weird black screen problem ATi X700
 

Hi guys. I'm using a laptop with an ATi X700 - 256mb gfx card with the "ati" as the driver in xorg.conf

I have a weird problem:
When I start the computer, I see the scrolling boot mesages but then the screen goes black.

Now, there is a fn+F10 combination on the keyboard (it looks like a rectangle with an up-down arrow in it).

When I use that key, the screen comes back with normal resolution (1280x800), however, I have to do this each time I boot or login.

So, my question is:
1- what is this key called and what does it do? (I think it exists in most laptops too)
2- How can I fix this so that the screen opens correctly by default?
3- when I run "glxinfo | grep direct", I get "direct rendering: Yes" but when I start most games, again, the screen goes black and I have to press fn+F10 only to see the login screen all of a sudden. This must be a part of the same problem right?

You might want to download the ATI driver installer app from ATI's site. Run it and it will build/install a module called "fglrx". Use that one instead of the "ati" one and it may solve your problem.

Thanks for your reply. You are right, when I install the fglrx drivers, the black screen problem goes away. However, I want to use the free driver if possible and I am sure there is a way to fix this problem. I'll greatly apreciate if someone could help me with my initial questions.

What version of xf86-video-ati are you using? I seem to remember reading about this bug, but I thought it was fixed already in newer versions of the X.Org radeon driver (it's something about a problem with setting the correct displays in the 2D component in X.Org - LVDS vs TDMS or something like that possibly).

I'm sorry I don't have any links to it at the moment though, since I last remember reading into this some time ago :(

Looking through the Git logs, it looks like it was fixed around October/ November, so post xf86-video-ati 6.6.2 release, so you'll probably need to try and build this driver from git.

I am not 100% sure but it is supposed to be xorg 7.2 RC2. So it is pretty new isn't it?

I think the key is the version of xf86-video-ati - the fixes you need went in after 6.6.2, and I don't think they've made a release since, so X.Org 7.2RC2 is still probably using version 6.6.2 of the free ati driver.

In which case, you could just pull the latest version of xf86-video-ati from the Git repository and replace 6.6.2 with that.

I downloaded and compiled the latest xf86-video-ati 6.6.3 driver. Well, nothing happened. I mean, looks like all went well but everyting is still the same :-(

Can this be some monitor setting? I tried to create some modlines with gtf and paste them in the monitor section but that doesn't do anything also.

Each time I try to chage resolution, the monitor goes black. When I press fn+F10 everything looks normal.

Another example: Say, I start xmoto. The screen goes black. I press fn+F10 and suddenly I see the KDE desktop at the 1024x768 size surrounded by a black frame (since the native resolution of the LCD is 1280x800)

Similarly, I run Chromium. Screen black. fn+F10. KDE desktop 800x600 size with a large black area around.

Can anything be done?