Mandrake 9 Video Config Problems
 

During installation of mandrake 9 at the part where you configure your monitor settings and video card I can't seem to get the settings correct. My monitor is the viewsonic VG171b lcd and my graphics card is a geforce 3 ti 200. I've tried practically every combination possible...using refresh rates off my monitor's manual and other possibilities. Instead of seeing the test message when I click test...I see either a thin grey line across the screen or a scrolling blur of color. When I boot mandrake I hear a noise, the startup sound (I suppose) but there's no image on the screen.

I'm about to give up on Mandrake 9 and attempt to download redhat in hope that it works. But if anyone can fix my problem...it would save me much time.

Thanks

You can try RedHat, but Digitally driven (as opposed to dual-connect with the card hooked to the analog input) wants the nVidia drivers at least and a hacked\self-customized refresh rate table also in many cases. What X does is to try to get the video card to talk to the monitor and negotiate a rate they can both use from a table that the installer sets up-- the default table is synced for VESA, which are CRT rates.

These work poorly if at all with LCDs, as LCDs have different paint rates(the rate dots are fed from video card to LCD need to be slower than with modern good CRTs) and the refresh rates for them need to be radically different than with CRTs-- unless the LCD has an analog connect and circuitry to go with it that will compensate or translate from analog to digital configs. The cheaper LCDs rely on drivers to do this, the more expensive ones have some or most of that in hardware. Right now there is not a lot of ACTUAL data for the individual LCDs as to TTL syncing, etc, so the drivers for Linux tend to be calibrated for analog rates or just being tested now unless the mfr has made the LCD a true dual mode LCD.

the only other thing I know that can be done is a pure manual install with the windows' driver's object file manually used for Linux for the monitor end of the video feed. This is WAY beyond a newbie thing and I only even try that in person. I would try another distro at this point, after perhaps trying the nVidia mfr drivers if you can follow a very large bunch of instructions to the letter and figure them out. I think, though, that for now you would do much better with a CRT type monitor for Linux.

John.

john owns

I found that explaining helps me to think clearer, and writing things down lets me remember better (typing works too), so will help when can and will tell why as well as how when can.

Hope that helped some, and if any more questions will try to help with at least where to look to figure things out.

John.

Hi John...

Thanks for your reply. I was somewhat confused about what you meant by true dual mode LCD though. This LCD I'm using has physical hardware connections for either a digital cable or analog...and right now I'm using digital mode. Do you think Mandrake might work with my monitor on an analog connection?

R.L.

Yay!...I got mandrake up and running. I'm just in analog mode right now...though the resolution is a bit worse than digital it's ok..


Thanks John for your help.

Yes, will not be quite as good. Do you know how an LCD panel works???
Essentially, what happens is a grid of segments of pipettes is charged. Where vertical and horizontal charges meet, there a tiny segment of an LCD lights up. This takes longer than with an analog. Soem LCDs do not have dual connections, they are either analog connect only or some are only S-Video or DVI connects. The ones without analog connects do not work well with Linux right now, the DVI drivers need work to use unless you have mfr drivers for monitor and card.

So, for now keep the analog connection connected-- as Linux gets more tuned for digital video the svideo and DVI drivers will be developed fro teh more common distros-- right now they are used mostly by those with very good hacking (tweaking, customizing, coding-- NOT bad kind of hacking) skills with drivers and abilities to compile things. I use a KDS XtremeFlat CRT right now for just that reason-- drivers not excellent for digital yet.

I figured with what I told you, you would look and see if your LCD had an anlog connection and try that-- and it worked. The rest was to try and explain WHY this might be the best way, and figured others might get the ideas also and avoid LCD monitiors that did not have analog connects with Linux unless very much into tweaking and playing very heavily with config files.

Happy to help any way I can.

John.

I had the same problem, Mandrake would install graphically just fine, but I could not get find a XFree driver/monitor setting that that worked. I tried Redhat but the graphical install didn't work, and using text mode install, I also couldn't get XFree to work.

I'm now using the standard XFree4 vesa driver and the generic 1024x768 flat panel display setting in Mandrake. It seems to work just fine.

BTW, I have a Creative LCD flat panel, connected to an NVidia TNT2 using a digital DFP connector.

I had a similar problem that when starting the dm i see nothing when connecting my tft with a dvi-cable. you've to add the following Option in your config:

Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFT"

I'm running a GF4 + TFT with DVI-Cable.