[Amicus]

I just loaded OpenBSD 4.0 on a Dell Inspiron 2650. I had 3.9 installed previously and the same annoyance occured. Here is a description of the problem:

Console looks fine on the screen.
After "startx" is run the console is flashing and adjusting horizontally. It's usually readable but very annoying.
X windows (xorg) looks fine. The colors look great, the resolution is correct (1024x768) for this screen.

My main concern is am I possibly screwing up the display by having an incorrect setting in the xorg.conf file?

I have googled for xorg.conf's and specs about this display as well as used xorgcfg and the following seems to be the best configuration so far:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "xtrap"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "wsmouse"
Option "Device" "/dev/wsmouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
HorizSync 31.5 - 48.5
VertRefresh 50.0 - 90.0
EndSection

Section "Device"

### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "HWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "ShadowFB" # [<bool>]
#Option "UseFBDev" # [<bool>]
#Option "Rotate" # [<str>]
#Option "VideoKey" # <i>
#Option "FlatPanel" # [<bool>]
#Option "FPDither" # [<bool>]
#Option "CrtcNumber" # <i>
#Option "FPScale" # [<bool>]
#Option "FPTweak" # <i>
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "nv"
VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
BoardName "NV11 [GeForce2 Go]"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

[molotov]

You can tell it what resolutions to use. I would do something like

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16


Note the lack of ""'s. Then

SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768"


If Im understanding the problem properly this might help.

[Amicus]

I think the depth it's choosing happens to be 16. I could force it for my trial and error troubleshooting steps.

The problem is console looks fine until X is started and the NV driver is loaded. After that, X looks fine but the text console has some sync issues. It's as if X is overriding the normal text console settings for the video.

So once I 'startx', the console is flaky until I reboot. Even if I exit X-windows the console is still flaky because the NV driver has been loaded prior and screwed all the normal text console stuff up.

For the time being, once I startx, I stay in X. If I want a terminal I open rxvt or xterm because ttyC1, ttyC2, etc are just painful to look at after X has been loaded.

Maybe all of that clarified the issue some. Anyone have anymore ideas?
In the meantime, I'm doing to choose a DefaultDepth like Molotov suggested and systematically change the HorizSync and VertRefresh values until I can find a range that doesn't screw up the text console. Only annoying part is I have to reboot in order to start on a clean slate. So I guess I'll change the xorg.conf, startx, see how console looks, reboot, change xorg.conf, etc.

Thanks all
-amicus