[NTLUG:Discuss] Video Help Needed

[George Lass]

--- On Thu, 7/8/10, Preston Hagar <prestonh at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Preston Hagar <prestonh at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] Video Help Needed
> To: "NTLUG Discussion List" <discuss at ntlug.org>
> Date: Thursday, July 8, 2010, 11:45 AM
> On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 10:21 AM,
> George Lass <george.lass at sbcglobal.net>
> wrote:
> > I have a 4 year old Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop with a
> slightly broken nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GS video card. By
> slightly broken I mean that if I try to use the "standard"
> nVidia driver that comes with Ubuntu (10.04) it won't
> display anything.  However if I boot in failsafe mode
> (which uses the frame buffer driver for Xwindows) the
> display works OK.  There are 2 things that I can't do with
> the frame buffer driver that I would like to be able to do
> though:
> >
> > 1) change the screen resolution
> > 2) use the vga output to a second monitor
> >
> >
> > If anyone knows how to do this using the fb driver
> please let me know.  I have tried the obvious things like
> setting up multiple Screen/Monitor/Device sections and
> Display Modes in xorg.conf, but this doesn't seem to work.
>  The fb driver crashes the second time it is loaded, and
> even when only one Screen is defined, it complains that the
> all Modes but the probed virtual mode are invalid due to
> "test failed".
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > George
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> >
> 
> By "standard" do you mean truly "standard" like the one
> that is put in
> by the installer, or the restricted NVIDIA binary?  In
> general, I have
> found the "restricted" NVIDIA binary to work much better
> than any of
> the reverse engineering replacements, especially with
> things like
> dual-monitor support.  To get the restricted driver,
> Go to "Ubuntu
> Software Center", Edit->Software Sources, and make sure
> "Proprietary
> drivers for devices (restricted) is checked" , then just
> search for
> nvidia.  You will find several listed (the version
> 185, 173, 96).  The
> one that works best will depend on your card and you might
> need to try
> each one, one by one, until you find the best one.  I
> actually ended
> up not using any of those three and use the version 190.42
> downloaded
> from the NVIDIA site.  It is kind of a pain with the
> drivers, but when
> you figure out the best one for your card, then you will be
> set from
> then on.
> 
> Preston
> 
> _______________________________________________
> http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> 

I have tried the "nv" driver (The one put in by the installer)
as well as the "nvidia" drivers (The restricted ones)
and have not had any "luck" with anything but the "fb" and "vesa" drivers.  One thing that I didn't mention is that there are visible artifacts even on the Dell bios splash screen, so I'm very convinced this laptop has a bad video card.  I'm also guessing that the use of any of the nVidia specific drivers must touch the broken part of the card, while the more generic fb & vesa drivers do not.  As it stands right now, the only thing that I haven't gotten to work using the vesa driver is a secondary display, and I'll need to try the hint about plugging in the other display before power up to see if that helps.  


Thanks,
George