To anybody using the Nvidia 304.xx series:

I was using 304.64 but updated to 304.88. I don't experience the black screen of death that 304.84 is famous for.

No problems with the 310.40 here.

304.88 works fine here.

304.88 fixes the blank virtual terminals/console problem in 304.84.

1 members found this post helpful.

People using Nvidia chipsets older than series 7 (6150, etc.) cannot use the 310 series.

1 members found this post helpful.

Fixed that for you.

I now have 304.88 running on a 6150 chipset with the 3.8.8 kernel - at last!

I had to patch the kernel/nv-mmap.c file to not fail on VM_RESERVED, but it then built and installed and no longer failed on the ABI version. This is on a fully -current system and Pat's reverting to the earlier Xorg seems to have fixed the ABI problem (if I understand that correctly).

[EDIT]
Forgot to mention - on this system I had to turn off the vblank option. With it I got 60FPS, without ~2400.
[/EDIT]

Question for Woodman. Did you use the older SlackBuild version for the 304 series? Or rolled your own?

There's an old 6150 ADP video card gathering dust within an nvidia AMD2 chipset based PC. I'd like to put SlackWare 14 on. And the nvidia I have on file is the 304.51 using the older slackbuild. Would it work just updating the version number in that older slackbuild?

I used the build scripts for 13.37 (302.17) from slackbuilds.org. I changed the version and build numbers.

Note: The driver script has an incorrect sym link command:

AS IS (line 154):

ln -sf libnvcuvidv.so.$VERSION libnvcuvid.so

CHANGE TO:

ln -sf libnvcuvid.so.$VERSION libnvcuvid.so

You will get 60 FPS (or whatever refresh rate you use) with any driver on any system with the vblank option on. That is exactly what this option is for, it syncs the FPS rate with the refresh rate to avoid tearing. If I were you I would turn that option on again, I really hate tearing.

Thank you Woodsman that is a big deal to me and grateful. my little private custom distro of puppy linux thanks you from the bottom of my heart.

Question: I have the Nvidia GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 chipset and everything seems to be working fine out of the box with the generic 3.2.29 kernel and stock nouveau drivers on a fresh install of Slackware 14. At least nothing is crashing and I'm able to watch movies and such without problems. Is there any advantage to installing the proprietary driver that I may not be aware of? Thanks in advance for any input.

I'm using version 304.64 on Slackware 14 and it works fine (7600 GS).

Version 310.32 (from the slackbuild) didn't work at all, and log messages pointed me to 304.64, saying the card was supported up to that version. I had to fix several links and libraries, and I guess it would have been easier if I had modified the slackbuild for 13.37 instead.

If you really need a good 3D support, the proprietary driver seem to be (so far) a better choice than nouveau, otherwise the latter is a better choice because it's free.

http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/HardwareStatus

Kind regards,

Philip

Thanks Philip, I suppose I was just looking for a good reason to load the Nvidia driver, but if everything is working well as is, I guess I will skip it.

You're welcome. As far as I know, the fact that nouveau is part of the official Slackware release is a very strong reason for using it, if it does the job: I guess this is the safest, crash-proof solution.

Philip