Monitor fried by 9700 Pro Linux drivers?

[Micand]

Hello,

I'm having serious problems with my 19" CRT, a Sony CPD-G400, running off a Radeon 9700 Pro. It was working well until today, seemingly because of damage caused to the EDID of the monitor by the ATI Linux drivers. Upon rebooting into Windows from Linux today, the monitor was detected as "Default Monitor" by Windows, in spite of it having been properly set up with the CPD-G400 driver many moons ago. Although one can still change the resolution of the monitor to any that is supported, the refresh rate is locked to 60 Hz. Changing the refresh rate to any higher, supported rate using the Control Panels' Display applet will not actually change the refresh rate of the monitor; it remains locked at 60 Hz no matter what it is set to in the Control Panel. Manually updating the "Default Monitor" driver so it is replaced by the proper CPD-G400 driver is possible, but changing the refresh rate still has no effect. If all monitors are deleted in Device Manager, any residual entries are cleared from the Registry under CurrentControlSet and the system is rebooted, the "Default Monitor" is redetected and the problems continue just as before. Additionally, the game of Battlefield Vietnam runs in 60 Hz, even though it is locked to 1024x768 at 100 Hz in its options panel. Using PowerStrip or Viewsonic's EDID.exe utility to query the monitor for EDID/DDC information fails, with a message stating that no such information can be retreived. Powering off and unplugging both the system and monitor for ninety minutes failed to change anything.

I believe that these problems were caused by revision 3.11.1 of the ATI Linux driver. There are reports on the Rage3D forums of v3.11.1 of the ATI Linux driver causing the same problem I describe above by damaging the monitor EDID/DDC. I had been running v3.11.1 on my Gentoo Linux install since the day it was released. Today, after the problem reared its ugly head, I upgraded to 3.14.1, but they have not had any effect (which would be expected, as the damage has seemingly already been done). The monitor was working fine last night in both Windows and Linux. I rebooted to Linux to do some stuff, and midway through the session, X crashed. It restarted, I logged back in, and everything was fine. This afternoon, I rebooted back into Windows, and the problem began. Now, whenever I start X in Linux, the monitor runs in 640x480 at 60 Hz, rather than 1280x960 at 100 Hz as X is configured. Although the thread linked above lists several possible solutions, none have worked.

To summarize:

• The EDID/DDC of my monitor, a Sony CPD-G400, seems to have been corrupted. Although it will run in different resolutions, nothing will get it to run above 60 Hz.
• Windows detects the monitor as "Default Monitor", rather than as a Sony CPD-G400 as it always has in the past.
• It's possible to change the resolution through the Control Panel, but adjusting the refresh rate has no effect, even if the proper driver for the monitor has been forcibly installed.
• Deleting all monitor profiles through Device Manager, clearing any leftover values left in the registry under CurrentControlSet, and rebooting does nothing.
• Utilities designed to query EDID/DDC information fail to communicate with the monitor.
• Powering off and unplugging both the monitor and system for ninety minutes did nothing.

Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated, as I'm desperate to restore this monitor to working operation. If the monitor is indeed doomed to eternal operation at 60 Hz, it's about as useful to me as a 55-pound block of wood. Although my 9700 Pro has given me excellent service over the last two years, it will be the last ATI card I buy if I have to worry about their drivers frying monitors. Thanks in advance!

 

[DR_K13]

blah! go with Nvidia if you are using linux, it makes things much better. ( easy )
some distros will load the nvida drivers for you, some you need to download from online updates. Plus you can Oc Nvidia cards with NVCLOCK in linux, sorry about your problem.

 

[BillLeeLee]

I did some searching, not much came up since I don't really know the best terms to search for. I found a thread on Rage3D with a warning to Linux users from one member who unfortunately had his monitor 'damaged' by the Ati Drivers.

It seems to be a common problem with the ATi 3.11.1 version of their Linux drivers. The posts on Rage3D makes it sound like the drivers rewrite the EDID EPROM or something in the monitor, so you have a corrupted EEPROM in the monitor.

If that's the case, then unfortunately, there is really not much you can possibly do. You should contact ATi and your monitor's maker, see if they have any suggestions, or see if your monitor is still under warranty. ATi, however, doesn't provide support on their Linux drivers.

Makes me a little paranoid about my monitor now. I'm not going to lose my monitor to their crappy Linux drivers (using 3.12 drivers now, well, used to).

Sorry I couldn't help more.

 

[speakxj7]

sadface, edid in my g400 got wiped in the last couple of weeks. no ati here, but it is predominately linux with intel/nvidia/displaylink(evdi). (with a little win10 sprinkled in for gaming)

luckly, don't have any issue setting arbitrary scan rates but it makes me a bit nervous.

noticed right away, but i've been fussing with it for a little while and have ruled pretty much everything out at this point, then found this thread.

my main thing with the loss of edid is that it coincides exactly with the use of the monitor with hdmi and dvi-d to VGA adapters becoming unstable (could've been the adapters as well, of course, but that's unavoidable to run it on current gen graphics hardware)
using a dp->vga adapter (at least my specific one), still produces a good result with the usual no issues @ 100hz+ rates