Re: help: hang on X start with PSW500au and s3 virge

[Randall Wayth <rwayth@physics.unimelb.edu.au>]

For the sake of making a record of what I have discovered, I'll reply to 
my own email here and hope it is useful to someone else. This is what I 
have found:

- the s3virge card would only work in one of the 64 bit slots after 
issuing a "set pci_device_override -1" command at the SRM prompt, but 
this did not affect the hanging problem. Thanks to "gl" for suggesting this.
- the card worked fine with a default woody installation and kernel 2.2.20.
- upgrading the kernel to 2.4.18, 2.4.27 or 2.6.8 caused the hanging 
problems. This was true regardless of whether I compiled a custom kernel 
without modules etc.
- with kernel 2.2.20, no "BusID" parameter was required in the X config 
file.
- the BusID param was required for all other kernel versions otherwise X 
would fail to start with an error something like "no matching device 
section for instance PCI:0:12:0". This was true if the card was in a 32 
or 64 bit slot.
- trying to use sarge/X4.3 with a 2.2 kernel caused all sorts of 
"interesting" problems and I wouldn't recommend it...

So, the problem appears to be related more to how PCI devices are 
handled in newer kernels, rather than anything to do with X or the card 
itself. Anyway, I'm giving up. Hope this is useful to someone.

Cheers,
Randall.

Randall Wayth wrote:

> Hi Jay,
>
> Thanks for the quick response. Alas, I have tried different PCI slots 
> with no luck. If I try using one of the 64-bit slots then the machine 
> does not boot, with a message from the SRM bios saying there is an 
> "illegal device" or something like that. So the machine will only boot 
> with the s3virge card in a 32-bit slot.
>
> The requirement for the "BusID" parameter came after upgrading to 
> sarge from woody. Prior to that, the card that came with the machine 
> worked using the "tga" driver without the need for the BusID param. 
> After that, the BusID line was required for X4.3 to work with the 
> existing tga card (error message was: " TGA: No matching Device 
> section for instance (BusID PCI:0:12:0) found") and was required for 
> X4.3 to even begin starting up with the s3virge card. Incidentally, 
> the existing card was installed in a 64-bit slot, so this BusID thing 
> does not appear to depend on the slot which the card is installed in. 
> It seems more likely to be something which has changed between the 
> different versions of X in woody and sarge.
>
> I should also say that I tested this card in a Windoze machine and in 
> a Pentium-based debian PC and it worked fine, so there is no problem 
> there.
>
> Thanks for the recommendation re good cards. This comes a bit late for 
> me :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Randall.