2.5.70 damaged my nvidia card?

2.5.70 damaged my nvidia card?

[Jakob Kemi]

(please CC me as I'm not subscribed.)

Hi,

I have an VIA KT333 + Athlon box with an old, noname AGP GeForce 400 MX 
card.
Upon first booting 2.5.70 i noticed heavy screen flicker. (never seen 
with 2.4.x or 2.5.x < 2.5.70) it behaved nice once in X, upon the next 
reboot i did some work in the console (X not started). Still lots of 
flickering and a misplaced text cursor in text-mode. So i decided to go 
back to my old 2.4 kernel but was unable to boot since my BIOS no longer 
recognizes my graphics card.
When I run the box with an old PCI card as my primary adapter and the 
AGP geforce card as secondary the Geforce card doesnt seem to run it's 
VGA BIOS (no boot message). X also refuses to detect the Geforce card. 
Is it possible that the new console layer or the new agp gart code or 
whatever in 2.5.70 poked in the wrong registers and replaced the BIOS 
flash rom on the GeForce with garbage?
Of course it could very well be something else, but the fact that it 
happened _exactly_ when I switched kernel makes me suspicious.
Some googling reveals that the screen might flicker during flashing of 
the graphics BIOS on geforce cards. Unfortunately since I don't know the 
brand of my card I can't try to replace it's bios.
I should also add that the 2.5.70 build was without framebuffer and that 
other AGP graphic adapters still works in my computer and that my 
Geforce card also doesn't work in other machines.

Any ideas? How much does the kernel poke with the graphic card?

	/ Jakob Kemi

Re: 2.5.70 damaged my nvidia card?

[Dave Jones]

On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 03:05:49PM +0200, Jakob Kemi wrote:

 > When I run the box with an old PCI card as my primary adapter and the 
 > AGP geforce card as secondary the Geforce card doesnt seem to run it's 
 > VGA BIOS (no boot message).

most (if not all) modern BIOS's have an "Init {AGP/PCI} display first"
option. You may need to fiddle with that.
 
 > X also refuses to detect the Geforce card. 
 > Is it possible that the new console layer or the new agp gart code or 
 > whatever in 2.5.70 poked in the wrong registers and replaced the BIOS 
 > flash rom on the GeForce with garbage?

Extremely unlikely. WRT agpgart, it pokes chipset registers, not
graphic card registers.

It may even be that the two cards you have won't play together.
Try them both _independantly_ before jumping to conclusions about
wiped BIOSes etc.

		Dave

Re: 2.5.70 damaged my nvidia card?

[Jakob Kemi]

Thanks for your fast reply,

Dave Jones wrote:
> On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 03:05:49PM +0200, Jakob Kemi wrote:
> 
>  > When I run the box with an old PCI card as my primary adapter and the 
>  > AGP geforce card as secondary the Geforce card doesnt seem to run it's 
>  > VGA BIOS (no boot message).
> 
> most (if not all) modern BIOS's have an "Init {AGP/PCI} display first"
> option. You may need to fiddle with that.

Of course, but should't the AGP bios report itself during initialization 
even when 'Init PCI display first' is set, or is the legacy BIOS 
completely ignored on the secondary adapter?

>  > X also refuses to detect the Geforce card. 
>  > Is it possible that the new console layer or the new agp gart code or 
>  > whatever in 2.5.70 poked in the wrong registers and replaced the BIOS 
>  > flash rom on the GeForce with garbage?
> 
> Extremely unlikely. WRT agpgart, it pokes chipset registers, not
> graphic card registers.
> 
> It may even be that the two cards you have won't play together.
> Try them both _independantly_ before jumping to conclusions about
> wiped BIOSes etc.

The PCI card was installed afterwards to be able to use the computer at 
all since it now refuses to boot with the geforce card. I've tried to 
use the PCI card as the primary card and only use the geforce card with 
X to see if it'd work that way (which it didn't).

	/ Jakob Kemi

Re: 2.5.70 damaged my nvidia card?

[David Ford]

I have an ATI card that went nuts a couple years ago, ~4 months old, 
fizzled on boot.  Doesn't work in text mode at all, works fine in 
graphics mode however.  I have an old ISA card stuck in the machine so 
the machine will boot.  The motherboard doesn't recognize the AGP card 
without another video card installed.  This is the only motherboard that 
I can get it to work on.  The card simply doesn't work at all on any 
other m/board.

Good thing I run Linux, I don't think I'd have this option under winblows ;)

David

Dave Jones wrote:

>On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 03:05:49PM +0200, Jakob Kemi wrote:
>
> > When I run the box with an old PCI card as my primary adapter and the 
> > AGP geforce card as secondary the Geforce card doesnt seem to run it's 
> > VGA BIOS (no boot message).
>
>most (if not all) modern BIOS's have an "Init {AGP/PCI} display first"
>option. You may need to fiddle with that.
> 
> > X also refuses to detect the Geforce card. 
> > Is it possible that the new console layer or the new agp gart code or 
> > whatever in 2.5.70 poked in the wrong registers and replaced the BIOS 
> > flash rom on the GeForce with garbage?
>
>Extremely unlikely. WRT agpgart, it pokes chipset registers, not
>graphic card registers.
>
>It may even be that the two cards you have won't play together.
>Try them both _independantly_ before jumping to conclusions about
>wiped BIOSes etc.
>
>		Dave
>  
>