I recently installed a PCI Matrox G450 Video Card on a computer using an AMD64 processor running Debian Wheezy and the computer displays a black screen when a VGA monitor is plugged into the card.

Running LSPCI shows,
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. MGA G400/G450 (rev 85)

So I'm assuming a video driver needs to be installed. Therefore I downloaded the Linux version video driver from Matrox. The file downloaded was, Matrox_driver-x86_32-4.4.0.tar.gz

Now I'm stuck. Does anyone know the remaining procedure from this point to install a Matrox G450 Video Card in Debian Wheezy?...would really appreciate any help/advice anyone can offer. Thank you

Should be supported out of the box from what I read. Should use kernel module mga. Check if it's loaded .

Do you have an xserver installed?

I typed.... lsmod | grep mga
Then hit enter and nothing showed on the screen. Terminal just reset and was ready for the next command.

I'm not sure how to check if xserver installed? Do you know the command to check it?

Are you logged in?

Hi Barry...

Welcome to the forum

It might be easier just to post the entire results of...

Could you also post the results of this command...

Regards...

Per your request listed below is the output of the command. Since My last post I've learned a few more things that may be of help in better understanding and solving the root cause of this problem.

1) Using the Matrox G450 PCI video card in an EMachines Model T6410 with an AMD64 processor running Debian Wheezy, upon startup the monitor stays black and does not ever see a signal. Unfortunately this is the computer I'd like to use the Matrox card on and thus the reason for this post. I'm wondering if the Matrox card is incompatible with the computer mother board chip set.

2) When using the same Matrox G450 PCI video card in a Dell Pentium Computer running Debian Wheezy, the card worked fine from startup. No issues.


3) Note a Nvidia PCI video Card in the EMachines computer works fine; however, it may be causing glitches. when I use the LinuxCNC program to drive my CNC Router the Linuxcnc program randomly crashes with no apparent consistency in the crash dump information provided. In reading through numerous forums on this issue there were many references to Nvidia cards causing random crashes, so that's why I decided to try using a Matrox video card as a first approach to solve this issue. Another approach maybe to use the VESA driver for the Nvidia card, but I'm not sure how to install it and "tell' the computer to use it instead of the Nvidia driver.


Any light anyone could shed on this would be really appreciated. Thank you!


barry@BarrysCnC:~$ lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A 12
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS480 [Radeon Xpress 200G Series] [1002:5954]
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device [1462:7141]
Kernel driver in use: radeon
02:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Hint Corp HB6 Universal PCI-PCI bridge (non-transparent mode) [3388:0021] (rev 15)
02:02.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212/AR5213 Wireless Network Adapter [168c:0013] (rev 01)
Subsystem: D-Link System Inc AirPlus DWL-G520 Wireless PCI Adapter (rev. B) [1186:3a13]
Kernel driver in use: ath5k
02:03.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ [10ec:8139] (rev 10)
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device [1462:145c]
Kernel driver in use: 8139too
02:04.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306/7/8 [Fire II(M)] IEEE 1394 OHCI Controller [1106:3044] (rev 80)
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device [1462:145d]
Kernel driver in use: firewire_ohci


03:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. MGA G400/G450 [102b:0525] (rev 85)


Subsystem: IBM Device [1014:0233]
Kernel driver in use: agpgart-amd64
barry@BarrysCnC:~$

your last post confused me, because suddenly there's no matrox card, and you seem to be talking about a different machine?
you are the boss of your own thread, it's your job to keep it clean, easily understandable, informative.

about your original post, a few thoughts:

• wheezy is oldstable, and more or less obsolete. i hope you know that.
• installing new software (and that's what a driver is) requires you to first update and upgrade the system. have you done that beforehand?
• matrox card seems to be very, very old. judging from a few other threads i've seen around, i think you could spare yourself some bother and just buy a cheap, low-end, but still much better gpu

Realistically given that you're not getting 3d acceleration worth anything from the Matrox, any reason you don't just use that onboard graphics (xpress 200/rs480) that it sees instead? Obviously I can think of several reasons, but if whatever you want to do would work with it, then it would probably be far easier to get it working. I do believe that should be supported in the 3.2 kernel rather well.

Also, that MAY be why it's not liking the Matrox. Is there anything in the BIOS to turn off the embedded graphics when it detects an external card?

I appreciate your replies. To answer your questions..

1) I use Linux Wheezy because I believe newer Linux based software will not run the LinuxCNC program. I use LinuxCNC to control all my CNC Machines. Please let me know if I'm wrong about this.

2) It's reported that LinuxCNC sometimes randomly crashes using mother-board embedded graphics and Nvidia cards and that's happening to me. LinuxCNC Q&A forums recommend using a Matrox G450 graphics card to solve this problem that's why I'm trying a Matrox card.

3) I am using the latest bios update on the Emachines T6410 AMD64. The bios only allows you to select the order in which to recognize graphics cards. The bios is set to recognize and use an installed PCI Graphics card before the motherboard embedded graphics. However, bios is not recognizing the Matrox PCI card so instead uses the embedded graphics.

4) LinuxCNC is not graphics intensive so 3D is not needed. You mentioned getting a different low cost graphics card. Nvidia is not a option due to reported compatibility issues with LinuxCNC. Do you have a recommendation?

Thank you.

do you know how to regularly update & upgrade your debian system?
are you doing it?

it just might have some bearing on the original problem.

although i still don't see how you could get any benefit from such an ancient gpu.

why don't you just use onboard graphics then? no hassle, problem solved.

He actually already answered that in the reply to me:

2) It's reported that LinuxCNC sometimes randomly crashes using mother-board embedded graphics and Nvidia cards and that's happening to me. LinuxCNC Q&A forums recommend using a Matrox G450 graphics card to solve this problem that's why I'm trying a Matrox card.

The pc has 2x graphic card.
a) Can you take away the Radeon from the PC? (probably not? onboard.. ?)
or
b) blacklist the radeon driver? https://wiki.debian.org/KernelModuleBlacklisting

Debian Wheezy is up to date.

I've tried about everything this weekend and finally decided that it must be a hardware compatibility issue. I read today in a forum in a brief note that the Matrox G450 would not work with an AMD64 processor. I'm thinking that that's probably factual given everything I've tried to make it work. So I'll either move on to another computer or try the VESA drivers with a NVidia Card on the AMD64 machine. If I run into issues doing this I'll post another thread.

Again thanks to all for helping and doing your best! This one was a tough one to solve.