Video card working slowly - marriage problems

giulio_buccini · February 16, 2010, 4:07pm

Hello to everybody,

I have a problem: I’m tired to repair the Windows-PC of my wife every couple of week 'cause she is a professional virus-collector. So I stated “I will install linux for you!”. And she told me: “yes but with your - wonderful - linux I cannot see my movies” (e.g. “Love actually”, “I love huckbess”, and all of that kind of movies that woman adores…) :sarcastic:

I must admit… she’s right. I’ve just updated from openSuse 11.1 to 11.2 but problems with video still remains. It is impossible to see a movie at full screen 'cause of the frustrating slow video refresh.

My options are:

upgrade from Wife 1.0 to Wife 2.0 (quite expensive option);
solve video card problems (more cheaper!).

I have an AGP 128Mb - S3 board running the VIA K8M890CE [Chrome 9] chipset (see details below). I have updated codecs too.
After infinite googling I have returned back to this forum with no infos. I have checked istructions at VIA - openSUSE but the post seems very old (I have openSUSE 11.2) and the post reports what follows: This chapter is relevant for VIA CLE266 and CN400 graphics (???).

After that, I have installed the xorg-x11-driver-video-chrome9 as reported by the user named “tosiara” in this thread Via Chrome9 resolution problem - openSUSE Forums (obviously, I have switched to right repository for openSUSE 11.2). Nevertheless, I have not understood these istructions:

init 3
sax2 -r 0:chrome9

I must type them from the terminal? They will activate hardware acceleration? Anyway, I have not typed them; as result, after restarting the machine, now MPlayer and Banshee doesn’t works (great! :sarcastic:). I can see video only with the Totem player (but video is still slow…)

Here I will list my card’s data and the xorg.con file.

Somebody can help me?

VIDEO CARD:

PCI(AGP) 100.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)
[Created at pci.318]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_1106_3230
Unique ID: VCu0.QX54AGQKWeE
Parent ID: vSkL.CP+qXDDqow8
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0
SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.0
Hardware Class: graphics card
Model: “VIA K8M890CE/K8N890CE [Chrome 9]”
Vendor: pci 0x1106 “VIA Technologies, Inc.”
Device: pci 0x3230 “K8M890CE/K8N890CE [Chrome 9]”
SubVendor: pci 0x1043 “ASUSTeK Computer Inc.”
SubDevice: pci 0x81b5
Revision: 0x11
Memory Range: 0xc0000000-0xcfffffff (rw,prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0xfd000000-0xfdffffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0xfeaf0000-0xfeafffff (ro,prefetchable,disabled)
IRQ: 11 (no events)
I/O Ports: 0x3c0-0x3df (rw)
Module Alias: “pci:v00001106d00003230sv00001043sd000081B5bc03sc00i00”
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #21 (PCI bridge)

XORG.CONF

/…/

SaX generated X11 config file

Created on: 2009-07-13T16:15:11+0200.

Version: 8.1

Contact: Marcus Schaefer <sax@suse.de>, 2005

Contact: SaX-User list <https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/sax-users>

Automatically generated by [ISaX] (8.1)

PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE!

Section “Files”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/local”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/Type1”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/URW”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/Speedo”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/PEX”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/latin2/misc:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/latin2/75dpi:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/latin2/100dpi:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/latin2/Type1”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/latin7/75dpi:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/baekmuk:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/japanese:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/kwintv”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/truetype”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/uni:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/CID”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/ucs/misc:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/ucs/75dpi:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/ucs/100dpi:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/hellas/misc:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/hellas/75dpi:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/hellas/100dpi:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/hellas/Type1”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/misc/sgi:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/xtest”
FontPath “/opt/kde3/share/fonts”
InputDevices “/dev/gpmdata”
InputDevices “/dev/input/mice”
EndSection

Section “ServerFlags”

Uncomment the following option to reenable kbd/mouse driver input sections.

Otherwise evdev driver is used.

