Using an Ati All in Wonder with an Nvidia Graphics Card
 

I have recently added the ATI all in wonder 32M PCI graphics card to my dual boot linux Box. The specs of my box are below.

Athlon 1700Xp
Nvidia Geforce 2mx 400 AGP
ATI All IN Wonder 32Mb Pci
SBLIVE
Basic NIC
etc
etc
Redhat 7.0
Win2k Pro

All is well under windows however i do notice that the ati is now the Primary graphics card( in The Bios). It has to be this way for the TV function to Work!!.

Anyway the next step was linux.
Because of the change in bios settings my Nvidia no longer seemed to work!!.
So i tried to get the Ati card working first.
I installed the new version of XFree86 4.2 with little headaches. This supposedly supports both cards!!. I then configured my XFree86 config file ( according to http://linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Xinerama-HOWTO-3.html). I then tested the file and no errors were reported.

Note the device drivers/modules used were "ati" and "nvidia".My Graphics cards are on BUSIDS 1:0:0 and 0:12:0-this was added in the config file.

However after running startx the server tries to start... It kicks the Nvidia card into action and shuts down the ati head and then freezes my linux box -leaving the dreaded hard boot.

Any Ideas

I have since tried reconfiguring all my modules to see if this was required....still no joy.

Does anyone have any ideas.
Note I am still quite new to linux so HOWTOs really help.

:confused:

well firstly try to get a system working without using xinerama. xinerama is just the tiny bit that let's you spread a single desktop across multiple screens. personally i don't use it, and just have two versions of blackbox runnning simulaneously on each head, the mouse still goes through the screens great. Xinereama greatly limits the video facilities and such like, so your tv card may well not work with xinerama, mine doesn't.

check the /var/log/XFree86.0.log or whatever for error messages when it dies too.

best way i found to get a server working ok, is to try swapping round the server layout:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "both"
Screen "screen1"
Screen "screen2" LeftOf "screen1"
InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

OR

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "both"
Screen "screen2"
Screen "screen1" RightOf "screen2"
InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

you can guess that these are equivalent, but only the first setup will work for me, the second crashes my box cold, even though in theory it should work.

screen1 is my secondary PCI card, while screen2 is my primary AGP, so i need to load the crappy card first, before the good one...

well, that *might* give you enough to go on...

Thanks for the input.
I looked in the log and the screens were sharing resources so i did as you said.
By changing the screens around , the server no longer crashes.

However....now i just get two blank screens. ...But no lock up.

So i went back in the log only to see -no errors?

The only problem i can see is ........ nvidia module is compiled for XFree86 v 4.0.1 not 4.2!!

Would this cause the problem?

Any ideas

ps good tip about the screens. I dont understand the difference between the 2 scripts but if it stops me booting into windows thats a good thing.

well what is a blank screen? Black or black and white dots with an X for a pointer?

as for the module, it shouldn't matter, you might want to try using the nvidia drivers from their website tho.

I just had a thought. It probably has very little to do with this, but:

Your NVidia card, does it support multiple screens? (My GeForce 2 is a dual-head). If so, would your system not, therefore, technically be capable of having 4 displays:

2xNVidia + 2xATI

Would this make a difference? Would X be trying to use these other two aswell/instead?

When i say the screens are BLANK!. I mean the screen is Black and nothing is displayed.....as if the monitor is off.