[plug] reset nVidia card to factory defaults??

[Denis Brown]

Thanks Bill, Arie.

The only problem about trying the MB BIOS settings is... I cannot see them 
:-)   At boot time the card remains silent until the OS and xorg takes 
over.   Then we have video.

Secondary point - assuming that the MB BIOS has somehow been reset (to AGP 
or whatever) *would* this be possible through the use of nvidia-xconfig and 
/ or sax2?    I would have thought that a BIOS API would be needed as well 
as code within nvidia/sax to utilise it.    Not saying that the idea is 
false, just that I am having difficulty getting my head around it.

Another possibility in this line though is, as Bill says, that if there is 
only one card (my case) the MB BIOS may be "smart enough" to test for the 
presence of a card of whatever type it has been told to expect (PCI-e in my 
case.)   If it fails to find one (say the PCI-e card appears fritzed) then 
it tries to default to a (non existent) AGP card but cannot tell me of its 
error because there is simply no video.   In that situation I would expect 
panic beeps but there are none.   Curiouser and curiouser!

The thought of dual outputs is a good one too.   In my situation I have a 
dual-input monitor (analogue + digital) and with both cables connected, 
switching the monitor between the two shows no video on either output at 
boot/POST time.   ("No video" means the power-on LED on the monitor shows 
orange with no video signals, green with signals.   That is my means of 
signal-presence monitoring.)

Indeed I was hoping for some clues within the OS environment as to how to 
switch between the two outputs at card level.   ATM it is using the 
analogue route and the display is a bit more "ordinary" than I think it 
would be if fed digital signals.

I will write to the openSuSE forum and to the good nVidia folks with a view 
to discovering a fix or some utility / utilities that will help restore the 
card.   And I do have another card (nVidia 7800) that I can use to get the 
box running in the meantime - but hopefully I will not wind up, as Arie 
implied, with two dud cards through misadventure.

Arie speaks to the card having its own BIOS / firmware.   I think this is 
what needs "un-tweaking" to put the card back on the rails again.   Reasonable?

FWIW when I discover a fix I'll let the group know.   It may just come in 
useful down the track :-)

Regards and thanks,
Denis


At 06:59 AM 22/11/2007, you wrote:
>I would have a look at the MB bios - some have a setting to start with a
>pci vs an agp video card or the like - if the wrong setting it produces
>what you are seeing. (on one MB I had, but on another it overode the
>setting if only one card in the machine - ymmv).
>
>Another possibility is that it is a dual output card and has somehow
>defaulted to the not in use output (seen this with intel graphics chips
>in laptops - though didnt act quite like what you are seeing)
>
>BillK
>
>
>On Wed, 2007-11-21 at 21:29 +0900, Denis Brown wrote:
> > 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.
>
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