HELP - can't read EDID from monitor - SOLVED

[Anon-E-moose]

Frankly I'm surprised that the nvidia fb worked, given that it's really designed for older nvidia chipsets and isn't to be used with the nvidia proprietary blob.

This looks like the latest (stable) for that chipset: x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-340.24

It the ebuild installed properly and you tell X to use nvidia then it should just work.
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If the nvidia fb worked and the only thing missing was edid info, there is an option in the config (at least in the 3.15 kernel series) designed for that.
FB_NVIDIA_I2C - This enables I2C support for nVidia Chipsets. This is used only for getting EDID information from the attached display
I have no idea if it will work for you.
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[Moriah]

When I used nvidia_fb, the NVidia driver was not loading. Also, although get_edid | parse_edid did not work, the modelines were in the log, and xrandr worked to put it into hires mode.
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[Moriah]

SUCCESS!!!

I have it working. Can't say exactly what I changed, because I was in a "try this -- nope; thy that -- nope; try this other thing -- etc. Then suddenly, it started working.

What I can do is post my .config from the kernel build, and the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

It even swoitches back and forth between text console and X display mode, and I am running 5 concurrent X-servers with it on F7 thru F11.

Still a few rough edges.

1. The backlight dimmer doesn't work on the built-in laptop display.

2. There is a noticable delay when switching between X-servers.

3. Occasional;ly, the 3840x2160 Dell external monitor will flicker like the video is being blamnked for a fraction of the vertical sweep. The blanking seems to always be in the lower portion ofthe screen. This is not a problem unique to the Gentoo X-server, as I also saw this when I ran M$ w7-32 on this same laptop and display. I read something about this when first looking up how to configure Linux for the nvidia chips, and vaguely remmember seeing that a newer version of the driver was reported to have cure this problem. I do not know what version that was, or whether I am running that version, or a newer, or older version.

4. I have to change my display configuration in the BIOS depending on whether I am planning to use the external display or not, but I can live with that.

5. Sometimes, the external monitor goes black. If I power it off for a second, then power it back on, the picture is restored.

For the record, here are the changes to my .config file before and after getting the nvidia chipset to work. The *_wifi file was the before, when I was only using the laptop display with the intel drivers. The *_nvidia_vesa file is the config that works with my external monitor.