#Option “AutoAddDevices” “off”
Option “AllowMouseOpenFail” “on”
Option “ZapWarning” “on”
EndSection

Section “Module”
Load “glx”
Load “dbe”
Load “extmod”
Load “dri”
Load “freetype”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Driver “kbd”
Identifier “Keyboard[0]”
Option “Protocol” “Standard”
Option “XkbLayout” “it”
Option “XkbModel” “microsoftpro”
Option “XkbRules” “xfree86”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Driver “mouse”
Identifier “Mouse[1]”
Option “Buttons” “9”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/mice”
Option “Name” “ImExPS/2 Logitech Explorer Mouse”
Option “Protocol” “explorerps/2”
Option “Vendor” “Sysp”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Option “CalcAlgorithm” “XServerPool”
DisplaySize 376 301
HorizSync 30-81
Identifier “Monitor[0]”
ModelName “NEC LCD93V”
Option “DPMS”
Option “PreferredMode” “1280x960”
VendorName “NEC”
VertRefresh 43-75
UseModes “Modes[0]”
EndSection

Section “Modes”
Identifier “Modes[0]”
Modeline “1280x1024” 108.00 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +HSync +VSync
EndSection

Section “Screen”
SubSection “Display”
Depth 15
Modes “default”
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 16
Modes “default”
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “default”
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 8
Modes “default”
EndSubSection
Device “Device[0]”
Identifier “Screen[0]”
Monitor “Monitor[0]”
EndSection

Section “Device”
BoardName “Framebuffer Graphics”
Driver “fbdev”
Identifier “Device[0]”
Screen 0
VendorName “VESA”
EndSection

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Layout[all]”
InputDevice “Keyboard[0]” “CoreKeyboard”
InputDevice “Mouse[1]” “CorePointer”
Option “Clone” “off”
Option “Xinerama” “off”
Screen “Screen[0]”
EndSection

Section “DRI”
Group “video”
Mode 0660
EndSection

Section “Extensions”
EndSection

please_try_again · February 16, 2010, 4:48pm

It would probably be easier to get a cheap Nvidia GeForce AGP card if it sounds reasonable to you.

oldcpu · February 16, 2010, 5:11pm

Quite expensive, and its possible Wife 2.0 is no where near as loveable as Wife 1.0.

In my case I’m still with Wife 1.0 and I confess I consider myself lucky

I think this is the approach.

I like the inexpensive nVidia card option recommended by please_try_again. Its inexpensive, and cost far less than the hair tonic to restore that you might pull out while trying to configure your chrome driver.

… However, if you have either (1) lots of hair, or (2) no hair at all and hence nothing to lose, or (3) are interested in learning, you could try to follow the horrible guidance I tried to give here: Via Chrome9 resolution problem - openSUSE Forums

Good luck!

Also Best wishes to you and wife-1.0. !!

giulio_buccini · February 16, 2010, 8:28pm

Hello oldcpu, I have a lot of hair (even if many of them are grey… :))

I will try to configure the graphic card as suggested by Tosiara in his post, but using your syntax (as reported in your reply).

Honestly speaking, I would mantain my wife-version 1.0 too, it has a good GUI interface, good application logic and recently I have upgraded it with new-shoes.10.0, new-apartment.2.0 and new-parfum.30.0 libs.
Sincerely, I’m tired of uninstalling and reinstalling wife-tools, it is a so complicated process… and there is no official support on openSUSE… rotfl!

I think that all people making OS are aiming to the wrong target. If someone in the world will invent a distribution of linux tailored for woman only (and their way of thinking) I think he will get an incredible success!

oldcpu · February 16, 2010, 9:07pm

His syntax may be better. I confess, I have never heard of a chrome9 driver (by that exact syntax). So maybe by using Tosiara’s syntax you end up with the ‘via’ driver. In which case if the driver is 'via" then my ‘sax2 -r -m 0=chrome9’ command instead should be ‘sax2 -r -m 0=via’

Also be very careful what driver version you grab. I had been assuming you were using openSUSE-11.2, but if it is 11.0 then you need different rpm versions.

As noted, this is far easier with a commonly supported nvidia graphic hardware. Typically that “just works” as opposed to this messing around. I would NEVER waste my time with a via/chrome driver on my PCs. Never.

giulio_buccini · February 16, 2010, 9:24pm

If I will fail I will buy a new (but cheap) nVidia card as suggested. Where I can find instructions to install? In the same post that you have reported to me few posts above on this thread?