Newbie trying to set up multiple monitors

I have a system with two graphics cards, an AGP Matrox G400 and a PCI ATI
Mach64. I've been happily using X 4.2.1.1 multiheaded for a while without
using frame buffer devices.

Now I want to play movies using mplayer on the ATI card because it has tv-out.
However it's too slow to play under X because the driver doesn't support Xv.

So what I'm wondering is if frame buffer devices are the solution to my
problem. Can I configure a frame-buffer device for the second monitor and run
mplayer with output going to the framebuffer? Is there a way to get X to use
the framebuffer device for the second monitor when I'm not playing movies?

I've tried building the modules but as soon as I load the atyfb.o module my
screen on the main monitor gets totally corrupted, C-A-Fn doesn't restore text
mode, nothing works. This happens even If I do it while in text mode, not
under X, and even if X is configured not to use the second monitor.

So I'm stumped how to get started. Is it necessary to switch my main monitor
to going through a frame buffer device too? Is it necessary to do it at boot
time, since nothing seems to work when loaded as a module? Or is something
else wrong here and this is supposed to work?

--
greg



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