Dual monitors with 2 video cards
 

I know this topic has been done to death but with days of googling and searching forums I am still getting nowhere.

I have 2 cards

agp is radeon 9200se

pci is el-cheepo s3 vision 4mb

when I try to set it up (using fedora3 gui or modifying the xorg.conf file), the monitor on the pci card works fine, but I cant get the 1st monitor to even fire up.

I know the hardware works cause when I boot into windows, it all works fine..
This is really starting to get to me (a setup that windows has no trouble with but linux cant handle!!!)

Any ideas would be helpful..

Here is my xorg.conf file which was generated by fedora after installing the pci card and using the gui setup program.

# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Multihead layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" RightOf "Screen1"
Screen 1 "Screen1" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
Option "Xinerama" "on"
Option "Clone" "off"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# RgbPath is the location of the RGB database. Note, this is the name of the
# file minus the extension (like ".txt" or ".db"). There is normally
# no need to change the default.
# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Red Hat 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
Load "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# Specify which keyboard LEDs can be user-controlled (eg, with xset(1))
# Option "Xleds" "1 2 3"
# To disable the XKEYBOARD extension, uncomment XkbDisable.
# Option "XkbDisable"
# To customise the XKB settings to suit your keyboard, modify the
# lines below (which are the defaults). For example, for a non-U.S.
# keyboard, you will probably want to use:
# Option "XkbModel" "pc102"
# If you have a US Microsoft Natural keyboard, you can use:
# Option "XkbModel" "microsoft"
#
# Then to change the language, change the Layout setting.
# For example, a german layout can be obtained with:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# or:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys"
#
# If you'd like to switch the positions of your capslock and
# control keys, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps"
# Or if you just want both to be control, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps"
#
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Unknown monitor"
HorizSync 31.5 - 37.9
VertRefresh 50.0 - 70.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Hansol Electronics Mazellan700A"
HorizSync 30.0 - 69.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 120.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "s3"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "S3 968 (generic)"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard1"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "Videocard Vendor"
BoardName "ATI Radeon 9200SE"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Videocard1"
Monitor "Monitor1"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "800x600"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Group 0
Mode 0666
EndSection

Hi that is close enough do you have somewhere to post the file /var/log/Xorg.0.log so we can see what Xorg is doing when it initializes the displays. If not you may have to split the log into 2 or 3 posts to put it here. A couple of things you may want to change after having copied you working config to a backup.


For this section make sure that you find the BusID by looking in the log file I mention above. What you should look for from my file.

The * in my output above shows the primary card by rights your s3 card should not be getting started without the busid, it should be your AGP one that gets the display as it has the busid, you may want to check in your BIOS and that the AGP is first to get started instead of PCI. Below is my xorg.conf it will show you a working config with two seperate displays with different resolutions not the xinerama that yours is trying to do.

try specifying the busid for BOTH cards. it makes sense that the second one is the only one to work when X can't find the other one.

X -scanpci, Xorg -scanpci, XFree86 -scanpci
or use your brain and convert from lspci's hex addresses, but why do that when you don't have to, eh. ;)

otherwise, maybe disable ddc, try using just the first card to see if that works, stuff like that.

I'm not sure what I did differently but after reading the replys I tried to set up the cards again (since I couldn't use my good monitor and agp card I went back to a single setup for a while!).
This time when the x server tried to start and automatically set things up, I worked no problems!!

I have discovered some interesting issues now like when I open firefox on one screen it works fine.
When I try to open it on the second screen, I get a box that says

Firefox - Choose user Profile

and I cant choose the default profile because it is in use!!

Has anyone come across this before and figured out how to get around it!!.