Ati Radeon 9000 - TV out causes X server not to start

[liamconfrey]

I read a pretty good article (http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=39991,00.asp) a few days ago over at Extremetech on building a linux media Jukebox. I got everything setup, but I cannot get the video card to output to a TV. I cannot get X to start when I have the TV Out (S-Video) hooked up on my video card. The system goes through its post fine, then grub loads up and displays fine, and then blam: "Could not start X server". Here are the relevant specs:

System = Athlon XP 1700, 256 mb ram
Video = Ati Radeon 9000 128mb
OS = Red Hat 9 (Shrike)

The research I've done says that Ati doesn't directly support Tv out on linux, so I downloaded a utitility called atitvout. The problem with this, is that the Tv out has to be plugged in at boot time in order for atitvout to detect it. If I plug it in at boot time, I can't start X! I can run linux from a command line on the TV, but that doesn't make for a very cool Multimedia Jukebox.

Any suggestions/Advice would be greatly appreciated.

[bwkaz]

After a failed attempt at starting X up, do a cp /var/log/XFree86.0.log ~/xfree86.0.txt and then (after replugging your monitor so that X can start again), attach the xfree86.0.txt file that will be in your home directory to your next post.

[liamconfrey]

Sorry bout that bwkaz.

Anyways, I think the point is moot (from my perspective at least). I broke down and bought a geforce 2 MX (35 bucks). I installed the "nvidia" driver, and presto - the thing works flawlessly.

Newbie-2-Newbie Advice: If you need to output to a TV under linux, save yourself alot of aggravation and get an Nvidia card