When I use startx, my monitor goes black then shows some weird ascii symbols. I know people have had problems with the screen going black and freezing, but I haven't read a solution to this problem yet. I can Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart my computer without hitting the reset button so it's not locking up completely. I also edited the XF86Config file to Option "NvAGP" "1" which hasn't solved the problem either. Any suggestions?

Vid card: FX 5600XT 256MB
Mobo: Epox EP8RDA+ nForce2 north and south bridges

lspci gives
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (rev a2)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0312 (rev a1)

Drivers attempted with: 4620, 5328, 5332

Slackware 9.1 with Kernel 2.6.5

This is a commonly reported problem. I've had great luck with the new Suse 9.1 live CD under environments where others failed.

Niall.

My Mandrake 10.0 installation is running off of the 2.6.3 kernel and that doesn't have a problem with my nvidia card. It configured it during installation. nvidia works on some, but not on others I guess, but I'd like to know if anyone has sucessfully installed the drivers in slack and how to go about it.

Dear Slick,

I was able to get my GeForce4 MX 440 working in Slack 9.1, after overcoming several problems, including the ascii garbage thing.

Then I repartitioned my hard drive and reinstalled everything.

Now it doesn't work. I get the ascii garbage again. And I don't remember how I got it working the last time. I did:

Load "glx"
Driver "nv" --> Driver "nvidia"

in XF86Config like last time. I installed Slack from the same CD, got my kernel source from the same tarball as last time, and ran the same NVIDIA-blah.run from last time.

So my answer to your post from May is, yes, nVIDIA cards can work with slack. My question is, how?

- Ben