Digital vs. Analog Monitor Connection?

[smcarrick]

Hey All,

I recently purchased the GeForce FX 5500 PCI card for my computer, as I am using (Open) SuSE 10.0 and have Cedega for playing my Windows games. I downloaded and and ran the latest (1.0-8xxx) installation script. It ran fine and compiled a new kernel with no errors. Then I ran `sax2 -m 0=nvidia`, but this was not successful, as far as I can tell. It errored out after a few moments with `ups lost connection to card.` Having no idea as to what this meant, I went ahead and tried X.

Now, going by the HDD activity, I'm guessing that the X-session started up as usual, but I received a notice on my monitor (Dell FP7202) that read as follows:

"1. Analog Display:

Cannot display in this mode."

Now, I'm wondering, since it mentioned "analog display", if I maybe need to go out and buy the digital monitor cable to be able to use this nVidia card in Linux. Could any of you let me know if you've ever seen this problem before? And, if so, if I need the digital connection for my monitor or if there is something I'm missing in getting my card set up? My X configuration file in /etc/X11 doesn't have any other resolutions than 800x600 listed, so I don't think that I'm getting my card and display set up correctly. Also, if I try to use the YaST display configurator, after I selecte it, it does something for a couple of seconds, but then never displays anything. When I was installing SuSE, at the hardware configuration section, it just hung and did nothing other than display the message "Analyzing your system..." It never seemed to do anything in regards to analyzing my system.

I am running the following system:

Dell Dimension 3000
Intel Pentium IV, 3.0 GHz
1 GB RAM
nVidia GeForce FX 5500, 256 MB DDR RAM, PCI
Latest BIOS, according to Dell.com
70 GB HDD
(Open) SuSE 10.0 (Kernel 2.6.13-15.7)

Any and all help or suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Sean

[netllama]

Please generate and post a bug report.

Thanks,
Lonni

[smcarrick]

Lonnie,

That's just it, there was no bug report. The installation script worked like a champ, I just lost my video with a black screen on my monitor. The only error was the one that my monitor gave me about not being able to display in this mode (whatever that means).

The only other error was from SaX2 when it simply said "ups lost connection to card". It gave me this after it showed the X (not KDE or Gnome) desktop with the X mouse pointer at about 640x480 or 800x600 resolution for 5 or so seconds.

Since SuSE was giving me this problem, I tried Fedora Core 4, but couldn't even get to any hardware configuration after the installation program completed and the system rebooted. All Fedora did was hang at the point where it tried to start X. It too gave me no errors.

Any ideas at all?

Sean

[Imperito]

what he means is use the program nvidia-bug-report.sh and post as an attachment the log file that is generated. Its just your X logs and configuration and stuff, there might be something in there that would be helpful for the investigation.

[smcarrick]

Oh...Will reboot to Linux and do that...

Right now, here is what just happened:

I logged into safe mode to get to runlevel 3 the easiest way. I've tried this from runlevel 5 as well. This is what goes on:

hal:~# sax2 -m 1=nvidia (This is b/c of the integrated card being 0)
SaX: initializing please wait...
SaX: no X-Server is running
SaX: will start own server if needed
SaX: ups lost card during probing...abort

hal:~# startx

After I run the startx command, my monitor goes blank and the exact error I get from it is: "1. Analog Input...Cannot display this video mode". This is a little different than I reported before.

I will reboot to Linux and get the bug report and come back and attach it.

Sean

[smcarrick]

Lonnie,

I have the bug report, but it is 124.3 K and won't upload. Do you have an email address to which I can send it?

Sean

[netllama]

You can compress the bug report with zip, gzip, etc, and then attach it here.

Thanks,
Lonni

[smcarrick]

OK, then...here you go. I hope you'll be able to help. Thanks.

Sean

[netllama]

I have a few questions:
0) Why are you setting acpi=off and noapic ?
1) According to the bug report, X is running at 1600x1200 on the CRT, yet you state that you're not getting a signal. Have you tried using lower resolutions (than 1600x1200)?
2) Have you tried using the 'nv' X driver at 1600x1200 ?

Thanks,
Lonni

[smcarrick]

OK...where does acpi=off and noapic get set. Looking at the bug report, it looks like I passed those parameters in when I ran startx, but I've only ran startx with no parameters.

Where would those settings be located in a configuration file? I can change them if I know where to look.

What about dma? Should that be enabled?

As for the resolution, I've tried specifying on the command line for the geography to 1280x1024, but to no avail.

I am appreciating your help with this. I am getting so sick of having to come into Windows to view the posts. Let me know where to go from here. Thanks.

Sean

[netllama]

Boot time kernel parameters are set in your grub configuration (either grub.conf or menu.lst depending on the distribution you're running).

I'm not clear which dma you're referring to.

Thanks,
Lonni

[smcarrick]

That's alright Lonnie, don't worry about the DMA that I was talking about, because it had absolutely nothing to do with anything.

I'm in! I've got the nVidia drivers going and I'm in KDE and currently installing SimGolf through Cedega (which passed my card on all tests, btw). I just wanted to let you know that it was the 1600xWHATEVER line in the xorg.conf file that was causing all the issues.

I appreciate all of your time and help. Have a great Christmas!

Sean