I have two systems with ATI video cards, one my MBE and the other a FE.
Cards are the X800 and X300. Installing R5E50 was wonderful with Xorg. I didn't even have to connect a monitor on the FE system that in normal operation only has a TV! Thank all for the wonderful work on KnoppMyth.

That said I was unable to get the built in Xorg driver to give the performance required to playback HD content on my FE. Specs:

FE:
Intel 2.8GHz CPU
ATI X300 (AGP) 128MB
1GB RAM

I reverted back to contaminating the system with the drivers from ATI that worked on R5D7.

Before I get into the how, maybe now is a good time to write down the ATI driver history that resides in my swiss cheese memory. It's fairly simple.

8.32.5 Latest driver (as I write this). Overlay problem, effect is that the overlay is stretched 2x tall (maybe wide also) and you can only see a fraction of the played back content on the TV. TV image adjustment does work.
.
.
8.27.10 Newest driver with a working overlay. TV image adjust does not work, entries in xorg.conf are ignored. This is what I use as the default image position is OK on my TV.
.
.
8.0.20 Last reported version that had a overlay and TV image adjustment features working. I did not try to get this working on R5E50.


I have also tried many versions in between the above and the two major features I track fail/work at various points in between the 3 versions I have identified.

Sorry for the diversion, on to the how. This is a sober monkey set of instructions as I have left out things like ‘su’ (do all this as root), how to get the files needed to your KM system and how to edit files.

1) Get the driver from ATI. I won't bother to post a link, the ATI/AMD site is 'being defined'. It is there, poke around and you'll find it and all the other versions. File name:
ati-driver-installer-8.27.10-x86.run

2) Unfortunately 8.27.10 doesn't have a pre-prepared driver for the version of Xorg in R5E50. Get the kernel sources. The way I did it compiled from several previous posts:



3) The ATI installer needs a library from gcc-3.3. I am sure there is an elegant way to do this, but here's what worked for me:



4) No that's still not enough to make it work. You’ll never guess...there are bugs in the ATI 8.27.10 package. Here's how to fix them:



I just manually edited /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/firegl_public.c to add the '+' items at the appropriate places.



5) We’re getting closer, time to build and install.



6) Time to update xorg.conf – ONLY FOR TV OUT (disconnect all other monitors before reboot), and very specifically a 4:3 TV if you need something different, you’ll need to do some research and use appropriate settings. You could do this with aticonfig, however I prefer not to as you are then left with two different sets of ‘screen’ definitions in xorg.conf. This can be maddening when you are making minor tweaks and accidentally make the chages to the non-active ‘screen’. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Under ‘Section “Monitor”’ change the following lines to:


Under ‘Section “Device”’ make it look like this:


Under ‘Section “Screen”’


7) Reboot. If no X, check /var/log/Xorg.0.log and see what’s not working

Hope this helps someone, GOOD LUCK!!!

***********************************************************

Well, wasn’t that fun. Why do I keep these ATI cards around instead of ending the pain and getting an Nvida 5200 or like? Not sure at this point.

Hi,

I followed the above instructions and this did successfully get the ATI (fglrx) driver to display the GUI on my TV, however this is giving me the 2x tall overlay issue.

I did try some other suggestions first ie. using apt-get to install fglrx drivers, however I did remove these packages before running through this process.

Xorg log with relevant info is below:

