I tried to install Fedora Core 1 on a friend's computer and got this really strange behaviour: when the X server starts, the screen goes completely black. If I turn the monitor off, then back on, all goes back to normal

The video card is a Voodoo 3. When I first booted on the Fedora CD, it recognized the monitor and the graphical installation started OK; the problem began after the first 'real' boot. I tried to boot from the CD again and then the monitor wasn't recognized any more, and the installation program freezed...

I tried to use 'Option "CrtScreen"' in XF86Config, but to no avail. The frequencies for the monitor are OK (from the monitor's manual).

Did anybody have the same problem ?

Thanks in advance.

I have the black screen problem but it happens at random times. When I was running SuSE, it showed me that there was an I/O error with xfree. I dont know however becuase it only showed it for a matter of seconds.

I havent tried to turn off my monitor and when i reboot, it works fine again but I feel a little better about my problems now.

Try to update video drivers and monitor drivers and also, try to change the refresh rate. My monitor was acting wierd when i was running it at 85hz and i moved it back to 60. Also, try to lower the resolution and slowly work up.

Goodluck

Hum, there's no such thing as 'monitor drivers'

As I was in a hurry, I didn't try other resolutions, we'll see if that works. What really baffles me is that, technically, it *works*, you just have to turn off/on the monitor and you get 1024x768@85Hz!

My first guess was that the X server was trying to send the video signal to TV-out instead of the CRT monitor, but after examining XF86Config, it shouldn't. Even when I change the X driver from tdfx to vesa, I get the same problem. Bummer.

Thanks for your suggestions, I'll post the results of my investigations here.

fraca7,

I am recommending this from memory so bear with me. I am not at my Linux machine.

One thing I have always experienced with Voodoo3 cards is that they are extremely easy to overheat. We all know what happens with too much heat for too long .........


Anyway, did Fedora enable 3D acceleration during the install? You might ( and I mean might ) be having problems if you are tyring to push too high a bit rate for the Voodoo3 with Direct Rendering enabled.

I believe the command to check for Direct Rendering is as follows (make sure your root):

# glxinfo | grep rendering

It will tell you either yes or no with regards to Direct Rendering.

If you are, try switching the default bit depth of your video card driver to 16 in XF86Config. I enabled DRI with my Voodoo3 under Gentoo and you MUST use the 16 bit default depth for it to work reliably.

If you are not using DRI, maybe enabling it will help? It may not help but you will at least figure out how to get that Voodoo3 cranking out some serous FPS at some point. There is specific Voodoo3 information in the documentation at this site to get you going:

http://dri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/

As mentioned previously, also try setting your monitor to 60 or 70Hz.

Hope this helps somehow.
Good luck.