The PC2500 motherboard, aka PC-1 from VIA Technologies, is a so-called
"green" board based on the VIA CN700 Northbridge and a VT8237R Plus
Southbridge. This is the same motherboard found in the $200 Walmart
Everex Linux PC's and can be purchased separately for about $60. The
VIA CN700 Northbridge contains an embedded video controller.
The output of lspci -v shows:
Code:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/P4M800
Pro/P4M800 CE/VN800 [S3 UniChrome Pro] (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems Unknown device aa51
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 19
Memory at f4000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
Memory at fb000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at fc000000 [disabled] [size=64K]
Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [70] AGP version 3.0
The matching output of lspci -n shows:
01:00.0 0300: 1106:3344 (rev 01)
An upgrade from R5F27 to R5.5 was attempted. The R5F27 installation used the
"via" driver for the video and worked fine for over a year. When rebooting
following the upgrade to R5.5, the dreaded "INIT: Id "c7" respawning too fast:
disabled for 5 minutes" message appeared. It seems that the xorg via driver no
longer supports the CN700 video. Snippets from the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file:
Code:
----------------------
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//via_drv.so
(II) Module via: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
compiled for 1.4.0, module version = 0.2.1
Module class: X.Org Video Driver
ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 2.0
------------------------
(II) VIA: driver for VIA chipsets: CLE266, KM400/KN400, K8M800,
PM800/PM880/CN400
(II) Primary Device is: PCI 01:00:0
(--) Assigning device section with no busID to primary device
(EE) No devices detected.
Fatal server error:
no screens found
----------------------
Solution
To solve this problem the system was rebooted into single user mode.
The /etc/X11/xorg.conf file was edited to change the video driver from "via" to "openchrome".
Code:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
### Available Driver options are:-
# sw_cursor is needed for some ati and radeon cards
#Option "sw_cursor"
#Option "hw_cursor"
#Option "NoAccel"
#Option "ShowCache"
#Option "ShadowFB"
#Option "UseFBDev"
#Option "Rotate"
# The following line is auto-generated by KNOPPIX mkxf86config
# Driver "via"
Driver "openchrome"
VendorName "All"
BoardName "All"
# BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection
I also had to add this line to the ServerFlags section:
Code:
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AllowMouseOpenFail" "true"
# The following line is needed to use the openchrome driver
Option "IgnoreABI" "true"
EndSection
Also, there was a problem with playback caused by changes in the DRI/DRM of the
xorg X server. This problem was fixed by making changes in the BIOS. The changes made were:
AGP Aperature Size 64MB
Total MEM with VGA MEM 64MB
Direct Frame Buffer Enabled
I'm not sure the frame buffer actually has anything to do with it, but now it works.