I'm trying to use KnoppMyth with a Jetway P4MDPT motherboard, which has onboard video (VIA P4M266 ProSavageDDR). When Linux boots up, I get a black screen. Using the keyboard or mouse has no effect. When I hit Ctrl-Alt-F1, I see the command prompt and am able to log in.

I'm guessing that I'm hitting a problem with my video drivers. From reading the docs, I see a lot of nVidia-related info. Is an nVidia graphics card required for KnoppMyth, or can I use my on-board video? Can someone point me to a primer on installing video drivers for Linux/KnoppMyth?

Thanks in advance,

Boris

no a nvidia board is not required, the just have the best linux support, particularly for tv-out. the via should work fine to a monitor. you may want to edit the XF86Config-4 file and change the driver to vesa and see if that works. it does for most cards.

Thanks, that worked. I have video capture running now with the vesa driver, but it's not too zippy. I'm getting about 2-4 frames per second for live TV. I can't tell whether the problem is that I'm not using native video driver or that my CPU is too slow.

I'm guessing that it's the video driver, because it looks like each frame is redrawing from top to bottom several times per second. I'm using a Celeron 2.5GHz chip. This should be fast enough to watch live TV, shouldn't it?

I poked around for info on the ProSavageDDR, and it looks like Linux support is dicy. So I'll probably just break down and get a GeForce4 card, since I'll eventually need it anyway for TV out.

Boris

I think I had a similar problem.
I left the autodetected drivers 'savage' - which is correct, but for some reason it was using a vert or horiz refresh that was out of range for my monitor. (which is strange, since the /var/log/XFree86.0.log file was showing that the monitor DDC detection was giving the right name/model and modes).
Anyways, I just edited the XF86Config-4 file to remove the hightest resolution setting (which was 1280x1024).
(This machine is going to be my back-end - so I don't care about the resolution).
If you're using this machine as a font-end too - you probably just want a 800x600 mode in there.

I think I've got a similar problem too, I have the same symptoms. I've used the Auto Install option and everything looked ok up to the reboot. Then it starts booting and is ok until the screen goes black. The last thing I see is "Starting Gnome Display Manager: gdm".

My motherboard doesn't have on board video, I have a 3Dfx Voodoo 3 card, and also a PVR-350 in the box.

I'm quite familiar with Linux in general, but not so much with X windows. I got to the console with Ctrl-Alt-F1 and based on the posts above I checked /var/log/XFree86.0.log. It looks like it found my Voodoo card and setup the TDFX driver for it.

I tried commenting out all the video modes above 800x600 in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, but that didn't help.

Any advise as to what to try next? Thanks.

if you are outputing to a tv then you need to change your refresh rates, because a tv cannot handle the ones in there by default.

Right now I'm working with a monitor hooked up to the video card, and the tv hooked up to the SVideo output on the PVR-350. When at the boot: prompt for the installer, I did not enter "tv", so I don't think I deliberately told it to use tv out yet. (The tv doesn't show anything either.) I figured I would try to get things working on the monitor first and figure out how to enble tv out afterwards.

Problem Solved! I'm posting for benefit of others. When the boot prompt came up, I ended up using params for a frame buffer and to not use apic. The install went just fine with these options.

boot: fb800x600 noapic

I read somewhere else that the noapic option helps if you happen to have a VIA chipset.

VIA on board video with Northbridge PM266 requires that you edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 with this line in the driver section. Option "NoUseBios" use the savage driver not vesa. You should have full use of your on board video. This is what mine looks like.

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "savage"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "S3 ProSavage KM133"
Option "NoUseBios"
EndSection