Thanks to:
Paul Henderson <pgh_at_unx.dec.com>
Dave Golden <golden_at_falcon.invincible.com>
Ian Thurlbeck <ian_at_stams.strath.ac.uk>
"Schuhl, Robert" <robert.schuhl_at_ald-vt.de>
We contacted DEC technical support and it seems that this problem might be
due to a bug in the DU 4.0 driver for the ATI Mach64 PCI video option on our
AlphaStation 200 4/100s. The monitor is apparently going into "power-saving"
mode because the video card lost sync. Rebooting or restarting the Xserver
will cause the ATI Mach64 card to reset/resync. DEC is going to investigate
further but they have a work around that solves the problem:
Change Xservers file (/usr/dt/config/Xservers) from:
:0 Local local_at_console /usr/bin/X11/X :0 -screen0 1280
to
:0 Local local_at_console /usr/bin/X11/X :0 -screen0 1280 -terminate
This causes the X server to terminate completely when a user logs out. The X
server then restarts and the video card resyncs.
Thanks for everyone's help!
[Original Messages]
I have some additional information on my problem with the AlphaStation 200
4/100 with the ATI Mach64 video, DEC 17" monitor and Digital Unix 4.0:
Based on the installation guide for the ATI Mach64, you are supposed to place
an entry in the Xservers file to indicate which resolution the server should
run at. The ATI Mach64 defaults to 1024x768. To change the resolution to
1280x1024 you change the line in Xservers from
:0 local /usr/bin/X11/X -nice 2
to
:0 local /usr/bin/X11/X -nice 2 -screen0 1280
This worked fine with Digital Unix 3.2x. We modified the Xserver file in
Digital Unix 4.0 (/usr/dt/config/Xservers) from
:0 Local local_at_console /usr/bin/X11/X :0
to
:0 Local local_at_console /usr/bin/X11/X -screen0 1280 :0
This is when we started to have problems with the monitor going into
power-saving mode when a user logs out. When we reset the Xserver file back
to the original, the problem went away, but the resolution then defaults to
1024x768.
I tried another experiment and placed the arguement -dpms at the end to force
the disabling of power management features. From the Xdec manpage:
-dpms Disables the VESA DPMS features of the X Server regardless of the
operating system's power management state. DPMS mode defaults are
dictated by the kernel's power management subsystem.
So our Xservers file now is:
:0 Local local_at_console /usr/bin/X11/X :0 -screen0 1280 -dpms
We still have the problem if we use the option -screen0 1280.
Any ideas?
Previous Message:
I am having a strange problem with Digital Unix 4.0 and an AlphaStation 200
4/100 with an ATI Mach64 video card and the DEC 17" monitor.
Whenever a user logs out of the workstation, the monitor goes into "idle" or
power-saving mode. Normally, you could press a key or something to get the
monitor to respond, but nothing short of rebooting the system will get the
monitor out of power-saving mode. From my understanding, the monitor goes
into this mode when it fails to detect a signal on one of the video pins.
So, it looks as if there could be a problem with the ATI Mach64 video card
and I do not have this same problem with an AlphaStation 200 4/166 with the
ZLXp-E video option. I will attempt to duplicate this on another machine with
an ATI Mach64 as soon as I can.
Has anyone else experienced this? Any ideas of how to fix it?
Received on Tue Jul 02 1996 - 00:12:02 NZST