matroxfb dualhead instabilities

Hi Petr,
I am doing a package for Gentoo with some tools for matrox dual-head
cards, mainly developed by you and available on your ftp.

I am using linux 2.4.20-pre8-ac3 at the moment. I hadn't used the second
head too much until now.

I patched my kernel with fbset-through-vt-2.4.19-rc5.gz,
mga-2.4.19-rc5-tvout.gz was already merged by Alan Cox on his tree.
However I get oopses often when using a console on my TV if I am playing
with matroxset & fbset, which I am right now as I am polishing some
scripts and default config files to include in the package for Gentoo.
I have just removed it from my kernel and I'll see if the oopses show up
again.

I tried matroxfb-vsync-irq-patch-2.4.19 too, but with it I cannot use at
all any board on my first PCI slot since the Matrox is using the IRQ.
What is the patch good for? I just have a crowded PC and no free slots.

I send attached two of the scripts I've written. There is something
which I could not yet understand.
If you run 'mgafb.sh pal fb1 4' to set fb1 in pal mode and control
virtual console 4, in principle works just fine. If I run it from
tvgetty.sh from inittab there aren't any kind of problems, but if I
launch it from another console, the first time works as expected, but
after the first one, not only console 4 changes of mode, but the console
I am calling it from also changes to pal mode.
I couldn't understand why. DO you see any reason?

Besides, if you read tvgetty.sh, you'll see a line with 'setfont'.
That's because without it I do not get 8bit mode on that console, and
thus can't see extended characters. Is it normal that I have to
re-run that kind of init scripts, which are system-wide (for all the
consoles) on my system, for the second head?

I hope I made me clear enough. Otherwise, tell me what needs to be
clarified.


-- 
Javier Marcet [off-list ref]
Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus