dual head radeon -- again

[Mike A. Harris]

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 hansel at hansel.mnstate.edu wrote:

>I've found many archived emails in many places about this problem with no
>general solution and nothing that helps me now.
>
>This is the 3d OS install in about 8 months on this machine and the 3d
>struggle to get the dual head display working properly.  This is a fedora
>x86_64 install with XFree86 rpm=4.3.0-55.

I presume "3d" above means "third" and not really "3D" as in 3D 
graphics, because dualhead and 3D acceleration are incompatible 
with each other.


>This system is a DP Tyan MB with a ATI Rage on the MB and an ATI
>radeon 7500 PCI card -- total 3 video outputs. I want to use the

You should be aware that PCI Radeon hardware is only supported 
experimentally.  Some PCI Radeon models work on some motherboards 
on some architectures, and some do not work.  There's no known 
pattern of what works or doesn't work yet, which is why it is 
experimental only status.  Also, even if one can get 2D to work 
on PCI Radeon, 3D is even more experimental, and may not work at 
all, although it does work also for some people.

>radeon card only with two monitors and ignore the MB VGA. The
>old configuration files do not work and the RH configuration
>scripts, though much improved, don't get the job done. I
>consistently get a cloned display -- every kestroke doubled
>(without doubling the pleasure).

If you get a cloned display, you might be able to get around that
by reading the "radeon"  manpage and trying the MonitorLayout 
option documented there.  That generally solves all problems 
related to clone-mode.  Note that this is something that must be 
done by hand right now and is not autodetectable currently, which 
is why the config tools do not put the MonitorLayout option in 
place when it is needed - there is no way for the config tool to 
know wether it is needed or not.  Just something that must be 
manually configured by hand for now.


>X errors complain that the ATI Rage is undefined.  That is, X
>finds the controller at PCI 3:6:0 with no corresponding device
>definition in the X86Config file (exactly what I intend!). Then
>it gives me the cloned display. When I define the device --
>without any screen assigned to it, it just screws up the screen
>resolution on a nicely cloned display.

Disable the onboard video in your BIOS, or via a jumper on the 
motherboard and th Rage problem should go away.


>As helpful as the man pages are, I'm at a bit of a loss what to
>do. I think the Tyan MB is common among Opteron users. Any help
>out there? I'm anxious to get back to writing before my
>so-called Spring Break ends!

Hopefully my above info is helpful and can get you up and 
running.

Good luck!
TTYL


-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat