NVidia GeForce4 prevents X starting

stf92 · 02-17-2013, 05:08 AM

Motherboard: AsRock P4i65G
Graphics card: NVidia GeForce4 MX4000

Hi: The motherboard has an AGP slot, where the graphics card, which is an NVidia AGP card, is plugged. When I try to start X, it says:

Code:

(EE) No devices detected.

Fatal server error:
no screens found
giving up.

The motherboard also has a connector for the onboard video card. Plugging the video cable into this connector I do not get video at all. Therefor I use the AGP card for video. But in this way I cannot start X. Any ideas?

EDIT: I unplugged the video card and started X with the onboard video adapter, but X still won't start. Windows does not start either. Maybe driver support for AGP cards is lacking nowadays? BIOS automatically detects whether the AGP card is plugged in or not.

ukiuki · 02-17-2013, 06:22 AM

The geforce4 is working because you have output, looks like it isn't loading the correct driver, so no device.
Also you might need to setup a xorg.conf if you dont have one.
Please give us some more outputs to work with:
Like this:

Code:

lsmod | grep -i video

or

Code:

lsmod | grep -i vga

and

Code:

dmesg | grep -i video

or

Code:

dmesg | grep -i vga

Regards

stf92 · 02-17-2013, 06:37 AM

I run slackware 12.0, kernel 2.6.21.5. In xorg.conf I have, in the section Device, 'driver nvidia' (I have just put it).

lsmod outputs neither 'video' nor 'vga'.

$ dmesg |grep -i video
Boot video device is 0000:01:00.0
$ dmesg |grep -i vga
console: colour VGA+ 80x25

I've just downloaded, from nvidia.com, a file with filename ending in '-pkg1.run', though I do not know what to do with it.

TobiSGD · 02-17-2013, 07:59 AM

The Geforce MX4000 should work out of the box with a recent version of the nouveau driver, so it would be better to run Slackware 14 on that machine (12.0 is not supported anyways, the latest supported version is 12.1).
If you want to run the proprietary driver make sure that you have the right version for that card, make the installer executable and run it.

John VV · 02-17-2013, 12:57 PM

with the gforce 4 card there are a few issues
( i have a OLD ancient Gforce2 mx 400 card , that still works after 13 years )

nvidia sort of stopped supporting cards older than the old gforce5 series
and Xorg STOPPED supporting them in newer versions

now the 96 .run driver
-- 32 bit ---
"NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.23-pkg1.run"
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/96.43.23/

will run on CentOS 6.3 ,SL 6.3 and RHEL 6.3
they are using older versions of x11

Slackware 12 ??? i do not know . I do not use it and it is unsupported any way
i use rpm based distros

the "nouveau driver" half works
2d is great the 3d ???? very slow on the GF2 and will be on the GF4 ( they are the same age - 2000 and 2001 )

new distros use the "nouveau driver" by default now
to use the .run you will need to rebuild the boot image
-- I use "dracut " for that

stf92 · 02-17-2013, 01:13 PM

It's unbelievable but I just ran NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.23-pkg1.run and X started automagically! Perhaps I will install slackware 14.0 in that machine anyways.

haertig · 02-17-2013, 02:39 PM

Quote:

NVidia GeForce4 MX4000

I wish I could still find those available. I still have some AGP-based motherboards. I really like those MX4000 cards, especially the quiet fanless ones with just a heatsink, for use with Linux. Sometimes, simpler is better. Unfortunately all mine (I think I have three?) have died over the years...