tlug: Re: XF86config for Matrox cards

[Dennis McMurchy <denismcm@example.com>]

On Sun, 16 Nov 1997, Alan B. Stone wrote:

> Here's mine.  I didn't do anything special, since when I loaded
> RedHat it pokes in all the values for me.  But, may be this will help
> anyway.  Take it easy.

  Thanks very much, Alan.  I really appreciate the swift response.
Unfortunately this didn't help me to get X running on the Mystique
card, but it did help to pinpoint a serious problem I will have to deal
with in the future: the XF86_SVGA XServer is detecting the onboard
video adapter rather than the new Mystique card that is actually 
delivering the video to the monitor.    

  This problem is mentioned in the documentation for the Matrox support:
 
	What do I do if I have an existing disabled display adapter and
	the SVGA server detects that and not the Matrox adapter?  

	I'm afraid there's only one solution - you need to compile your
	own Xserver with just the Matrox stuff compiled in. It's not too
	hard, but you need about 400 MB of disk space, and a little help
	to get going. The next version will not suffer from this so much
	due to a XFree86 architecture change on most of our supported
	platforms.  

  That's where things seems to be with my system.  There is a hardware 
jumper that I could try setting, I suppose.  It's only supposed to be
used only if the BIOS doesn't automatically see the new video adapter
card, though, and I would have to take everything but the motherboard
out of the case just get at it (truly wonderful engineering in this AST
desktop).  It's OK, though, I've got a perfectly good X setup running
on the built-in video, so there's no hurry to solve these problems and
I will eventually.   

  Has anyone out there compiled their own Xserver?  What's the "little
help to get going" that I will need?

  Another point:  looking at your XF86Config, Alan, I see no reference
anywhere to any Matrox card.  Although the XServer can do a lot of
auto-detecting, you may not actually be using the accelerated features
of your card.  You might want to look at /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc/README.MGA
and then run /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86Setup, just to be sure.   I'd be interested
to see the resulting XF86Config.

  Cheers,

Dennis McMurchy, 
Sointula, B.C. / Tojinmachi, Fukuoka
Canada           Japan


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