[plug] reset nVidia card to factory defaults??

[Jim Householder]

If it is the MB bios, you should be able to reset it by temporarily
changing a jumper on the board, or removing the battery.
If the video card, try removing it overnight.  Unless it has flash
memory for configuration that should reset it as well.

HTH
Jim

Denis Brown wrote:
> 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.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
>> http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
>> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.linux.org.au
> 
> 
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