disable i810 in linux?

verbose · 03-24-2006, 02:43 AM

I've been battling with this graphics card situation of mine for awhile now. I recently bought a Nvidia FX5200 PCI card and have been trying for quite some time now to install the latest drivers, and nvidia-installer always fails to build the kernel interface. I'm really not even sure if installing drivers is necessary, since this is my first time doing this. The fundamental problem seems to be that the integrated video is not disabled, even though I've instructed the BIOS to use PCI as its primary video adapter.

I've actually gotten the PCI card to work in Knoppix even though it prompted me that it was going to use the integrated card.

I have only recently gotten the video card to work on Windows through disabling the integrated chip via the Device Manager, so I was wondering if there was a way to do this in Linux, only via the command line, of course.

Thanks

pljvaldez · 03-24-2006, 06:50 PM

Not sure, but I had a box that you actually had to change a jumper on the motherboard to disable the on board graphics. Like you said the bios didn't seem to disable it. So you might look into that. Google for your motherboard layout if you don't have a hard copy of the specs...

verbose · 03-24-2006, 09:26 PM

Yeah, I know for sure you're right and I've spent quite a bit of time looking into this. Supposedly Intel's forums are filled with posts about disabling the graphics chipset. I've mainly been looking at Computing.net and this posting is exactly what I'm looking for. I stumbled across another posting a week or so ago that includes tons of information on my motherboard, Trigem Cognac, but I've not yet figured out how to disable i810 via jumpers.

Right now, I'm booted into Mepis (kernel 2.6.10) and it is using the PCI card for video output.

Here is the pertinent lines in Mepis's XF86Config-4 file:

Section "Device"

Code:

 #Option "sw_cursor" # needed for some ati cards
 #Option "hw_cursor"
 #Option "NoAccel"
 #Option "ShowCache"
 #Option "ShadowFB"
 #Option "UseFBDev"
 #Option "Rotate"
 #Option "NoUseBios" # needed for some Savage cards
  Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
# nvidia special options, use with care
  Option "CursorShadow" "1"
  Option "CursorShadowAlpha" "63"
  Option "CursorShadowYOffset" "2"
  Option "CursorShadowXOffset" "4"
  Option "FlatPanelProperties" "Scaling = native"
  Option "NoLogo" "false"
  Option "IgnoreEdid" "true" # needs to be true for some nvidia cards
  Identifier  "Card0"
  Driver "nv"
  BoardName "unknown"
 #BusID  "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Clearly, it is using the pci card. I'm guessing it's using the obsoleted "nv" driver name because the drivers are older.

Is it necessary to first install the latest drivers, or should Debian be able to boot without them. Mepis works fine, so I should think it wouldn't be necessary, but I have no clue.

Thanks

verbose · 03-24-2006, 09:27 PM

Yeah, I know for sure you're right and I've spent quite a bit of time looking into this. Supposedly Intel's forums are filled with posts about disabling the graphics chipset. I've mainly been looking at Computing.net and this posting is exactly what I'm looking for. I stumbled across another posting a week or so ago that includes tons of information on my motherboard, Trigem Cognac, but I've not yet figured out how to disable i810 via jumpers.

Right now, I'm booted into Mepis (kernel 2.6.10) and it is using the PCI card for video output.

Here is the pertinent lines in Mepis's XF86Config-4 file:

Section "Device"

Code:

 #Option "sw_cursor" # needed for some ati cards
 #Option "hw_cursor"
 #Option "NoAccel"
 #Option "ShowCache"
 #Option "ShadowFB"
 #Option "UseFBDev"
 #Option "Rotate"
 #Option "NoUseBios" # needed for some Savage cards
  Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
# nvidia special options, use with care
  Option "CursorShadow" "1"
  Option "CursorShadowAlpha" "63"
  Option "CursorShadowYOffset" "2"
  Option "CursorShadowXOffset" "4"
  Option "FlatPanelProperties" "Scaling = native"
  Option "NoLogo" "false"
  Option "IgnoreEdid" "true" # needs to be true for some nvidia cards
  Identifier  "Card0"
  Driver "nv"
  BoardName "unknown"
 #BusID  "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Clearly, it is using the pci card. I'm guessing it's using the obsoleted "nv" driver name because the drivers are older.

Is it necessary to first install the latest drivers, or should Debian be able to boot without them. Mepis works fine, so I should think it wouldn't be necessary, but I have no clue.

Thanks

Sorry for the dupe. Could a mod delete the previous one... thanks.

edit: I tried 'modprobe -r i810_rng' at Debian's interactive prompt (not sure if this would do the trick...), but I can't figure out how to disable it on every boot; assumimg it's even possible.

verbose · 03-25-2006, 12:51 AM

This has been resolved. I was using "nvidia" instead of "nv".