Re: Power Mac G5: Attempting to get 2D acceleration with nouveau and 6800 Ultra

[Peter Saisanas <psaisanas@gmail.com>]

Hi Rick,

Unfortunately, all three of my Powermac G5 Quad's require the LCS to be 
rebuilt.
Until i find the spare time to rebuild the LCS, i wont be building 
kernels anytime soon.

I doubt that Debian PPC arch would make an official kernel package 
specifically for the PMAC 11.2.
Either way, aside from the tweaked kernel config and perhaps a specific 
cherry picked patch from ozlabs-ppc or nouveau project where required, 
there isn't anything "special" about the kernels i have built which in 
every other respect are just vanilla kernel.org source.

Not difficult at all to roll your own custom kernel. Just download 
kernel.org source, install kernel-package and a appropriate version of 
binutils as there was an issue with some recent versions not able to 
correctly build a kernel (which may have already been resolved). Use my 
kernel config as a starting point and tinker away building your own 
kernel deb packages.

Cheers,
Peter

On 30/04/16 10:37, Rick Thomas wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> It looks like events have caught up with us.  There’s now a 4.5.0 kernel in Debian testing and strong hints that the kernel in Stretch, when it’s released, will be based on 4.6.  So your reconfigured 4.5.0-rc2 kernel is getting out-of-date.
>
> Which raises a couple of questions:
>   
> Is there any chance that your changes could make it into an official Debian package?  Seems unlikely to me — because it’s very hardware specific — but we can always hope!
>
> Do you have plans to make a 4.6 based kernel any time?
>
> And finally, is there a hardware solution?  Is there a non-Nvidia graphics card I could purchase and install in my PowerMac-G5 that wouldn’t have the problem?   I don’t need anything fancy.  Just enough to run a simple 2D mate or xfce desktop.
>
>  From all of us who have benefitted from your work, a big “Thank you!”
>
> Enjoy!
> Rick
>
> On Jan 14, 2016, at 12:42 AM, Peter Saisanas <psaisanas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi Logan,
> > The kernel version is quite old (3.16.7). Perhaps you can try something newer. Nouveau continually has improvements practically with each newer kernel version.
> >
> > Perhaps something to consider, try the easy way out and use a pre-compiled kernel deb package that i have available. I have kernels as new as 4.4.0 available suitable for Powermac G5's.
> > At least these could perhaps be a better baseline as these kernels are known to be working for many Powermac G5's (AGP & PCIe GPU's along with a few generations of nVidia GPU's (some even older than yours). Makes it easier to have a side by side comparison.
> > Your call, link is below if interested.
> >
> > https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8pqd5Ots1vfT2puX09CYjEwcFk&usp=drive_web
> >
> > Many have used them successfully in the past and have got their G5 Powermacs running with nouveau.
> >
> > I'm not so sure that MSI interrupts are ever enabled on AGP GPU's in the first place (PCIe based GPU's are a different story).
> > It would be interesting to see your cat /proc/interrupts log as well.
> >
> > Regarding your EDID issue, can you try the other DVI connector of your video card or cable or alternatively try another display out if the issue still persists.
> >
> > Most Apple OEM ATI Radeon GPU's have their own issues as well. But that's another story.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Peter