20020111: McIDAS install at NIU (cont.)

>From: Gilbert Sebenste <address@hidden>
>Organization: NIU
>Keywords: 200201102312.g0ANCeN20508 McIDAS-X 7.804

Gilbert,

re: how Xconfiguration didn't work

>It found my monitor, refresh rate, etc and yet when it tested it, it said 
>there was something wrong, and I should "go back". Go back and do what, it 
>didn't say.

OK.  It may be that the Nvidia 256 card is not supported by RedHat 7.2
(?) yet.  Did you go out to the RedHat web site and see if this card
was in the list of supported ones?

We ran into a similar thing with an onboard Nvidia chipset in a Dell we
were trying to use for last summer's training workshops.  We tried
grabbing a kernel that Nvidia was making available for Linux, but that
did not work.  Our problem turned out to be something in the way that
the video was implemented on that motherboard.  Our eventual solution
-after a lot of mucking around- was to replace the motherboard.

>Thanks Tom! Greatly appreciated. Look forward to hearing from him.

I talked to our sysadmin, and he refreshed my memory with the
information above.  There was nothing magical that we could do with
running Xconfigurator (or XF86Setup) that would get our system working
with the particular Nvidia chipset on that Dell motherboard.  Again, we
eventually simply had Dell replace the motherboard.

>My Nvidia 256 card just doesn't like X windows, from what I can tell. Yet, 
>I have briefly gotten it to work during the initial install.

It sounds like this may be a new board that Linux (XFree86) does not
yet support.  One stopgap measure would be to go out and get a cheap
ATI card (one with something like 8 MB of RAM) and use it in your
machine.  Last time I looked, cards like I have in mind were on the
order of $25-$50.  You have already spent more than that in
frustration, so it is time to take the simple approach:  i.e., spend a
little to save a lot.  You can then switch to the use of the new Nvidia
board when it is officially supported by Linux.

Good Luck!

Tom