Hi!
We have received our long-awaited G450PCI cards, and I immediately
tried to replace with them old Milleniums, which worked together with
G450AGP (4 heads per computer). This finally worked, but not immediately,
and some things are plainly strange.
Below is my experience of making the configuration work, which can
be useful to others. And I'll be very grateful for any comments,
corrections, or hints.
Hardware: ASUS P3B-F, PIII-800, 1GB RAM;
G450AGP 32M SDRAM, G450PCI 16M SDRAM in slot 5 and a second unused G450PCI
in slot 4.
2 Nokia 447PRO (30-96KHz, 50-150Hz) + 2 EIZO FlexScan T561 (30-96KHz,
50-160Hz).
Software: RedHat 7.1 (kernel 2.4.2) with XFree86 4.0.3, Matrox
drivers from ftp.matrox.com/..../beta_1_3_0/. Probably in some aspects
4.1 will work better, but most bugs seem to be in Matrox drivers. I've
also tried 4.0.3's mga_drv.o, but this worked worse than Matrox's.
XF86Config was generated with X -configure and later hand-tuned.
Videomode used was 1152x864@90Hz for all heads.
So, the problems:
0. Non-primary card doesn't work without HAL module (as it should,
according to documentation). Monitor on its 1st head stays in suspend
(VFreq=0, HFreq=0), while XFree86.0.log shows that it is being queried and
DDC data is correctly read; monitor on 2nd head is turned on but shows
garbage (not even a checkerboard). So, everything below was done with
mga_hal_drv.o.
1. When AGP is non-primary, one has to specify VideoRam for it --
otherwise the driver allocates 1M per head. PCI card doesn't have this
problem.
2. Option "MGASDRAM" has to be specified for *both* heads, despite the
fact that it is one physical device (however, VideoRam has effect only
when specified in "Screen 0" Device). That's definitely a driver bug.
3. Non-primary card doesn't switch off 2nd head when terminating or
switching to console -- the monitor remains displaying the picture.
4. The server starts *very* slowly -- as if it spends ~5seconds to boot
each head (this is a long-known issue, which is absent with XFree driver
(or is it absent without HAL?)).
5. When AGP is non-primary and VideoRam >=16384 is specified, if "dri" is
loaded, machine hangs cold (only Alt+PrtSc+B works). Very strange -- I'd
expect this behaviour with *little* memory, not with >=...
Of course, not all possible cases were tested (there are too many
parameters). And option "Int10" wasn't tested (it *was* tested with DRI,
and X only half-loaded and hanged forever until killed).
#3 and #4 are simply irritating and aren't very serious, #5 would
probably disappear with 4.1 (AFAIR, some DRI memory management problems
were fixed there). #1 and #2 are cosmetic (however #1 is bad too, why
can't memory size be determined?). #0 is serious, since overlay isn't
supported with HAL.
To repeat, I hope this info will be useful to other people and
will help Matrox, and I'll be very thankful for any comments.
(Hey, Matrox, wanna hire me as a beta-tester? ;-)
_________________________________________
Dmitry Yu. Bolkhovityanov
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics
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