video problem

[mick12345678]

I have 5.9 Gold on a 2 year old PC.
Everything works fine, but sometimes (not always) I get  spurious characters displayed in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. They stay there irrespective of what program output the screen is currently displaying.

I can't isolate any trigger event that causes these characters to come up - they're not there on bootup and then after a while of using the PC I suddenly notice them and then they won't go away until reboot.

For what it's worth, its always 4 lines composed of dots and dashes (looks a bit like morse code  ).

Should I be updating/changing the video drivers 

[mick12345678]

This doesnt happen under XP, so its unlikely to be a faulty card.
lspci says the card is a ATI Technologies Inc RS480 [Radeon Xpress 200G Series].

Does the output below suggest anything that needs reconfiguring ?

Code:

user:$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier     "X.org Configured"
Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
RgbPath      "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/OTF"
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load  "glx"
Load  "extmod"
Load  "xtrap"
Load  "record"
Load  "GLcore"
Load  "dbe"
Load  "dri"
Load  "freetype"
Load  "type1"
EndSection

!keyboard, mouse sections not shown

Section "Monitor"
 DisplaySize 269 201 # 96 DPI @ 1024x768
  Option "UseEdidFreqs" "1"
#DisplaySize      370   300     # mm
Identifier   "Monitor0"
VendorName   "ACR"
ModelName    "Acer AL1911"
### Comment all HorizSync and VertRefresh values to use DDC:
HorizSync    24.0 - 80.0
VertRefresh  56.0 - 75.0
Option      "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option     "NoAccel"                   # [<bool>]
#Option     "SWcursor"                  # [<bool>]
#Option     "Dac6Bit"                   # [<bool>]
#Option     "Dac8Bit"                   # [<bool>]
#Option     "BusType"                   # [<str>]
#Option     "CPPIOMode"                 # [<bool>]
#Option     "CPusecTimeout"             # <i>
#Option     "AGPMode"                   # <i>
#Option     "AGPFastWrite"              # [<bool>]
#Option     "AGPSize"                   # <i>
#Option     "GARTSize"                  # <i>
#Option     "RingSize"                  # <i>
#Option     "BufferSize"                # <i>
#Option     "EnableDepthMoves"          # [<bool>]
#Option     "EnablePageFlip"            # [<bool>]
#Option     "NoBackBuffer"              # [<bool>]
#Option     "DMAForXv"                  # [<bool>]
#Option     "FBTexPercent"              # <i>
#Option     "DepthBits"                 # <i>
#Option     "PCIAPERSize"               # <i>
#Option     "AccelDFS"                  # [<bool>]
#Option     "DDCMode"                   # [<bool>]
#Option     "IgnoreEDID"                # [<bool>]
#Option     "DisplayPriority"           # [<str>]
#Option     "PanelSize"                 # [<str>]
#Option     "ForceMinDotClock"          # <freq>
#Option     "ColorTiling"               # [<bool>]
#Option     "VideoKey"                  # <i>
#Option     "RageTheatreCrystal"        # <i>
#Option     "RageTheatreTunerPort"      # <i>
#Option     "RageTheatreCompositePort"  # <i>
#Option     "RageTheatreSVideoPort"     # <i>
#Option     "TunerType"                 # <i>
#Option     "RageTheatreMicrocPath"     # <str>
#Option     "RageTheatreMicrocType"     # <str>
#Option     "ScalerWidth"               # <i>
#Option     "RenderAccel"               # [<bool>]
#Option     "SubPixelOrder"             # [<str>]
#Option     "ShowCache"                 # [<bool>]
#Option     "DynamicClocks"             # [<bool>]
#Option     "VGAAccess"                 # [<bool>]
#Option     "ReverseDDC"                # [<bool>]
#Option     "LVDSProbePLL"              # [<bool>]
#Option     "AccelMethod"               # <str>
#Option     "DRI"                       # [<bool>]
#Option     "ConnectorTable"            # <str>
#Option     "DefaultConnectorTable"     # [<bool>]
#Option     "DefaultTMDSPLL"            # [<bool>]
#Option     "TVDACLoadDetect"           # [<bool>]
Identifier  "Card0"
Driver      "fglrx"
VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName   "RS480 [Radeon Xpress 200G Series]"
BusID       "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device     "Card0"
Monitor    "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport   0 0
Depth     1
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport   0 0
Depth     4
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport   0 0
Depth     8
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport   0 0
Depth     15
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport   0 0
Depth     16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport   0 0
Depth     24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection
             
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "on"
EndSection

[M0E-lnx]

do you get the same results using the open source driver?

have you tried vlati? I was able to setup my ATI card using it

[bigpaws]

I had that same problem. The problem from
what I can find is in xorg on Slackware 12 and the
ATI driver.

Since I am now running Slackware 12.1 I have not
had the problem.

Bigpaws

[mick12345678]

Thanks for the replies 

do you get the same results using the open source driver?

I haven't tried that yet. Is that driver in the repo ? What do I search on ?

have you tried vlati?

Not yet. I believe I could try this by running VASM again.

The problem from what I can find is in xorg on Slackware 12 and the ATI driver. Since I am now running Slackware 12.1 I have not had the problem.

To run 12.1, would I have to abandon 5.9 and go to 6 Beta ?

[mick12345678]

When I run VASM and xconf, I don't see any "VLATI" option. All I get is FGLTX (the one I was running), radeon open source, ati  open source and vesa open source.

I tried both radeon and ati. Both work ok except they cause Google Earth to crash.

I found a few post where is said you have to run "aticonfig --initial" after xconf, but all I get is "command not found".

[nightflier]

vlati is VL's script to install fglrx.

Regarding "aticonfig --initial", according to your xorg.conf, it is already initialized, since the fglrx driver is chosen.

I do remember having the same issue on a Radeon during testing, never got it fixed (put in an nVidia GeForce instead).

Google Earth is a very demanding application that uses your video card like a 3D game does. The open source drivers generally are not up to that task. Even when they work, the performance suffers in comparison to fglrx.