, I could get a copy of it if need be though.

If anyone has any ideas what could be causing these errors, please let me know. I've been using linux for 5 years now, so I do have a clue on what I'm doing, if anyone needs any further error messages etc. to help them, let me know.

Thanks in advance.

- James

[bwkaz]

First, your card doesn't seem to have an IRQ (at least, according to /proc/interrupts, unless I'm blind). See if changing your BIOS's "assign IRQ to vga" setting has any effect on whether X works (or whether "nvidia" shows up in /proc/interrupts).

Well, wait a minute -- cards/0 and /proc/pci say IRQ 11? But /proc/interrupts doesn't have 11 listed. This is a bit confusing... well, I'll assume that it's actually assigned IRQ 11, so never mind the whole BIOS thing.

You'll definitely want to get rid of the "dri" X module. And unless you're using them, get rid of "pex5", "vbe", and "int10" as well. You might also want to think about getting rid of "xie", as that should (at least, in the majority of X installations...) be included in "extmod".

If none of that helps the garbled screen, try disabling AGP (with Option "NvAgp" "0" in your Device section), and see if that helps. It might slow the card down, but it'd at least it might work.

Otherwise, do you have another card to test it with? Your specific card might be having issues, maybe.

Maybe try driver 3123? If you do decide to try it, note that the kernel module's name is "NVdriver" in 3123, rather than "nvidia.o". Try 3123 with and without AGP -- but note that 3123's internal AGP driver probably won't work with the KT333, so don't bother trying it, just use 2.4.20's agpgart.

[faytl]

Thankyou very much for the reply. I've got it figured now (well not really), I simply just removed just about every module X was loading, now it works.

james@bender:~$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status
Status: Enabled
Driver: AGPGART
AGP Rate: 2x
Fast Writes: Disabled
SBA: Disabled

;)

Thanks again