Underscan/overscan/size options of tv cause X not to start with 8.10 and 8.11

[Heiko]

system:

• AMD Athlon X2 5200 (2.7 Ghz)
• 2Gb memory
• AMD HD3450 512Mb
• Asus motherbord with AMD780G chipset (with internal graphics: hybrid crossfire disabled in bios)
• Ubuntu 8.04
• using dual-head configuration with single idependent displays (two X screens, can not drag windows from one to another, but can move mouse from one to another).
• TFT monitor and Pal/B tv (old CRT 4:3, it can handle a resolution of 1024x768 on 60Hz and that is the resolution I use)

Last month I tried installing the 8.10 driver, but I couldn't get it to work. When restarting the computer both screens stayed black. So this month with 8.11 arriving I tried again, but it still didn't work. The graphical installer gave the advice to use:

aticonfig --initial -f

If X didn't start, so I tried. Now I got a working X session! Next thing I did was enabling dual-head, it still worked. But the colors on my tv didn't look very nice. So I fired up Catalyst Control Center and changed the standards setting to the correct value Pal/B. Colors look good now, but I got big black borders in the top and the bottom of my tv's screen.

So I fired up Catalyst Control Center again and I changed the size settings of my tv so that it covered the complete screen. It worked, but after restarting my computer both screens stayed black (I saw my tv blinking a few times, trying to initialize it I guess). No way to get X starting again... so restart in recovery mode, did:

aticonfig --initial=dual-head -f
init 2

And I got X working again. So I though... if resizing does not work, lets try changing it from `underscan' to `overscan' and again X didn't start when rebooting my computer.

So there seems to be a bug in the drivers that cause X not to start properly when the size or underscan/overscan settings are changed in the Catalyst Control Center for my tv.

In fact, the system hangs, both screens stay black and I can not go to a terminal screen with Ctrl-Alt-F1.

Does anybody else have these same problems? They occur with 8.10 and 8.11. Driver version 8.9 seems unaffected.

[Heiko]

The problem seems to be a bit more complex then described above. While changing overscan/underscan or size options for my TV gave me guaranteed failings of X to start, it also failed me once yesterday while I didn't change any of those settings.

In AMD's release notes it can be seen that there are all kind of dual-head problems. I hope they will fix them soon, because this driver (as the previous 8.10) is unusable for me.

I went back to 8.9 for now...

[Heiko]

I am still having this problem with 8.12. When installing I add the option that my tv is PAL-B. I see large black borders in the top and bottom of my tv, but stretching using overscan/underscan options causes X not to start anymore after a reboot.

I am using 8.12 at the moment, using PAL-B as tv format setting, but I kept the big black borders (2 cm or so) in the top and bottom of my tv. That way it runs reasonably (X starts always after a reboot, user switching causes X to crash, but that might be unrelated to my tv problems).