could use help debugging black screen on RS780 (xf86-video-ati-6.13.0, radeon)

[Dave Airlie]

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 3:28 PM, Larry Doolittle <larry at doolittle.boa.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 04, 2010 at 06:09:43AM -0700, Larry Doolittle wrote:
>> The motherboard is a Biostar TA790GX XE, conveniently listed
>> at Newegg as item N82E16813138140.  The monitor (LCD panel)
>> worked recently at 2048x1152 driven with a 10-year-old Matrox
>> and the same VGA cable.  It's a Samsung model 2343BWX.
>>
>> I have started downloading the files to install the i686 version
>> of Debian Squeeze, instead of the amd64 version, just in case
>> I have run into a word-length bug.  I should have a chance to
>> try that this weekend.
>
> It was a long and winding path, but I think there's a short
> answer:  someone disabled the traditional herringbone start
> pattern for the X server, so all my tests just starting X
> (no clients) gave a black screen -- not even the stylized
> "X" cursor I have known for literally 17 years.  How am I
> supposed to know the server is running?
>
> When I finally ssh in and "DISPLAY=:0 xclock -geom +100+100",
> I see the server works fine.  Install a few clients, and the
> system works fine!  Well, still some rough edges, but I'll
> have to deal with those another day.  Unless someone can
> explain why X no longer starts with a herringbone, or show
> how to re-enable it, I consider this thread closed.
>
> Sorry for the noise -- trust me, I went through many hours of
> effort before discovering the (lack of) problem.

X -retro

brings back the whole hash + cursor.

Dave.