Asus Nvidia/AGP woes.

[Kyro]

Hiya all. Upgraded my computer a bit over Xmas, and thought I'd give Gentoo a new try now that KDE 3.1 is here. Got myself an Asus A7V333-Xhttp://www.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=A7V333-X, an XP 2200+ and a GeForce4 Ti4200. Now, I get the base of Gentoo installed with no sweat, but then I start fiddling with trying to make it agree with me on that it's really using AGP.

And that's where things go wonky. See, I do a "cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status" and no matter how I've configured my system (AGPGart in kernel, not in kernel but as module, not at all), even following all the steps in the Nvidia configuration documentation from the Gentoo developers, I get a "Status: Disabled" back. I've checked in the bios, and it *should* be fine. Sat AGP to to Default, Auto and 4x respectively, but it didn't seem to make a difference, regardless of kernel configuration.


I tried Gentoo once just after getting the new hardware, and tried running Ut2k3, and it ran like a slideshow. And yet, it seems AGP is detected by the kernel, just not used, because if I do "cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/card" I get

[The Ennead IX]

I'm not too well up on how the a7v333 works these days since I replaced mine with the a7v8x so some of this is from memory.
To get agp support enabled you need to compile agpgart as a module and add a line to etc/modules.autoload

agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1

With regard to the kt266, I seem to remember this being something to do with the way it was recognised in the 2.4.19 kernels. I'm not sure if they cured it with 2.4.20, I think so, but it didn't cause me any noticeable problem other than dmesg used to say something like "pci bus impossible setting to whatever". Once you get agpgart sorted if it returns that fw & sba aren't enabled even though your card supports it, you can correct that by manually editing the os-registry.c file in the nvidia kernel folder prior to compiling it. Open the file in the text editor of your choice and you should see the lines that need editing complete with an explanation of the settings.
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[Kyro]

Thanks, but that seems to have been a no go. Even following the directions posted on the Gentoo website for Nvidia setup gives me "Status: Disabled" with the agp port. Agpgart works without try_agp_unsupported (Gives Via Apollo Pro KT266, and the actual model name if I do a grep AGP /proc/pci). Regardless of what I try, it seems to refuse to let me use my AGP interface, which is more than just a little bit frustrating.

If I go with NvAGP only (No AGPGart), cat /proc/drivers/nvidia/agp/status should still return "Enabled", shouldn't it? I haven't compiled X yet, so I can't tell if it will make a difference... think I'll do that next.

This just bugs me something enourmously. I wanted to switch to Linux entirely if possible when I upgraded the computer, and thought that by getting a motherboard that's not extremely new and shiny I'd get support, but it seems I might have to keep windows around. *boggle*

Must have coffee.
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[Malakin]

The 8233A southbridge on your A7V333 is supported by 2.4.20 and so is the newer 8235.

For /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status to list agp as being used X _must_ be running.

[Kyro]

Whahu? X has to be running for AGP to be listed as enabled? *blush* I think I'll just go stand in this here corner now...
Anyway, thanks for putting up and answering that (obviously) rather silly question. You guys rock.
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