Dual head problem with ATI Radeon 7000
 

I have a dell computer running Redhat 9, it has an ATI Radeon 7000 that has 2 VGA connections. I plugged in 2 identical NEC MultiSync FP950's and configured my XF86Config file to use both monitors with the Xinerama option.

In text mode the monitors work fine as clones of each other, but...

When I startx everything appears to work fine, I see the desktop environment on both screens and I can move windows back and forth between them.... BUT, if at any time the mouse icon is on the second monitor it goes blank, after a few seconds I hear it change states and go into idle mode. It appears that X thinks the monitor is still working fine, I can move windows there and back and there's obviously room for the mouse to roam around blindly. The monitor comes back to life when I close X.

Any ideas? I've tried playing around with options in the XF86Config, I've looked through /var/log/XFree86.0.log but there's no errors or warnings.

Thanks
-Ben

To rule out that it's a problem with that one monitor I swtiched the vga cables in the back. The desktops come up as before, reversed. When the mouse cursor moves to the new secondary screen it goes blank.

More interesting facts...

GNOME: seems like it will work until you move the mouse onto the secondary screen, which then goes blank

KDE: doesn't work very well, no mouse cursor

TWM: works better than GNOME, the X shaped mouse cursor can move between screens without causing a problem, but as soon as that X cursor changes to something else (like a pointer when you hover over a window) the second screen goes blank

ben133; check for conflict between mouse & card along with monitor.

not sure what you mean?

i tried a couple of different mice with no luck

ben133; conflict between mouse,ati card
& monitor- the have to have shared access to system but if more than two(2)
conflict arises. check the interrupts assignments.

penguin4 -- I'm not sure what you mean either. Can you please provide a detailed, step-by-step description of what you are recommending here? In other words, if someone gave this advice to you, what exact commands would you run? Thanks -- J.W.

I'm not sure how to check for conflict. But, the video card works fine as long as you don't try to use the monitor on the second VGA port. Does the second VGA port have it's own IRQ?

jw; again no tecnical advice given just where solution maybe found. some of posters not reading or bothering to, so just pointing where to look for solution.

penguin4 - I'm afraid you are missing my point. Sorry about that. What I was trying to say was that your original post was not clear. Your recommendation to the original poster was to
and I'll apologize but I was not sure exactly what you were suggesting that benl33 do.

Let me rephrase my question differently: Can you please re-state and clarify exactly what you are recommending? All I am asking is that you simply add more detail to your recommendation. Thanks -- J.W.

still stuck on this one

Radeon 7000
 

I searched for some time before I set a linux partition on this machine. Since I run many different machines I try to match the latest possible linux build to the hardware I'm dealing with. Since this machine is running an old 1Ghz via chip with a Radeon 7000ve video card, I found the best build was Fedora Core 3. Since I'm always messing around with my machines, Ive had to rebuild my Fedora partition a half a dozen times. After updates, I've never had problems getting the dual heads working. I have found, though, that running the same monitor on both heads alleviates any problems in my setup. I'm now running an old pair of Compaq V70 with a total resolution of 2800x1050. In my experience, if I take the time to research what others have done on older equipment and match the linux build to the equipment, I have far fewer headaches. I have two old Dells (Dimension 4100 box and Inspiron 7500 laptop) and they're both running SuSE 10.1 without any problems. Take your time before you build and you'll be far happier!:)

I ended up solving this problem a few days later by changing from X11 to X.Org, sorry I should have posted my solution.