I have an idea of a ‘hack’ you could try. If this fails, remove the edits.
Change your /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf file to:
Section “Device”
Identifier “Default Device”
#Driver “radeon”
Identifier “Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA 1064SG Mystique]”
Driver “mga”
BusID “PCI:0:1:6:0”
Option “ShadowFB” “true”
Option “OldDmaInit” “True”
Required magic for radeon/radeonhd drivers; output name
(here: “DVI-0”) can be figured out via ‘xrandr -q’
#Option “monitor-DVI-0” “Default Monitor”
EndSection
I’m guessing at a lot of things. You may need to remove that Identifier “Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA 1064SG Mystique]” line.
I may also have the BusID wrong. It may not be BusID “PCI:0:1:6:0” but mayu be something else, ie BusID “PCI:1:6:0” or BusID “PCI:0:1:6” . I tried to guess the BusID from here: 242.673] X.Org X Server - NanaLisa’s Xorg.0.log - mJJcWS13 - Pastebin.com](http://pastebin.com/mJJcWS13) but I don’t really know what I’m doing …
… and instead of “mga” for the driver you could try “mga1064sg” or some combination of the above.
Its a lot of time and effort to hack … it may not help … and in the end finding an inexpensive more compatible graphic card may be a better approach.
Edit: if you type “man mga” you will find a description of what ShadowFB and OldDmaInit do. Reading them suggested to me that they might be an idea to try.
Same problem with totally different hardware: ATI/AMD Radeon HD 4650, Monitor Siemens-Nixdorf 1702, capable Resolution up to 1600x 1200, driver radeonhd - installed by opensuse 11.3 - sets resolution to 1024x768, no chance to change the Monitor to my favourite resolution. It would be helpful, to tell suse what hardware is connected. But I didn’t find a solution. Installing the propriate ATI driver results in an unoperable GDI: Nothing works. Driver fglrx is loaded, but after a few secondt Display-Manager fails, to get amything working I have to use the “Magic Keys” and restart to a text shell. If I find a solution, I will post it. But to get rid of the proprietary driver I had to re-install the complete system. No Idea what happens to the system if the ATI/AMD Catalyst-Driver 10.7 is installed. I am just checking it out. But I would be pleased to get some help.
Yes, that’s what I am thinking, too. I am not that good in hacking Linux after having it installed just for 3 days now. But thanks a lot for trying to help me out here.
Just so I don’t get directly into the next trouble…
what specification should the ‘new’ graphics card have?
is there a prefereable chip to avoid driver problems?
obviously it should be able to serve the resolution of my monitor (1280*1024@75Hz)
The “recognition of your monitor” problem was my assessment, … but I note deano_ferrai knows significantly more than I about this, and I would defer to his judgement here that the monitor recognition is ok.
For a desktop PC, I tend to recommend nVidia cards because nVidia driver support tends to be better. (I have a different recommendation for laptops). With nVidia one also has a wider driver selection possible, with in addition to FBDEV and VESA, one also has the older ‘nv’, the newer ‘nouveau’, and the proprietary ‘nvidia’.
I suspect your PC is very old, probably with a very old power supply, hence you need to find a card that draws very little power. You need to check to see if your PC has an AGP slot (PCI-e, which is NOT PCI, would be even better).
I own an Asus A7N8X Deluxe. It works well. My A7N8X Deluxe has a PCI and AGP but no PCI-e bus.
A lot depends on your power-supply. What is the rating of the new ?
The best approach is likely to buy an AGP card.
I took an unusual route and I went for a nvidia PCI graphic card with vdpau support, which means poorer 3D performance, and overall slower desktop performance, BUT superior HD video playback.
It depends.
For the PCI approach I adopted, one needs as much memory as possible. My PCI nVidia 8400GS has something like 812MB of RAM ?? 1GB or 1.5G would have been better, the reason being the PCI bus is so limited in bandwidth, one does not want to have to transfer data back and forth on the bus, and hence it is desireable the card has as much as possible of its own memory.
An AGP bus has a wider/faster bandwidth than PCI. Hence its likely a nVidia AGP card approach is what you will adopt, in which case 512MB or 256MB or even 128MB of RAM should work (of course you won’t be able to play back HD video). But with a nVidia AGP card your overall graphics will be faster.
I can have a TNT2 Ultra with 32MB for 5€. I guess that’s enough for what I tend to do with this PC, which is all rather text based. Not much of graphics, no video. Remember, my actual graphics card had 8MB VRAM on PCI bus.
Of course the motherboard on your PC is capable of running with a card much more capable than the TNT2 Ultra. Its hard, thou, to dispute a 5€ price !
I note NVIDIA DRIVERS 71.86.14 Certified which indicates there is still nVidia propriatary driver support (in the 71.86.14 driver) with last update on 2010.08.04. An updated graphic driver was necessary to work with the new Xorg-1.8.0 and the new 2.6.34 kernel. If one clicks on the supported products link on that page one can see it is supported by nVidia. But note this is legacy hardware, so there is a risk that proprietary driver support will be dropped in the near future.
Keep in mind that nVidia have already stated they will NOT provide support any more in the ‘nv’ driver. The open Source community is moving toward the ‘nouveau’ driver, and the ‘nouveau’ driver may not work with the TNT2 Ultra.
Maybe try surfing on it to see what you can learn. … I have no doubt it can be made to work, but its not all that common any more.
But the bottom line - its hard to dispute a 5€ price !
On my Asus A7N8X Deluxe I had a 128MB nVidia FX5200 AGP card which I replaced with a PCI nVidia 8400GS. With the FX5200 I had 3D, special desktop effects, etc …
In fact, because of the AGP bus, the FX5200 had super graphic peformance over the PCI 8400GS, EXCEPT for play back of high definition video files. The FX5200 can not play back such files, but the 8400GS with applications that use vdpau ‘standard’ can play back High Definition videos. (vdpau allows the offloading of the decoding of the video from the mother CPU to the graphic card’s GPU). BUT the 8400GS was expensive ! Expensive for less performance (except for HD video playback).
The FX5200 should have signicantly superior performance over the TNT2 Ultra (although that may not be a criteria for you).
BUT I was looking at the price for FX5200 AGP cards: Geizhals.at EU.search and at 25€ price they are rather expensive compared to the 5€ price you quoted for a TNT2 Ultra. IMHO its worth the 5€ price (and the associated fun) to try a TNT2 Ultra - but then again I enjoy playing with PCs so my assessment may be a bit biased.
That’s what I think, too. I’ll give it a try.
And before investing ‘a lot of money’ in a high-end graphics card, I’ll have to start thinking about a new motherboard, a new monitor, even a completely new PC system… which will be in question in the next year(s) anyway.
Thanks a lot for all your help, I learned a lot and felt very supported in my first steps.
I’ll come back to let you know if I’m happy with my interim solution.
But thanks a lot for trying to help me out here.