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Re: Can't get ATI Rage128 to work with XFree86 on Debian



I'm sending this to debian-user as well, hoping to draw out some more
helpful comments.

On 03 Dec 2002 12:43:10 -0500
"Timothy J. Ford" <ford@fau.edu> wrote:

> Here's what I am currently using. Maybe it will you.
> 
> 1. Output from lspci:
> 
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage 128 Pro Ultra TF

Same output here:
  01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage 128 Pro Ultra TF

> 2. The pertinent section from XF86Config:
> 
> Section "Device"
>         Identifier  "Card0"
>         Driver      "r128"
>         VendorName  "ATI"
>         BoardName   "Rage 128 Pro TF"
>         Option     "AGPMode"    "4"
>         BusID      "PCI:1:0:0"
> EndSection

The only meaningful difference is the AGPMode option. Tried it, same result
(X starts with acceleration, the gears screensaver works for a random amount
of time ranging from a few seconds to 1 hour or so, then X crashes, only
way out is Magic SysReq sync+umount+boot).

> 3. xfree86 version: 4.2.1-4 from Debian unstable

Mine is -3 from testing, perhaps there've been improvements but I doubt it.

> 4. using kernel-package, roll my own kernel starting from the Debian
>    kernel source version:   2.4.19_2.4.19-5 

I'm at 2.4.20 as of this morning. Source came from kernel.org, so no Debian
patches. But I don't think that should make all that much difference.

> 5. For drm kernel modules and dri packages, in sources.list put this:
> 
> deb	http://people.debian.org/~daenzer/dri-trunk/	./
> 
> 6. apt-get install the 4 packages:
> 
> drm-trunk-module-src
> xlibmesa-dev-dri-trunk
> xlibmesa3-dri-trunk
> xserver-xfree86-dri-trunk
> 
> Some remarks:
> I have been successfully using the version 2002.10.02-2 of
> xserver-xfree86-dri-trunk, the newer versions seem to have problems.
> Roll the drm modules using kernel-package.

Took me a while to figure out beforehand what steps would be required to
use these packages without compromising my system, but I'm glad I did,
because:

a) the new xserver aborted very early during startup with a segfault,
probably because it was compiled in another linux version (2.4.19) and
for another architecture (686, mine is K6). Rolling back the changes would
have been a dependency nightmare if I hadn't thought of a back-out plan in
advance.

b) I then tried to leave the new kernel modules obtained from compiling
and installing drm-trunk-module-src, in the hope they might work out better,
but the result was even worse (random patches of colour painted all over
the screen while running glxgears). Fortunately, all I had to do was to
copy back the standard kernel modules I had backed up before installing
the new ones, and run update-modules.

So, back to where I started. Damned card. Worked perfectly under Windows,
so it's not a hardware problem. Seems the only thing to do is wait for
X 5.x :)

-- 
Carlos Sousa
http://vbc.dyndns.org/



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