P4PE (845PE chipset) and linux/Parhelia

[leech]

Anyone try this combination? I recently got my 3.06ghz P4 installed and now X is nothing but a terrible mess. Anyone know which kernel will support this chipset (845pe) I tried to compile 2.5.63, but have that annoying "Uncrompressing linux....." then lock up, problem. Have been too busy lately to figure that out, any ideas?

Leech

[WyWyWyWy]

Using 2.4.18-26, absolutely no problem at all.
What distro are you?

[leech]

Debian unstable. I do have hyperthreading enabled (probably the cause of my woes, but I wouldn't have thought so...)

Leech

[Ribbit]

I'd suggest you try getting it working with a stable kernel before messing around with 2.5.x.

[WyWyWyWy]

Originally posted by Ribbit
I'd suggest you try getting it working with a stable kernel before messing around with 2.5.x.

AFAIK only 2.5.x supports HT, no?
Of course I could be very wrong.

[Ribbit]

I'm pretty sure there's HT support in recent 2.4. And even if there isn't, the kernel should still just treat it as regular SMP. Anyway, as a test, you could compile the kernel for uniprocessor and make sure everything works there first.

My original point was it's a bit silly playing around with the unstable branch if your machine isn't working with the stable branch yet.

[leech]

Actually there's a great point, generally the newer kernels will support newer hardware, hence if you have a KT400 chipset like Byock, then you'd need to run 2.5.x, and I was wondering if the 845PE was working in 2.4.x, or I'd have to install 2.5.x.

I used to always play around with the 'unstable' kernels, but never had many problems with them. The Kernel hackers are really great. Anyhow, I'm only trying to get it to work with the mtx driver, for some reason right now (kernel 2.4.19-686) is having major issues. To get any text in mozilla, for instance, I have to scroll the window up, then down to show it, otherwise I just get white. It's a horrid, dreadful mess.

This is with Debian 'Sid'. I just updated to kernel 2.4.20, but haven't had a chance to run it yet. I'll try it now, and get back to you guys on if I have any luck....

Leech

[leech]

D'oh! Same thing. Any ideas? XFree86.0.log says nothing out of the ordinary. Everything is compiled and installed properly. agpgart just says that I have a 845G, but it's an 845PE, the G, I believe is a actual video chipset, if what I recall is correct. So that's obviously not what I want....

Leech

[WyWyWyWy]

Whats the problem in X anyway?
X 4.3 and Gnome 2.2?

[leech]

Here's what I've established so far (Gnome 2.2 and XFree86 4.2.1).....if I don't have the mtx.o module loaded it works like it always does when it's not loaded. A small porton of the screen on the bottom is moved over to the left or right, slightly and then duplicated on the top.... or whatever that weird look was.....

But if the mtx.o module is loaded then I get all sorts of crazy corruption on the screen. For instance what I mentioned above that happens in mozilla/galeon. If I scroll up/down then it'll show the text how it should, otherwise it's WHITE. Also if I take another dialog (terminal or other program, whatever....) and drag it over the mozilla window and around the desktop, it leaves chunks everywhere of that app. And will kind of start to show the text, etc. that is supposed to be in the website. Hope that's a good enough description. (I would put a link up to a screenshot, but my server is down right now....)

Leech

[WyWyWyWy]

You using dualhead ain't you?
This is a known problem... although not as bad as yours.
They said it is a fundamental problem of GTK, I'm not sure how true it is.

See people b1tching at Matrox tech support forums.

Try using only 1 monitor. See if it still happens. If so... the problem is somewhere else.

[leech]

Uhm... no dual-head here, never could get that to work, so I just said forget it. This IS in single head mode. So I have no clue what's causing this...

Leech

[leech]

Originally posted by WyWyWyWy
Using 2.4.18-26, absolutely no problem at all.
What distro are you?

Which Distro are you using? This is killing me, I've been forced to use windows for the past three weeks!

Leech

[WyWyWyWy]

RedHat 8.0.

But of couse i dont have HT.

[leech]

I'm also wondering if it could be a Bios thing. What version of the bios do you have on yours? (I'm currently running 1003 beta 010) I'm gonna check right now to see if there's a new bios and also will turn off hyperthreading to see if anything helps...

Leech