Could it be the driver?

[MarkBeardsley]

Sorry about this but I need to explain a little bit of the background to this question.

Just for fun, I bought a Chinese made mini pc recently, the Tronsmart BJ19. It is built around the Intel Celeron J1900 chipset and I was thinking of using it for software development and the like. When I received the pc, I could not make it work with the VGA monitor I had at hand but found that it did function when plugged into an old TV set which had an HDMI port. Linux Lite 2.6 was installed successfully and then updated. Later, I bought a new monitor with VGA and HDMI ports and tried to plug the BJ19 into this; this is when the fun began.

Booting the pc up, I saw a GRUB screen and took the Linux Lite option only for the display to revert to black and for the monitor to tell me that it was not receiving a signal. Digging around the internet it seems there are a few people having similar problems; they can boot up the machine when the monitor is HD ready but not when it is fully HD. With Windows installations, it seems the problem is fixed by installing an updated driver and I wondered if the same solution can be applied in my case.

So, my question is, well questions are, how can I check to see which drivers I have installed? Next, how can I install different driver software? I understand that Intel themselves offer drivers that can be installed using an application they also provide. Does anyone have experience with this? What options do I have with regard to drivers and is there a 'preferred' solution?

Thanks in advance.

[Valtam]

The Intel graphics driver for that CPU is no longer supported in LL. You could try a newer kernel, try 4.1 - https://www.freecinema2022.gq/forums/insta.../#msg14960 reboot after.

[MarkBeardsley]

Thanks for the reply Jerry. I will look into changing the kernel this weekend.

[MarkBeardsley]

No joy I am afraid. First I updated the kernel to 4.1 and nothing then 4.2 and still nothing. In vain, I even replaced LinuxLite with Xubuntu 15.10 and installed Intel's HD Graphics Drivers for Linux and still no luck. The DisplayPort does work with an adapter but not the HDMI port.

One thgought did occur, do you know whether the HDMI cable I use matters at all? Manufacturers often state the version (1.3, 1.4, 2.0 etc) and the resolution their cable supports but is this just marketing? A new cable seems a reasonable place to start another hunt for a solution I guess.

Thanks again.

[Wirezfree]

Hi,

There are a myriad of HDMI cables,
some even have Ethernet included, but that is usually noted on packaging
For straightforward video use a standard cable, maybe 1.1/1.3 will suffice.

In my early days I was also having a black screen issues with my setup.
I only had one HDMI cable, and was swapping it between multiple PC's

1. Sometimes when I swapped between PC's I would end-up with a black screen.
    I posted somewhere on here that was a Bug with XFCE.
    But you have tried Ubuntu 15, so that rules out XFCE.

2. I have an AOC Monitor with 2 X HDMI & 1 VGA
When there is no signal, it goes to sleep, and defaults to VGA.
So if I switched on a PC it would blink, but it would not always stick to that input,
and it gave a black screen. In my case it was usually just after BIOS splash.
I suspect during boot, it is initialising the video, Get's an initial bit of a signal then
during boot/monitor detection, signal goes, monitor flips to saying no signal.

So in the AOC monitor I turned "Off" the auto detect.
Now I use the buttons on the monitor, 1 cycles through the ports, 1 makes it active
No more black screens or "No Signal" message.
See if your monitors got such options.

Given it worked with your TV,
I would check monitor settings 1st, does not cost anything, then try a new HDMI cable.

[MarkBeardsley]

Thanks for the suggestion, I will take a look at the monitor's settings to see if I can turn off the auto-detect feature. Failing that, I will also get another HDMI cable just so that I can rule out any problems with that part of the equation.

[somewhereman]

i just flushed windows completely and have only linux lite on an older dell laptop,
it never occurred to me that there might be an issue running an hdmi to our 50" hd tv to watch the odd movie on kodi

but i tried the settings-display and plugged in the hdmi cable,
and boom, the display window instantly recognized the tv, i thought this was going to be a breeze

nope, i tried every setting available to make it come up on the tv
and then whatever i chose (i believe it was the tv as output) my screen went blank

reboot, nothing
good thing i still had lite on a thumb drive, so i booted that up and looked for answers
try ctrlf2, ctrlf10 or ctrlaltdel, was all i could find
ok, reboot from hard drive, nothing again
but ctrlf2 brought up a login option (username, password), so some success
unfortunately i am a green horn and had no idea how to bring up the actual user interface (if that is the right term)

finally, for whatever reason, i simply rebooted with the tv hdmi attached to the laptop,
and success, it was on both screens
we watched the movie then made sure the display output was set to the laptop screen
now the laptop is on the normal screen (and my wife is not saying, that is what you get for monkeying around with operating systems)

i hope this helps