On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 08:15:20PM +0100, Graham wrote:
I've never got this computer (an Athlon 2800+ on Epox 8KRA2) to do power management, either before or after fitting a new graphics card (nVidia FX5200) and monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 213T). (Plug: A stunning 21.3" DVI LCD panel. Anyone after a Christmas treat for themselves should take a gander at this beast. Not a single dead pixel in the whole 1600x1200.)
What happens if you connect the screen via an analog cable? just for testing purposes mind ;) The Nvidia gfx cards quite often seem to be a real bugger when it comes to power management and detecting monitor capabilites via DDC. Also are you using the nv or nvidia driver with XFree86? (try using the other one to see if the problem goes away?) Oh, and are you running the system dual head? (with 2 screens) as this can aggravate problems.
Other computers, my old Dell laptop, for example, do behave as wanted. But for this one it looks like the power switch remains the only option.
I know what you mean, although, my Dell M60 laptop works fine (which has a *really* *really* nice 1920x1200 15.4" screen) but others with the Dell D800 which to all intents and purposes is the same machine with a different gfx card have many problems with Linux doing the right thing with power management.
Anyhow, if none of the above ideas work then the power button it is for you ;) and i prefer to leave a flashy screensaver on as it reminds me to turn the monitor off at the power switch instead of having something that nearly but not quite powers off the monitor as it gets hard to tell what state it is in.