[gentoo-user] can't get xorg tdfx driver to work any more

[Robert Persson <ireneshusband@yahoo.co.uk>]

A while ago I had a working 2-head setup which I stopped using because I 
needed to use the proprietary ati driver. Now I need to revert to using the 
twin-head setup, but I can't get it to work any more.

I have the same xorg.conf as before. What has changed is that I have upgraded 
to xorg-7. It is also likely that I did something to my kernel config to get 
the fglrx driver to work properly, but I can't remember what exactly. I get 
confused about this because the various display-related kernel options are 
scattered all over the place.

The setup basically consists of an agp radeon 9200SE (using the radeon driver) 
and a pci voodoo banshee (using the tdfx driver).

The precise manifestation of the problem changed with the recent bump from 
xorg-server-1.0.2-r4 to xorg-server-1.0.2-r5.

Before the bump I got a screen that was the right overall colour, but with 
ugly incomplete horizontal lines across it. Windows were recognisably 
windows, but still heavily garbled. Within half an hour or so I would have 
complete system lock-up.

After the bump I now get a screen composed of horizontal red and black lines, 
with the occasional flicker  on the left hand side when something happens on 
the desktop. The only thing that is barely recognisable is the mouse pointer, 
which looks like a white bar-code. After a period of use (perhaps 20 minutes) 
the display locks up irrecoverably, but I am able to restart gracefully from 
a remote terminal session.

I tried the noaccel option, but that made no useful difference (I merely got a 
few warning messages).

I have tried using alternative drivers, but I can't get any to work for me. I 
had thought that vesa was a generic driver that should work on pretty well 
anything, but it doesn't work here. The log says "chipset vesa not found". 
fbdev doesn't work either. I tried vga, but that caused an instant system 
lock-up.

What should I do to get a working 2-head setup?

And when I have got it working, would there be any advantage in emerging 
xorg-drm, in terms of making up for the performance shortfall between the 
radeon driver and fglrx?

Many thanks
Robert
-- 
Robert Persson
That's MISTER Scum to you.
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