[TriLUG] CCI machine Linux compatability

[crimsun at fungus.sh.nu]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2004 at 11:41:59PM -0500, Faheem Mitha wrote:
> May I first ask you what is the actual model of the computer you are
> referring to? I assume it is some similar IBM model?

I will look at the IBM machine and pull the model number hopefully
tomorrow (it's locked away in another room). I'm currently on a Dell
Precision 360 that has similar hardware.

> Um, Ok, no offense intended. In that case it just makes me wonder why the
> X people are under the impression that Quadro4 doesn't work with the 4.3
> nv driver. :-)

No offense taken. It's probably an oversight wrt the listing on XFree86.
I actually pulled the information from the README that's distributed
with the Nvidia binary-only drivers (1.0-5328). Here are the chip ids:
  Quadro4 550 XGL                      0x0178
  Quadro NVS                           0x017A
  ..
  Quadro4 780 XGL                      0x0289
  GeForce FX 5800 Ultra                0x0301
(I omitted a few GF4-family ids) Everything up to and including the
Quadro4 780 XGL is supported via "nv" in 4.3.0. The family jump to
0x03xx requires CVS HEAD XFree86, or 4.4.0 whenever it's finally
released. The 0x03xx correspond to the FX family.

> I see that the upcoming 4.4 is listed as having support for Quadro4.

Yes, it does.

> I'm not sure what the GF4 family is. I assume this includes Quadro4, then?

Yes. Quadro FXes, on the other hand, are an entirely different family.

> > My Debian experimental/sid/sarge machine at home runs 2.6.0-test11 with
> > the binary-only "nvidia" drivers (1.0-5328) just fine.
> 
> Is this also with the Quadro4? The latest version of the nvidia drivers in
> Debian is 1.0.4496. Are your drivers from experimental or did you get them
> from nvidia.com directly?

My machine at home has run a GF4 Ti and a Quadro4 for testing, but at
the moment it runs my trusty GF3 Ti200. Not stellar in terms of speed
compared with say the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, but then again it didn't
set me back nearly as much, either.

I used the pkg1.run installer downloadable from Nvidia's ftp
(download.nvidia.com) site and applied the fixed 2.6 diffs against the
extracted Nvidia installer (--extract-only). There are also patched
2.6-compatible installers downloadable from www.sh.nu/nvidia . I use
the installer instead of Debian's debs because I use XFree86 from Debian
experimental, and the overrides for the GL[X] libs are messy. I'd rather
kill them manually via the top-level Makefile in the extracted Nvidia
installer.

If you use XFree86 from Debian unstable, you shouldn't have to worry
about messy GL[X] libs overrides.

> So to summarise, you can drive the Quadro4 card on Debian using either the
> nv driver or the binary-only nvidia drivers, both with X 4.3 from
> experimental?

If you use Debian sid strictly, you'll need to grab XFree86 from
experimental (4.3.0-0pre1v5) for the updated "nv" driver; _or_ you'll
need to use the binary-only Nvidia driver (1.0-4496 will work; some
people have had issues with 1.0-5328, the latest, but we've mostly
hacked around them for the unofficial patches on minion.de).

To sum, choose one of the following if you run Debian woody/sarge/sid:
1) install XFree86 4.3.0+. For Woody, use the 4.3.0.ds backport. For
Sarge or Sid, use the experimental packages.
_or_
2) Regardless of what XFree86 version, simply install the binary-only
Nvidia driver and libs.

> Might I trouble you for a copy of your Debian XF86Config-4, then? I'll
> save it just in case.

Sure. Posted at http://www.trilug.org/~crimsun/XF86Config-4 . Keep in
mind that it's pretty specific to my home hardware, but the basics
work.

> BTW, I am very ignorant of such things, but does *any* non-digital video
> card work for *any* analog flat-panel?

To be honest, I have not done sufficient testing wrt flat-panels, so
I'm not qualified to answer that question.

HTH.

-- 
Daniel T. Chen          crimsun at fungus.sh.nu
GPG key:   www.sh.nu/~crimsun/pubkey.gpg.asc
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