[mythtv-users] nvidia geforce MX 4000 and blank/black screen

[Brad Templeton]

On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 11:38:53PM -0500, MacNean C. Tyrrell wrote:
> Little update.  I've tried the previous 3 older drivers and always the 
> same thing.  I see some green dots on the tv screen and then it goes 
> black.  I know it doesn't lock up because i can do cntrl alt f1.  Which 
> than goes from black to a bunch of green dots.  I can trype root enter, 
> my password, enter and type reboot and it reboots.  So its not locking 
> up the computer.  I don't know whats going on.  I know this card works 
> perfectly in windows, i can just output to tv or clone or just crt.  I'm 
> very frustrated with it.  I would like to use this card instead of my 
> sis 315 due to the XVMC thinng.

Debugging video driver problems is hard, but if you are going to do so:

a) Set your system to not go directly into X.   This varies by system but
in many you edit /etc/inittab and change initdefault.   Booting into
X is for weenies.  :-)   Or rather, it's for people who are not trying
to debug problems in their X servers or video cards.

b) Log in normally so you own the console.

c) Go to another computer, a laptop etc.  Log in from that to the same
userid.

d) Do your playing around, changing your xorg.conf/xfree86.conf etc.
Loading/unloading drivers yada yada.

e) Test them by typing "X -verbose 5" on the OTHER computer.  Then you
can see what's happening.   Or consider "X -verbose 5 | tee /tmp/res 2>&1"
so you have a log of it (there is also one in /var/log/xorg.0.log)

You won't start your whole desktop environment, you will just see the
cursor, but that's enough for most tests.  If you need more, fire an
xterm or whatever at the display.

f) Quit the test with ^C.

g) Once it works, do "startx" to test your full environment.


Debugging from the same system you are mucking with the display of is
a pain.