Recently, I've had a few screen lockups with cryptic errors
in the log file (and incomprehensible 2500 line debug dumps).
As a hardware guy, I punted - swap out the graphics card.
The old card was a dual DVI nvidia 9800GT, driving two
screens. Where to get a "new" dual DVI card? Vendor
shortages everywhere, unless I spend $1000 for a
top-of-the-line gaming card; performance I don't need.
Free Geek store to the rescue! They had a used/tested
Nvidia GTX750 Ti for $100 in their "eBay online store".
I ordered late Tuesday night March 8. FG shipped early
Wednesday. The package arrived today (March 10) with
the USPS mail. It is plugged in, tweaked, working, and
displaying this email now.
This is the second time I gotten "less than 48 hours
service" from the Free Geek store and USPS, for Beaverton
home delivery. The usual option for distant customers is
FedEx, but that is more expensive, and FedEx has taken
weeks(!) for orders from other vendors.
I strongly recommend the Free Geek store with US postal
service shipping for Portland region customer needs.
-----------------
P.S. I hope this fixes the lockup. I'm slowly migrating
from CentOS 7 to Mate Ubuntu, so if the problem is aging
software bugs, they will soon be replaced with new bugs.
-----------------
P.P.S. The new card behaves slightly differently.
On the old 9800GT card, the two screens are "DVI-I-1" and
"DVI-I-2". On the new 750 Ti card, they are "DVI-I-1"
and "DVI-D-1".
I used "xrandr -q" to figure that out, and the following
script to configure my two (rotated) screens:
------
#!/bin/bash
# twoscreen750T
# new 2022 March 10 KHL
# old 2021 August 11 KHL
# two side-by-side Planar screens for gate
xrandr --output DVI-I-1 --rotate left --pos 0x0 \
--output DVI-D-1 --rotate right --right-of DVI-I-1
------
I call this at login with a startup script:
/home/keithl/.config/autostart/twoscreen.desktop
------
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=/home/keithl/bin/twoscreen750T
Hidden=false
X-MATE-Autostart-enabled=true
Name[en_US]=twoscreen750T
Name=twoscreen750T
Comment[en_US]=properly position two screens
Comment=properly position two screens
------
BTW, thanks to Randy Bush for helping me figure this out
last summer.
Keith
--
Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com
