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PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:02 pm 
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Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:53 pm
Posts: 6
This post is the other side of my tier-one lineup.
Quote:
Hardware:
Asus P4P800 Deluxe - all the usual stuff, onboard sound, usb, etc
Pentium 4 1.6a at 2.1Ghz
1.5GB of RAM until one of the other boxes needs some
Seagate 80GB IDE harddrive
Random, Unknown CDRW (untested so far)
GeForce 2 MX400 (Tier 2)
Sony 27" Trinitron (NTSC-M)
Haupauge 350 w/ remote (remote is tier 2)
Microsoft Sidewinder USB gamepad
Generic keyboard
Extremely faulty MS 5-button mouse

Everything on the list acted exactly as expected (or better) except the graphics card and remote. I did do a set of modprobes on the gamepad before starting xmame, but not sure ifthey were necessary.
Gamepad worked perfectly with ZSNES and MAME frontend configuration screens, Haven't tried any of the other emulators.

Using an NTSC-M signal over composite.

For the record, this was just a test. Real hardware for the box is in the works. For more info on the GeForce 2 issues, check tier 2 posts.


The Haupauge Remote is only Tier 2 because it worked when I selected the grey haupauge remote, but some of the button mappings are off and I need to rework them from LIRC.

The GF2 MX400 was a PITA. basically I took bits from posts and various sites and a little bit of guessing and put it together to figure out what the deal was.

There are two things that need to be modified. I thought there were three but I can't remember the third now (sorry, tired and coming down with something)
1) In my case the card was pushing PAL to my NTSC set. rather than look for a jumper on the card (which I only just remembered I need to look for) I used the nvtv to switch it to NTSC. This method only has a few resolutions to pick from. It should be easy, but this card will trick you.
Here is what I used: nvtv -S NTSC -t -r 640,480 -s Normal
I added this to the top of me /etc/gdm/PreSession/Default file, right after the path declaration.

2) The reason I used 640x480 in my nvtv command...I could not get this card to do a reasonable resolution with a bit depth of 32. in fact, the only reasonable resolution that worked for me was 640x480 (which is why this card won't be lasting long). This was somewhat guesswork and somewhat experience with breaking X a few times. It's possible I missed something, but I was pretty frustrated the second time I got this working.
Tools that helped immensely during this:
SSH and "/etc/init.d/gdm restart"
Method to fix it:
I copied the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.nvidia-tvout.sample file over top of /etc/X11XF86Config-4 file
Next I modified the file in several locations (I accidentally erased the sample, so I may repeat some things already set in the sample):
a) In the Monitor section I set my TVOutFormat to COMPOSITE, TVStandard to NTSC-M, and change the VertRefresh to 50-75 since 60 did bad things to my TV and I don't know what it should be.
Code:
        Option "TVStandard" "NTSC-M"
        Option "ConnectedMonitor" "tv"
        Option "TVOutFormat" "COMPOSITE"
        Option "NoLogo" "1"
        #Option "TVOverScan" "0.2"      # not supported for lower than GF4?

        #HorizSync 30 - 69 # DDC-probed
        HorizSync 30 - 50
        VertRefresh  50.0 - 75.0 # Very conservative. May flicker.


In the Screen section I lowered my default color depth to 24 and then in the 24 section I removed all of the entries until I only had the "640x480". I am fairly certain I tried 640x480 in 32 and I know I tried various combinations of other resolutions in 24 bit. 640x480@24 was about the best I got without getting a partial top-left corner screen on the TV.
Code:
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth     24
                Modes "640x480"
        EndSubSection


For the record, I am not a master at X configs. I still have a laptop that I can't mangle into working with Xfree or Xorg and I tried for almost a week, so if I am overlooking somehting, please point it out.

I think that was everything I needed to get the graphics card working. I do have a tiny 1/4 inch strip of black on the right side of the screen, but so far I have not been able to fix that. Might look into getting correct rates for my TV and try those. The xvidtune did very bad things to the display the several times I tried it (/etc/init.d/gdm restart, rinse, repeat).


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