ATI Fire GL V3100 and Dual display

[Wes Bauske]

Hello,

I'm trying to get an ATI V3100 dual display card working using Xinerama. I'm
running FC4 and configured the card using the preferences dialog.

Xorg version:  xorg-x11-6.8.2-31.x86_64.rpm

Here is the xorg.conf file:

# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
         Identifier     "Multihead layout"
         Screen      0  "Screen0" LeftOf "Screen1"
         Screen      1  "Screen1" 0 0
         InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
         InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
         Option      "Xinerama" "on"
         Option      "Clone" "off"
EndSection

Section "Files"
         RgbPath      "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
         FontPath     "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "Module"
         Load  "dbe"
         Load  "extmod"
         Load  "fbdevhw"
         Load  "glx"
         Load  "record"
         Load  "freetype"
         Load  "type1"
         Load  "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

         Identifier  "Keyboard0"
         Driver      "kbd"
         Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"
         Option      "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
         Identifier  "Mouse0"
         Driver      "mouse"
         Option      "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
         Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
         Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
         Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
         Identifier   "Monitor0"
         VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
         ModelName    "LCD Panel 1280x1024"
         HorizSync    31.5 - 67.0
         VertRefresh  50.0 - 75.0
         Option      "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
         Identifier   "Monitor1"
         VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
         ModelName    "LCD Panel 1280x1024"
         HorizSync    31.5 - 67.0
         VertRefresh  50.0 - 75.0
         Option      "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
         Identifier  "Videocard0"
         Driver      "radeon"
         VendorName  "Videocard vendor"
         BoardName   "ATI FireGL V3100"
EndSection

Section "Device"
         Identifier  "Videocard1"
         Driver      "radeon"
         VendorName  "Videocard Vendor"
         BoardName   "ATI FireGL V3100"
         BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
         Screen      1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
         Identifier "Screen0"
         Device     "Videocard0"
         Monitor    "Monitor0"
         DefaultDepth     24
         SubSection "Display"
                 Viewport   0 0
                 Depth     16
                 Modes    "800x600" "640x480"
         EndSubSection
         SubSection "Display"
                 Viewport   0 0
                 Depth     24
                 Modes    "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1152x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
         EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
         Identifier "Screen1"
         Device     "Videocard1"
         Monitor    "Monitor1"
         DefaultDepth     24
         SubSection "Display"
                 Viewport   0 0
                 Depth     24
                 Modes    "1280x1024"
         EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
         Group        0
         Mode         0666
EndSection

This appears to initialize fine according to the Xorg.0.log. However, there is no display
on the secondary connection. Moving the mouse cursor around shows X thinks the monitor is
there. This same card works fine under FC3 on a different motherboard (Supermicro) so I'm
inclined to think this is a BIOS issue. Boards that fail to initialize both heads while
booting Linux also seem to never get X running on the 2nd display. The motherboards having
problems are Intel D945psn and a D945gxxx with this card. I've read that X code uses an
"int10" to soft reset video cards and wonder how this interacts with the BIOS and could
cause this issue.

Also, under FC3 I see this same problem with an Opteron and AMD64 based motherboard using an
Nvidia FX5200 based AGP card. Seems to happen on many combinations of dual display cards and
motherboards. At least 6 different combinations I've tried. Other motherboards work fine.
I have Intel D845G/D850G/D865G/D875G and all work fine. I need a D945 board to use dual
core P4 processors so I really need to understand how to fix this.

One other thing. The connection that seems to always have trouble is the DVI. The standard
VGA connector seems to never run into problems. I use a DVI->VGA adapter to connect the
secondary screen. Also, this is a PCI-Express card if that matters.

Any thoughts on what to do are appreciated.

Wes.bauske