Dual Headed Console
 

Hey all,
I have an Assus A7V333 with a Geforce3 in the AGP slot and a Geforce2 in a PCI slot. For whatever reason window does not handle itself very well if I boot up with the AGP card as primary even though it runs it as primary. How can I get Linux to switch over to the AGP video card after (or before) booting up?

Second question is, how can I set up dual headed console (using both monitors for consoles wether console and tty1 or even just console).

Sw1tch

There might be a setting in your bios that says whether to use the AGP or PCI as the default video device. Check there and let us know if you find anything.

There is the option to chose between PCI and VGA in the BIOS, if I boot into windows with VGA selected the mouse and keyboard dont work, if I boot into windows with the PCI selected things work fine and Windows uses the VGA card as the primary screen (it switches control over from the PCI card).

let me refine my question, how do I get Linux to switch control over from the PCI card to the VGA card so I can use my primary monitor in Linux.

Sw1tch

There are a couple things I'm confused about in your post... I will ask you about them, and also point you to a resource that might help you fix it on your own.

Do you mean PCI and VGA or PCI and AGP? Both of the cards will support VGA mode.

Are you talking about MS windows, as in a dual boot system, or are you talking about X Window system?


Now, here's my advice. Check out this howto :Xinerama howto . There's sections in here about scanning the bus so you know the addresses of your video cards and how to tell XFree86 which card to use. You should even be able to use both cards, if that's what you want.

Hope this helps.

My apologies, I mean PCI and AGP, not PCI and VGA.

Refering to the questions about MS Windows or XFree, I am refering to MS Windows in a dual boot situation.

Thank you for the Xinerama howto, I will go over it soon. The question I have is while I am still in the console, I havn't set up X-Windows yet. Hopefully you know of a resouce for that as well. Thank you very much.

Sw1tch

Well, your questions are getting to the limits of my knowledge. Following the xinerama howto, I was able to configure my dual-head setup without much truouble. I don't know of it's possible to have two different consoles on different monitors though.

Could you tell us what happens in both operating systems when you set the primary card to AGP? I wouldn't think the video card would have anything to do with whether the mouse and keyboard work.

In windows the keyboard doesn't work and the mouse will move very jerky and haltingly across the screen.

In linux everything seems to work fine but I have no way of knowing for sure, wouldnt even know where to look. Another thing is I havn't set up X-WIndows yet so I dont know about the mouse.

Thanks for your help I really appreciate it and I hope someone else has any ideas.