Lenovo H415 desktop AMD A6-3600 GPU not recognized

[peterzay]

Lenovo desktop model H415 does not see Viewsonic monitor VE710b except for text mode.

The APU is AMD A6-3600 CPU combined with AMD Radeon HD 6530D GPU.

The following test boots were made:
- Ubuntu 12.04 beta 28-feb-2012 i386
- Ubuntu 12.04 beta 14-mar-2012 i386
- Ubuntu 12.04 beta 19-mar-2012 AMD64

All three fail to get graphics mode from monitor with message NO SIGNAL.

The i386 boots proceed as follows:
- BIOS welcome screen from Lenovo
- white text flashes by in upper left corner, cannot read it
- keyboard = man drawing appears at bottom
- get NO SIGNAL from monitor
- boot continues but cannot see it

The AMD64 boot proceeds as follows:
- BIOS welcome screen from Lenovo
- in the upper left corner, you get the following white text: error: prefix is not set
- you then get GRUB screen version 1.99-17ubuntu1 with 3 options: try, install, check disc
- select either try or install
- get NO SIGNAL from monitor
- boot continues but cannot see it

On an old HP Pentium 4 with ATI Radeon 9200 physical card, this Viewsonic monitor is recognized with the i386 Ubuntu 12.04 beta from 28-feb-2012. The 2 others were not tested.

This bug submitted from another machine with Ubuntu 10.04.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: gedit 2.30.3-0ubuntu0.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-39.86-generic 2.6.32.56+drm33.22
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-39-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Mar 19 22:17:31 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gedit

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 959890

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[peterzay (peterzay)]

The 3 test boots were all from liveCD versions.

I must return this machine in about 1 week, so any testing on my end needs to be done quickly.

This bug was reported from another machine because the AMD64 test machine will not boot. No apport-collect is possible.

Here is a link on this APU:

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K10/AMD-A-Series%20A6-3600.html

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

Does this bug happen if you boot prior versions of Ubuntu, such as 11.10 or 11.04?

[peterzay (peterzay)]

I would have to download the liveCD for those releases.

Which should I try, the i386 or AMD64 versions?

[Julian Wiedmann (jwiedmann)]

If the monitor is connected via VGA, you're probably hitting bug 943263.

[peterzay (peterzay)]

Yes, the VGA monitor is fed by the VGA output from the desktop.

The HDMI desktop output cannot be connected because the old monitor does not support HDMI.

[peterzay (peterzay)]

In answer to comment #4:

Ubuntu 11.10 fails as per AMD64 boot in the initial post except that the GRUB version is
- GRUB screen version 1.99-12ubuntu5

The big surprise (for me) was that Ubuntu 11.04 works:
- BIOS welcome screen from Lenovo
- in the upper left corner, you get the following white text: error: prefix is not set
- you then get GRUB screen version 1.99~rc1-13ubuntu3 with 3 options: try, install, check disc
- select try
- get rather large ubuntu splash screen with animated dots
- get a successful boot to gnome 2 classic desktop
- system monitor indicates about 400MiB RAM required, about double i386 value
- system monitor recognizes 4 cores
- on shutdown, you get a screen full of text messages