Infrastructure Software

Hello folks -

I'm new here, I searched and did not find anything that matched so I'm posting. If I'm asking about something previously covered, please be patient, I'll learn.

I am running an Asus A7N8 Deluxe motherboard with an Athlon 2800+, standard ATA/133 drives and an Nvidia 6800 AGP supplied by PNY. My display is a Viewsonic VA2012wb, which I've since learned is only available at a well-known warehouse membership store.

I've been using this setup under XP for some months now, and yesterday I decided to try and install Sol10/X86 again now that some new drivers are available that support my onboard LAN. Nothing untoward happened during the install (I'm very familiar with the process on Sparc hardware), and I was asked to reboot so I could start installing CD2.

Suddenly, no display on boot. Troubleshooting ensued, and I found that I was able to get the monitor to display if I connected the VGA cable instead of the DVI interface I've successfully used all this time.

Subsequent troubleshooting included:

1. Changing out the 6800 with a 6200 I had on hand.

2. Booting to XP to see if the Nvidia Twinview stuff had become confused - The Nvidia software behaved as if there was nothing available on the DVI input, so many menus did not even appear.

3. Checking with Viewsonic to make sure that I was clear on how the monitor selects inputs. It's largely automatic, but hitting the '2' key on the front panel forces a rescan of the analog and digital inputs.

4. Substituting another display on this workstation, with all cables unchanged, so I could verify that the DVI output on my video card still worked. Tested fine.

5. Moving the affected display to another workstation, to see if it was capable of functioning on the DVI input from a different machine. It was not, test failed.

6. Unplugging everything and letting it sit for over an hour (while I fumed) - test failed.

7. Returned the affected display to Costco today, for a spanky new one. It worked great on DVI with existing hardware (and under XP) this afternoon, so I decided to re-start my Solaris install.

Lather, rinse, repeat, or so I was about to find out....

After I was asked to reboot from CD1, my display died again.

Just like yesterday, it's currently working fine on the VGA input/dead to the world on DVI, and just like yesterday, everything was fine until the first reboot after the Solaris CD1. I repeated the most pertinent aspects of my prior diagnostic steps, and then I went out to the back porch to curse and throw tools until I felt better.

I cannot find a hardware reset button for the display, and an old friend of mine reports that he had a similar issue under Solaris 8/X86 in which he ended up blowing up a CRT. The Sol8 installer was overdriving the monitor.

That said, I don't think that the DVI interface is able to 'overdrive' a monitor, and that confuses me more deeply. I know that if I (re)abuse the return policy of this warehouse store once more tomorrow and get a new display it will fix the problem, but I'm hoping that I can fix this in house!

I refuse to believe that Solaris is actually frying the DVI input on my display, but I do have clear evidence that it the installer is a destructive force, at least with Nvidia cards and a VA2012wb. I'm seeing some similar threads on the Linux forums, some mentioning the part number of my display in specific, but no clear resolutions yet.

Any thoughts?

- Eli