[mythtv-users] Trouble booting a system with S-video plugged in

Larry Taub larryt at gmail.com
Wed Jun 15 05:20:17 UTC 2005


To close out the thread, I am replying to inform that this is solved. 
Perhaps this may help someone down the line, switching from grub to lilo 
solved the problem. I am not sure what grub was doing that prevented my 
graphics card from properly displaying on the S-Video out but lilo does not 
do it and it works as I desire. 

Larry

On 6/13/05, Larry Taub <larryt at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The machine does in fact seem to be hanging. In the IRC channel, I was 
> advised to look for a framebuffer in the kernel but could not find one. I am 
> using a 16k stack kernel provided by linuxant because my next task is to set 
> up wireless pci. 
>  If I boot with VGA only connected, it goes in fine and I can startx and 
> have it go to whichever display I configure in xorg.conf. I can plug in 
> S-video once it is finished booting and has a login prompt and use that 
> display for X if I desire. 
>  If I have only S-video connected, it hangs though I still have keyboard 
> responsiveness in that the lights will turn on + off and I can get a 
> response out of control alt del. I cannot access the machine remotely 
> either. It displays the BIOS information. It checks for boot devices then 
> informs me it is switching to GRUB level 2 and then I get a black screen 
> with a signal. The hard drive light remains on for a few seconds then shuts 
> off and doesn't come back on. It leads me to believe it is hanging at this 
> point. If I plug in the VGA at this point, I get no display. 
>  If I boot with VGA + S-video both connected, it goes in fine and I can 
> startx and have it go to whichever display I configure in xorg.conf.
>  If I have nothing connected, it boots fine and I can access it remotely. 
> However, plugging in either VGA or S-video cable yields me no signal.
>  So, in summary, I have a decent workaround to get my S-Video working: I 
> need to have a VGA cord connected to boot the computer then I can remove the 
> VGA cord once X is loaded and hope to not need to reboot again. If I exit 
> out of X at this point, the TV display seems to be not synced but it does 
> show what is on the command line scrolling horizontally on the screen at a 
> rapid pace. 
>  Unfortunately, I see no option to configure my video card in the BIOS 
> because it is a separate card.
>  Thanks for any suggestions.
>  On 6/12/05, Nick <knowledgejunkie at gmail.com> wrote: 
> > 
> > On 6/12/05, Larry Taub <larryt at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > When I boot with S-Video plugged in, the BIOS shows up fine and the tv 
> > 
> > > displays that the grub bootloader stage 2 is beginning and then it 
> > never
> > > continues. If I plug in a VGA monitor or nothing, it boots fine and 
> > when it
> > > gets to the X login screen, I can hook in my S-Video cable and see 
> > > everything just fine and it works fine on the tv after this point.
> > 
> > When you only have S-Video plugged in, is the machine actually
> > hanging, or is there just no output on the TV? Depending on X, it may
> > be looking for a VGA monitor to be present to successfully launch the
> > X server. If this is the case, it is usually possible to edit the
> > xorg.conf file to tell X that you are using on S-Video output.
> > Alternatively, if you are using a clone mode, then it is likely it 
> > will try and detect the presence of the VGA card first (which may
> > explain why it works and you get cloned displays with both VGA and
> > S-Video connected)
> > 
> > >
> > > Obviously, I don't intend on rebooting this machine often but it would 
> > be 
> > > nice to figure out what is causing this problem and perhaps fix it
> > > especially since my backend/frontend machine boots fine with just the
> > > S-Video cable (on the same TV and S-Video cable right now). 
> > 
> > On my Pundit-R (ATI based) machine, I use only S-Video output
> > connected to the TV. I changed the BIOS to reflect this, and also
> > edited my xorg.conf file to tell it I am using only display via
> > S-Video.
> > 
> > HTH,
> > Nick
> > 
> 
>
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