(II) fglrx(0): [drm] DRM interface version 1.0
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] created "fglrx" driver at busid "PCI:1:0:0"
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] added 8192 byte SAREA at 0x8000
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] mapped SAREA 0x8000 to 0xb76f1000
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] framebuffer handle = 0x9000
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] added 1 reserved context for kernel
(II) fglrx(0): DRIScreenInit done
(II) fglrx(0): Kernel Module Version Information:
(II) fglrx(0): Name: fglrx
(II) fglrx(0): Version: 8.27.10
(II) fglrx(0): Date: Jul 27 2006
(II) fglrx(0): Desc: ATI FireGL DRM kernel module
(II) fglrx(0): Kernel Module version matches driver.
(II) fglrx(0): Kernel Module Build Time Information:
(II) fglrx(0): Build-Kernel UTS_RELEASE: 2.6.18-chw-13
(II) fglrx(0): Build-Kernel MODVERSIONS: no
(II) fglrx(0): Build-Kernel __SMP__: yes
(II) fglrx(0): Build-Kernel PAGE_SIZE: 0x1000
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] register handle = 0x0000a000
(EE) fglrx(0): [agp] unable to acquire AGP, error "xf86_ENODEV"
(EE) fglrx(0): cannot init AGP
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] removed 1 reserved context for kernel
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] unmapping 8192 bytes of SAREA 0x8000 at 0xb76f1000
(WW) fglrx(0): ***********************************************
(WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed! *
(WW) fglrx(0): * (maybe driver kernel module missing or bad) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * 2D acceleraton available (MMIO) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * no 3D acceleration available *
(WW) fglrx(0): ********************************************* *
(II) fglrx(0): FBADPhys: 0xe8000000 FBMappedSize: 0x08000000
(==) fglrx(0): Write-combining range (0xe8000000,0x8000000)
(II) fglrx(0): FBMM initialized for area (0,0)-(832,8191)
(II) fglrx(0): FBMM auto alloc for area (0,0)-(832,600) (front color buffer - assumption)
(==) fglrx(0): Backing store disabled
(==) fglrx(0): Silken mouse enabled
(**) fglrx(0): DPMS enabled
(II) fglrx(0): Using XFree86 Acceleration Architecture (XAA)
Screen to screen bit blits
Solid filled rectangles
Solid Horizontal and Vertical Lines
Offscreen Pixmaps
Setting up tile and stipple cache:
32 128x128 slots
28 256x256 slots
13 512x512 slots
(II) fglrx(0): Acceleration enabled
(II) fglrx(0): Direct rendering disabled
(**) fglrx(0): Using software cursor
(II) fglrx(0): Largest offscreen area available: 832 x 7591
(II) Loading extension FGLRXEXTENSION
(II) Loading extension ATITVOUT
(==) RandR enabled

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

BTW I have a Radeon 9600.

Regards,


Richard

Keep in mind I have not done this myself on with a Radeon older than the X300. The 2x ovlay is the exact symptom I get with drivers newer than 8.27.10.

The same section from my Xorg log:


Note I don't have the AGP and DRI errors you do.

A quick search of my favorite place to get help with ATI drivers:
http://www.rage3d.com
Yields a simple, yet unhelpful:

Direct link:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33863030

Also more helpful:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33868998
And:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33850077

Not sure how to help you out with the agp-gart kernel module. What chipset (NB/SB) does your system have?

Hi,

Thanks fors the follow up I read those links and did notice that I didn't have the UseInternalAGPGART option set to no.

I've done this and it has slightly altered Xorg logs, but AGP init and DRI still fails.

My Chipset is an Intel 875P. Had a quick look but can't see if its North or South Bridge. I bought the board some 3.5 years ago

agpgart module is loaded and depends on both fglrx and intel_agp nodules...which are both loaded. till 2x height in overlay though. At least the occasional error with X not able to load due to graphics error seems to have dissappeared though.

Really need XV for myth as using GLoverlay chews way too much CPU and barely delivers watchable video. This did use to work when I ran Myth 0.18 under Debian Sarge build.....not sure what fglrx driver I used back then though.

This problem has been around at least a year from what I can see from Bugzilla info. Not sure why its taken so long for a fix, very unusual in Linux world. I think I may have to buy $50 NVIDIA TV-out card......I've spent way too much time on getting this working already

Hope I can find an AGP card still these days.

BTW found out card is actually 9800 Pro not 9600 as I first thought.....driver wise I think this matters very little.

Would be nice if I could get this working again though, if anyone else has some ideas.

Regards,


Richard

Well did look at some Intel 875P posts. Your are correct, there seems to be a bug with agpgart and the Intel 875P. Does look like there are bugfixes out there and agree it is strange the fixes are not already in the kernel as the patches are for older kernels than what R5E50 uses. Before investing in an NVidia card it is probably worth the research time to make sure the 875P apggart bug doesn't affect NVidia AGP cards also. In my simplistic world view agpgart is video card agnostic.

Try version 8.20.8. That's the last version that I got working with a 9 series card, but it was on R5D1.

I've been too busy to play with the latest KnoppMyth release.

Oh, did you test if the Xorg drivers worked before going through all that trouble recompiling? Just curious, because I have done similar things, only to find later, that the precompiled versions would have worked just fine due to backward compatibility.

These steps aren't tested with R5E50, but I'll include them here since this is how I got it to work with Xfree86. This is modified for Xorg: