Re: DualScreen, 2 cards, AGP and PCI, have to boot from PCI?

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Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 23:43:45 GMT

On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:20:24 +0200, Dieter Soltau wrote:

> Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

Dieter, Ich denke, daß Floyd ein wenig verwechselt wird.

The virtual console driver uses the VGA controller setup via BIOS to
display your virtual terminals. As far as I can see, you have only two
options:

a) set your BIOS to use the AGP card for primary video controller.
b) modify the virtual console driver to use non-BIOS VGA (your AGP card).

I don't think X setup has anything at all to do with what you want except
that you need to be able to see the PCI card when you have set the AGP
card as your primary video controller in BIOS.

>
>> First Step: Take the PCI card out of the machine. Set the BIOS to init
>> the AGP card. Boot to single user, or to multiuser without X running,
>> and see if you get what you expect from a single monitor system. (If
>> not, fix whatever it doesn't do before proceeding.) Then try running
>> X, and configure it to work correctly with that video card and monitor.
> yes, that works. i have already been there.

Good, I would recommend the same procedure so far.

>
>> Second Step: Put the PCI card into the machine and connect a
>> monitor to it. Do *not* change the BIOS. Boot to single user
>> or to multiuser without X running. See which monitor Linux
>> uses.
> it uses the AGP and i see nothing on the PCI card.
>
>> BusID "PCI:00:14:00"
>> BusID "PCI:00:13:00"
>
> i have set this, except one card ist AGP here (1:0:0 and the pci 0:b:0).
>

At this point you have me a little bit confused. Let me summarize what I
think you are saying:

Scenario 1: AGP is set for VGA in BIOS.
lspci shows only AGP card at 1:0.0

Scenario 2: PCI is set for VGA in BIOS.
lspci shows both AGP card at 1:0.0
             and PCI card at 0:11.0

You may want to try moving the PCI card to a different slot. It
appears to affect the way the cards are interpreted when scanned
by the BIOS.

http://grafi.ii.pw.edu.pl/gbm/matrox/pciagp.html

>
> yes, all of this works fine. but my ttys are on the monitor connected to
> the pci card. i dont think i can change this, because X has nothing to
> do with those screens. thats why i wanted to boot from my AGP, but then
> the PCI card is not initialized at all.

You're absolutely correct. You must boot from AGP if you want the virtual
consoles on the AGP device. (see where screen_info boot parameters
are setup and passed to kernel - linux-2.6.8/arch/i386/boot/video.S).

Perhaps you can play around with pcitweak(1) and scanpci(1). These
utility functions allow you to scan and to change, tweak, the settings
for PCI devices. Maybe you can get your system to "see" the PCI card when
the AGP is set to be the primary display in BIOS.

I think your only other option is to change the virtual console code in
the kernel.

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