[mythtv-users] overscan problems with nvidia 8400 GS

[Dale Pontius]

Tortise wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Dale Pontius" <DEPontius at edgehp.net>
> To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2009 8:45 AM
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] overscan problems with nvidia 8400 GS
> 
> 
> Tortise wrote:
>> Dale Pontius wrote:
>>> The current tool is "nvidia-settings", and it's been pretty well proven
>>> to not work for 8xxx+ cards.  However, as mentioned before, the system
>>> I'm using now has an nVidia 6200, and last night I looked with a mirror,
>>> and it has an S-Video connector.  So I dug out the manual, and sure
>>> enough, it has TV-Out.  One of these days I'm going to swap.
>> I would check the driver version you want, I think you need the 173 driver - and a compatible card - which means <= 5xxx NVIDIA
>> cards - check the reference I gave you.  I don't think a 6200 will be any better, except to use less power!
>>
>> Also I suggest that you read about S-video on wikipedia.
>>
>>
> I have driven the 6200 with a 173-series driver, probably earlier too,
> considering that I set this system up 3+ years ago.
> 
> Looking at http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/173.14.18/README/appendix-a.html I note the 173 drivers also support the 
> 8400 GS!
> 
> Perhaps you can use 173.x overscan capabilities with the 8400GS card?  How about that for an idea worth trying? 
> 
Already tried that.  Doesn't work, I've had overscan set to 0.0 from day
1 in xorg.conf, and it's done no good.  Having read about the problems,
moving back to 173.x was one of the first things I tried.

As of now, I haven't gotten S-Video out of the 6200.  I can hook it up
to the TV, and all of the BIOS video works, as does Linux text mode.
Then when I startx, it goes blank.  I can look at Xorg.0.log and
everything looks normal, and a "ps -ef" shows that my window manager and
associated programs are running.  There's just nothing on the screen.

Oh, and to add insult to injury, I never did get hd-audio to output at a
decent volume, so I decided to go back to AC97/snd-i8x0.  Except ALSA
doesn't see it, and for that matter I can't see it with lspci, either.

So far this box is a bust, and I haven't even gotten to the problems I
have in addition to excessive overscan and soft sound.

Dale