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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Apple G5 & Ati 9600 Screen Blank

JohnO - Aug 28, 2005 - 11:11 pm

I recently replaced a GeForce 5200 card with an ATI 9600 in my Apple G5 tower running OS X 10.4.2. I also installed the latest ATI Displays Control Panel 4.5.5. While looking at the newly installed software, I clicked on Roate 90°. My screen went blank and won't come back. If I reinstall the GeForce card, all is well. I borrowed another monitor (both of the monitors are 17" CRTs) and it works with either card. The only time I have a problem is with my original monitor connected to the ATI card. Is there a way to reset the preferences for the ATI display software so that I can get my monitor to work? Are there some files I can delete that will get me back to a working situation? I have tried zapping PRAM but that did not help.
I would appreciate any help you can give.

a2daj - Aug 29, 2005 - 11:23 pm

If you want to delete the ATI Displays preferences look in your Preferences folders for anything that starts with ATI. If you have any files which begin with com.ati delete those too. If this doesn't help there's another option to try.

Do you buy any chance have another computer available that you can use to connect to your G5 remotely? It wouldn't matter if it's a Mac or PC. If you do have another computer, I would recommend downloading an OS X application called OSXVNC. This is a really simple app makes it easy to setup what's called a VNC server. IT allows you to access a computer using what's called VNC (Virtual Network Computing). You can configure the application so that the VNC server starts up at during the boot up process. On another computer you can download any number of VNC clients to use to connect to your G5. A popular Mac one is called Chicken of VNC.

Once you're sure you can connect to the G5 with another computer, replace the 9600 and start it up. Then connect to it remotely. You should be able to configure the display. You may get disconnected as you switch display settings but you should just need to reconnect.

JohnO - Aug 29, 2005 - 11:41 pm

Thanks for the reply.

I have already tried deleting all files that contain 'ati'. So, it may be a file that does not contain 'ati' but I don't know what it would be.

As far as the VNC issue, I already have Timbuktu installed on the machine in question and my laptop. The odd thing is that when I tried to connect from the laptop, the display was not the desktop of the machine I was connecting to but multiple repeats of the laptops display. Much like you would see if you aimed a video camera at a mirror with another mirror behind you. I got about 15 copies of the laptop display on the laptop. Don't know if this is due the the problem I am having or not but I have used Timbuktu successfully in the past.

VNC may work where Timbuktu does not so I may try that, however, I kind of doubt it since Timbuktu is more sophisticated.

I'm open to any other suggestions.

Thanks,

John

a2daj - Aug 30, 2005 - 11:17 am

I'm actually not surprised dumping the ATI preferences didn't help since it's the system which keeps track of the display states and not ATI Displays.

I forgot about the location where OS X keeps the display preferences. In your Preferences folder there should be a folder called ByHost. There should be files in there with names like:

com.apple.preference.displays..plist


Try dumping those.

JohnO - Aug 30, 2005 - 11:46 pm

Thanks for the info on the preferences, I will try that, however I am currently on a business trip so it will have to wait until Thursday.

I had assumed that since Zapping PRAM did not have an effect, that the preferences were somewhere other than an apple pref file.

We'll see how it goes.


John

JohnO - Sep 1, 2005 - 4:15 pm

Well, I tried dumping the two files I found in 'ByHost'. They were titled:
com.apple.preference.displays.000a95696878.plist

and

com.apple.preference.displays.000d9335516e.plist

I trashed them, emptied trash, pulled the ATI prefencepane out of the Library folder, deleted any ati preferences I could find, then restarted and zapped PRAM.

Had no affect.

Any other suggestions? I'm starting to get desperate ;-)


John

a2daj - Sep 1, 2005 - 7:06 pm

Ack! Hmmm... how about this:

If the display preferences were recreated, dump them again, but on the next reboot reset the NVRAM via the Open Firmware method. If you're unfamiliar with how to do that do the following.

Hold down Command+Option+O+F during startup. You should eventually see the open firmware prompt. Then type the following three lines

reset-nvram
set-defaults
reset-all

After reset-all is typed, the system should reboot. This does a deeper reset than zapping the PRAM. Hopefully it will be enough to wipe out the video settings which are stored in the NVRAM.

JohnO - Sep 1, 2005 - 7:53 pm

Thanks you very much for the additional suggestions, however, I got it straightened out. I had a wild idea to boot the computer in Safe Mode (something I have never done before but assume it is similar to the old pre-OS X way of booting without extensions.

Any way, when I did this with the ATI card in, I got a screen. It was rotated and at a resolution of 400 by 600 (no idea why). There were big black bands on either side of the visible part of the screen, much like you see with a wide screen movie on a non-wide-screen TV except on the sides. The screen was behaving very strangely. If I drug a window off the right, it came back on from the left.

So, I was able to open the monitor system prefs. and reset the resolution to 1024 x 768, the resolution that I normally use. It did show additional screen space but still with the big black bands on the side (and still rotated).

When I opened the ATI Monitors application, it would show an error saying that the ATI TVOut Kernel Extension was missing and although I could get to a couple of parts of the ATI Monitor application, the part with rotation was not available.

I then tried a normal reboot. The screen came up the same way (rotated and with big bands on the side) but since I was not in safe-mode this time, I could open the ATI Monitors application and get to the part where I could rotate back. Hurray, it worked.

I am not really sure what was prevented from loading by the Safe Mode boot that allowed the screen to be visible (although screwy). I'm also not sure why that rotated resolution could display in safe-mode but cause my monitor to power off (actually go into power saving mode) when I was not in Safe Mode.

It may have something to do with that ATI TVOut Kernel Extension (although my card does not have a TV out port) but I have pulled too many hairs out trying to get this working so it may be a while before I try and delve deeper into it.

Anyway, thanks again for you efforts, I really appreciate it.


Regards,


John

a2daj - Sep 1, 2005 - 8:57 pm

Glad to hear your problem was solved! I'm curious as to what caused the problem too and if it's reproduceable (not on your system! Could you provide me wiht the exact monitor which had the problem and the resolution/refresh rate you were using before the initial screen rotation attempt? I have friends in the ATI Mac dev team so I might be able to provide them with a bug report.

As far as TV out and the OEM Radeon 9600, it actually does support TV out with the appropriate DVI adapter (Apple sells the proper ones). ATI added support to ATI Displays to offer more TV Out options when using an OEM Radeon 9600/9800 with the DVI adapter. I'm not sure how well it works since I don't use TV out but the support is in ATI Displays and the ATITVOut.kext.

JohnO - Sep 1, 2005 - 11:32 pm

Well, my monitor is an old Radius PrecisionColor Disply/17 crt. I only had installed the ATI 9600 OEM card (not a commercial version) a few minutes before I downloaded and installed the ATI Display software 4.5.5. Prior to my installing the software a (stupidly) clicking on the Rotate button, the display appeared to be operating correctly. It was only when I clicked on one of the 90° rotate buttons that the screen went blank and my monitor went into 'power saving' mode as indicated by the lights on the front panel.

My resolution and refresh were set at 1024x768 @ 85hz prior to the rotation attempt.

When I was finally able to to see the screen (although still rotated) the Monitor system pref. said that the resolution was 400x600 which is a resolution that I had never seen before, nor is it available now that everything is working.

Just an additional bit of info, I am using the Apple ADC to VGA adapter as opposed to the DVI to VGA adapter. Not sure if this has any effect.

I was not aware that this card supported TV out thru an Apple adapter, however, there is not an S-video or Composite output directly on the card.

Hope this addtional info helps.


Regards,

John