[plug] reset nVidia card to factory defaults??

[Denis Brown]

Hello PLUG list members.

Sorry in advance for the length of this post but I figure the more info 
up-front the better in such cases.

While setting up Xgl on openSuSE 10.3 with nVidia 8500GT card today I 
appear to have put the card into a state where only the Linux OS can 
communicate with it.    At power on for example, there is no evidence of 
video being generated hence the POST screen and BIOS setup are invisible :-(

I would like to reset the card back to factory defaults (apart from knowing 
what caused it to get so distressed!)

System:
ASUS P5K motherboard
Sata drives (1 by 73GB system, 3 by 320GB in software RAID5)
4 GB memory
Intel 6600 Core 2 Duo CPU
openSUSE 10.3 for x86_64
nVidia GeForce 8500GT video card

The initial OS used was Ubuntu but for various reasons I wanted to use 
openSuSE on this system.   Installed 10.3 yesterday - sweet sailing.   It 
even passed across the three user accounts and their passwords, and 
preserved the software RAID5 array.   Colour me impressed.

Started tweaking the video -- this is a medical imaging workstation which 
will run some fairly top-end software.   GLUT dependant, some of it, so had 
to get Xgl on there.   Followed some HOWTOs for installing/running Compix 
on openSuSE and all went well until the configuration of the nVidia drivers.

At that point it overwrote the xorg.conf file (this was expected) but from 
that point on things started to go pear shaped.

First hint of problems was the fact that after logging off one user and 
preparing to log on again, there was just a black screen - no evidence of 
video coming out of the video card.   SSH'd into the box and replaced the 
xorg.conf with a previous known-good copy.   Restart X and we're happy 
again.    But no glxinfo, no glxgears, etc.

Then decided to do a power down and restart.   It was then I noticed the 
absence of video output during POST and OS startup.   The first evidence of 
video is the openSuSE signon screen.   Cannot even get to an Alt-Fx 
terminal.   Yikes!

Several nvidia-xconfig and other xorg-related tweaks later, still having 
the same problems.

Latest nVidia driver from website (installed using YAST as per nVidia 
instructions.)   Have also located documents suggesting that YAST is *not* 
the installation method of choice and I will explore that tomorrow.

But in the meantime I have an apparently "invisible" POST and BIOS setup 
which is not comforting.   Either the BIOS settings got changed during the 
xorg tweaking (highly unlikely) or the nVidia card got itself reprogrammed 
into a state that it does not function in any way unless driven by the 
nVidia drivers and the Linux OS.    Great, but not good for BIOS tweaks, 
etc!   And it still does not respond to glxinfo - claims it cannot see 
display 0:0

So to return to the prime question, how to reset the card back to factory 
defaults?   Pref. using Linux :-)   Or is there some other explanation - 
and fix?

TIA,.
Denis