Configuring FireMV 2400

[Bill Conner]

On Jan 29, 2010, at 11:03 AM, Alex Deucher wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 10:28 AM, Bill Conner <bconner at mac.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On Jan 21, 2010, at 7:39 PM, Timothy S. Nelson wrote:
>> 
>>> On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Bill Conner wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I've been fighting with get a ATI FireMV 2400 PCIE for several days now and
>>>> I've reached a dead end. I was hoping someone has already resolved my issue
>>>> or can point me in the right direction.
>>> 
>>>      I have a 2400 MV with only two working heads.  I've been following the
>>> issue moderately closely.  However, I'm no expert on xorg in general.
>>> 
>>>> Environment details
>>>> Ubuntu 9.10
>>>> 2.6.31-18-generic
>>>> xorg-server 2:1.6.4-2ubuntu4.1
>>>> 
>>>> The 2400 is a quad-head board with two M24 chips appearing on separate PCI
>>>> slots. In my case 0:5:0:0(primary) and 0:6:0:0
>>>> 
>>>> The server has no issue in auto detect mode with the primary M24 and it's
>>>> dual heads perfectly. The problem is getting the server to recognize the
>>>> second M24. It sees the card but it fails to load:
>>> 
>>>      The problem is, when xorg was refactored to use/create libpciaccess,
>>> no-one was testing for support of multiple graphics chips, and it got broken
>>> along the way.  This has now been fixed, but only in version 1.7.  You will
>>> need to upgrade to version 1.7 before it will work.
>>> 
>>>      I haven't personally gotten around to installing 1.7 myself.  I plan
>>> to do this in May.  I'm on Fedora 11, and I'd have to upgrade to Fedora 12 (or
>>> go through a lot of hassles recompiling half the stuff on my system).  I'm
>>> waiting for F13.  A quick skim of ubuntu-related information reveals that
>>> you're on Karmic, which is the latest release.  I was unable to determine what
>>> version of xorg is going to be used in Lucid.  That's the advantage of Fedora;
>>> it's already had an xorg 1.7-using version out for months.  It seems to me
>>> your options are:
>>> 1.    Stick with what you have as dual-head
>>> 2.    Recompile xorg yourself, which I regard as a vast undertaking (but I'm
>>>      no xorg expert)
>>> 3.    Start using Fedora, the most up-to-date distro around ;)
>>> 
>>>      Of course, I could've missed another option there.
>>> 
>>>      Note, also, that I don't promise that xorg 1.7 will work, but I do
>>> know that if you ask questions here, the experts will say "upgrade to 1.7".
>>> 
>>>      HTH,
>>> 
>> 
>>   Thanks for the info. You're right the newer versions of xorg have the multihead support fixed (sort of).
>> I installed Ubuntu 10 alpha 2. Only two screens came up on auto configure but Xorg -configure generated a working xorg.conf with both chips.
>> 
>> Now a new issue has appeared. The two heads on the primary interface flash periodically. I remember reading another post somewhere about this issue.
> 
> Might be underflow to the display controller.  Does:
> Option "DisplayPriority" "HIGH"
> in the device section(s) of your config help?
> 
> Alex

I tried the DisplayPriority but it didn't resolve the issue. I'm thinking it's a ubuntu issue. I noticed the filemanager is attempting to load over and over again. Each time the cursor changes to a wait cursor and the desktop flashes. When the password box is displayed (black desktop) the screen is not flashing. Hopefully this will be addressed in alpha 3.

-Bill