legacy Nvidia 256 gentoo linux please help

[ITguru]

Hi, im doing a senior project with gentoo linux, and I hope to get 3d acceleration working with an nvidia 256. Can anyone help as to what version of the nvidia drivers i need? (nvidia-kernel and nvidia-glx). I cant seem to unmask the older drivers for gentoo. And I was hoping to get xgl working, but if it was just 3d accel i would be happy. All i can get the nvidia drivers to do now is display a bunch of debug stuff and it locks up my screen. Please help. Thanks.

[DcAdrian]

I think what you are looking for is 7174
I have the same card and I was running gentoo on it but now I'm over on slackware.
I used a simply mepis (that spelled right?) and they had the drive need on the cd and that worked well. Nvidia's website can be hard to find anything on so you can google for it or try pulling it off a simply mepis or pclinuxoc cd.

[logistiker]

Originally Posted by ITguru

Hi, im doing a senior project with gentoo linux, and I hope to get 3d acceleration working with an nvidia 256. Can anyone help as to what version of the nvidia drivers i need? (nvidia-kernel and nvidia-glx). I cant seem to unmask the older drivers for gentoo. And I was hoping to get xgl working, but if it was just 3d accel i would be happy. All i can get the nvidia drivers to do now is display a bunch of debug stuff and it locks up my screen. Please help. Thanks.

You need to emerge two packages: nvidia-kernel and nvidia-glx. Then you'll need to add the x86 keyword (it's hasn't been set to stable yet but it works fine) emerge the 7174 version which is the last stable version of the nvidia legacy drivers. You'll add the keyword to this file:

/etc/portage/package.keywords

If that file isn't already there, then create it.

Then add these lines to it:

<media-video/nvidia-kernel-1.0.7667 ~x86
<media-video/nvidia-glx-1.0.7667 ~x86

These lines basically tell it to emerge any driver less than 7667 (even if it's test in the x86 arch) which is for the newer cards and does not support legacy cards like your Geforce 256.